Psychosocial Safety Under the Spotlight: Is Your Workplace Ready for a Regulator Visit?

Coinciding with World Mental Health Day 2026, SafeWork NSW has launched its largest workplace mental health compliance campaign, placing psychosocial risk management firmly in the regulatory spotlight.

Inspectors will visit workplaces across NSW and a broad range of industries to assess how organisations identify, assess, and control psychosocial hazards.

The campaign follows preliminary inspections conducted during May and June 2026, when inspectors visited more than 200 workplaces and issued over 80 improvement notices. The NSW Government has also committed $127.7 million over four years to strengthen regulatory capability, including 20 additional specialist psychosocial inspectors and a new Psychosocial Advisory Service.

The message for businesses is clear: psychosocial safety is an ongoing WHS obligation, not simply a policy or human resources initiative.

Having a Policy Is Not Enough

Under NSW work health and safety legislation, businesses must identify reasonably foreseeable psychosocial hazards, manage associated risks and implement effective control measures.

The Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice provides practical guidance on meeting these obligations. Organisations need to understand hazards such as excessive job demands, poor organisational support, bullying, harassment, role ambiguity and exposure to traumatic events. Importantly, a psychosocial risk management plan alone does not demonstrate compliance. The critical question is whether the organisation can show that its arrangements are understood, implemented, monitored and effective.

What Might a SafeWork NSW Inspector Look For?

An inspector may examine whether the organisation can demonstrate:

• Hazard identification and risk assessment: Psychosocial hazards have been identified through appropriate consultation and assessed in the context of actual work activities.

• Effective risk controls: Practical measures have been implemented to eliminate or minimise risks, rather than relying solely on training, awareness programs or employee assistance services.

• Worker consultation: Employees and their representatives have been genuinely consulted, with evidence that their feedback has informed decisions.

• Clear responsibilities and reporting: Managers, supervisors and workers understand their responsibilities, including how to report concerns and escalate issues.

• Monitoring and review: Controls are regularly evaluated and revised when circumstances change or existing measures prove ineffective.

• Documented evidence: Relevant records, including consultation minutes, risk assessments, action plans, training records and control reviews, are maintained and accessible when required.

Confidentiality and privacy must also be considered, particularly when handling complaints, personal information and sensitive workplace records.

Is Your Organisation Inspection-Ready?

A useful starting point is to ask whether your organisation can demonstrate not only what its psychosocial safety procedures say, but how they operate in practice. Are managers sufficiently informed to recognise psychosocial hazards? Have workers been consulted? Are controls addressing the underlying causes of risk? Can the organisation produce evidence that identified issues have been addressed?

These questions are particularly important for officers and senior leaders, who have due diligence obligations to ensure the organisation has appropriate resources, processes and verification arrangements for managing WHS risks.

Taking a Proactive Approach

Organisations should review their psychosocial risk management arrangements before an inspection identifies shortcomings.An effective approach combines management commitment, competent leadership, meaningful worker consultation, practical risk controls and ongoing compliance verification.

Psychosocial risk management should be integrated into existing WHS systems and everyday operational decision-making—not treated as a separate administrative exercise. The key question is no longer simply whether your organisation has a psychosocial risk management plan. It is whether you can demonstrate that the plan is working.

Courtenell provides psychosocial risk assessments, WHS compliance audits, gap analyses, and development and review of psychosocial risk management plans. Our services also include tailored training for directors, managers, supervisors and workers to strengthen psychosocial safety, address compliance gaps and support ongoing legislative compliance.

It is the overarching duty of every organisation to provide a WHS management system that ensures the safety and wellbeing of its workers. If you require support in improving or strengthening your WHS management system, Courtenell can assist through tailored training, consulting services, and management system review. Please contact one of our Training Consultants on 02 9552 2066 or email train@courtenell.com.au