Psychosocial Risks

The NSW Work Health and Safety Regulation was amended in October 2022 to include an explicit obligation whereby a school as “a person conducting a business or undertaking” must identify and assess psychosocial risks that may cause psychological harm. Appropriate control measures must be in place to manage psychosocial risks and monitor the efficacy of those control measures, to comply with the legislation.

Common work-related psychosocial hazards include job demands, exposure to traumatic events, bullying, sexual harassment, low job control, lack of role clarity and hazardous physical working environments.

SafeWork NSW has recently announced its 2024-26 Psychological Health and Safety Strategy under which SafeWork NSW inspector visits are expected to increase by 25 per cent. The regulator will be focusing on ensuring workplaces adopt a proactive and preventive approach to psychological health and safety, rather than responding to incidents after they've occurred. Education has been identified as a high-risk industry.

SafeWork NSW will issue improvement notices, prohibition notices or formal regulator warnings and may prosecute workplaces who repeatedly do not comply or where they have seriously breached WHS laws.

Schools are encouraged to review their policies and practices to ensure they align with the minimum requirements as set out in the Regulation on identifying and managing psychosocial hazards.

Links to resources are below which will assist schools to:

• Identify and evaluate psychosocial risks in the workplace
• Implement controls and interventions to address the risks
• Monitor and review risks and controls.

Schools may consult with staff and/or Work Health and Safety Committees during these processes. To ensure compliance, schools may wish to periodically raise staff awareness of risk management and hazard/risk identification procedures, as well as establish pro-active reporting and monitoring procedures to ensure the measures are properly implemented, reviewed and further improved.

Resources:

• SafeWork NSW Code of Practice – Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work - Page 29 of the Code includes a school example on assessing and managing psychosocial risk.
• SafeWork NSW – Mental Health
• People at Work – This provides a free and validated Australian psychosocial risk assessment survey assessing a number of the most common psychosocial hazards and factors. The site also includes links to many other useful resources on how to achieve a mentally healthy workplace.
• SafeWork Australia – Psychosocial Hazards – This provides details on the common workplace psychosocial hazards and examples of how these can be controlled.

If you have any questions in relation to the above, please contact the Workplace Management Team on 02 9299 2845.