The Australian Government approved a new code of practice introducing three new psychosocial hazards. These are:
- Fatigue
- Intrusive surveillance
- Job insecurity
Here is a link to the code of practice. Arguably the most challenging part with psychosocial risk management is 'worker consultation'. We unpack this below and an important announcement from SafeWork NSW (increased compliance checks in 2025).
The key consultation insight
The law doesn't specify how you must consult workers, it just says you must consult workers. However, it does mention the following (among other things):
- You must consider if your method is appropriate (e.g. a regulator might rule that it's unreasonable to rely on focus groups for disclosures of sexual harassment or use engagement survey data to assess psychosocial risk).
- You shouldn't wait to react to incidents, you should be proactive (case below).
The focus isn't on rigidly defined methods but on outcomes. Can you show a regulator you consulted and your process worked?
Lesson from a QLD company
In 2017, a QLD company was fined $8,000 for failing to consult other duty holders. A key line from this case:
Magistrate Shearer found that the consultation was reactive, rather than proactive, which fell short of the standard of reasonableness required.
A proactive anonymous online psychosocial survey
There are three reasons doing an anonymous survey is a good approach:
- Legislative guidelines: The Code of Practice heavily references anonymous surveys throughout it.
- Digital record: It gives you evidence of consultation as you have a digital record.
- Scalable: It's easier to do it across all workers than focus groups/interviews.
Below are images taken directly from the Code of Practice.
Important announcement from SafeWork NSW
SafeWork NSW has announced increased compliance checks in 2025. If you have 200 or more workers and an inspection is carried out, even if unrelated to psychosocial risks, there will be a standardised check to see if your workplace is meeting its duty. If you haven't started consulting workers on psychosocial risk, now is a good time to start given this announcement.
To help with worker consultation, we have a survey template you could use. If you would like to access this, send an email to info@skodel.com for more information.
