September 16, 2026

psychosocial hazards

Is your workload harming your health?

by Leave a Comment

Every year on April 28, the World Day for Safety and Health at Work highlights the importance of safe and healthy workplaces across the globe.  

This year’s theme is ‘Ensuring a healthy psychosocial work environment’, an especially relevant focus for nurses and midwives, whose roles often involve intense pressure, high emotions, and exposure to trauma. 

What is a psychosocial work hazard? 

Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work that may trigger a stress response, which can potentially lead to psychological or physical harm.  

For nurses and midwives, key psychosocial hazards may include (but are not limited to):  

  • Role overload (high workloads, inadequate staffing) 
  • Exposure to traumatic events 
  • Conflict/poor workplace relationships 
  • Poor support from supervisors and managers 
  • Workplace violence 

Whilst a single exposure may be low risk, increased or prolonged exposure may result in serious consequences. 

How are psychosocial hazards managed? 

Employers have an obligation to provide a safe workplace, and this includes managing psychosocial hazards. 

In NSW, this is supported by the mandatory WHS Regulation on psychosocial hazards and a Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, which outlines commons risks and practical steps to address them.  

The recommended approach for employers includes:  

  • Identifying the hazard – this can be done through consultations with staff, workload reviews, rosters, absenteeism data, and surveys. 
  • Assessing the risk – considering the likelihood of exposure to psychosocial hazards as well as the level of severity. 
  • Controlling the risk – putting reasonable measures in place such as nurse-to-patient ratios, and risk management plans with suitable controls for violence from high-risk patients. 
  • Reviewing – once controls are in place, employers must review them to ensure they remain effective over time. 

What can you do if you’re concerned? 

If you believe that psychosocial hazards are causing risks to your health and safety at work: 

  • Raise your concerns through the normal channels at work – be sure to do this in writing. 
  • Talk to your Health and Safety representative about your concerns. 
  • If the issue remains unresolved, members of the NSWNMA can contact us with their concern by emailing gensec@nswnma.asn.au 

The rising impact of psychological injury 

Psychological injury claims are growing faster than any other type of injury claim. Based on data from Safe Work Australia, psychological injury claims made up around 9% of workers compensation matters from 2021-2022. While this may be a smaller percentage figure, it has been a huge jump of 36.9% since 2017-2018.  

The rapid growth highlights the importance of recognising psychosocial hazards early, and ensuring workers know when and how they can seek support.  

Not a member of the NSWNMA? Learn more about the benefits here and join an 83,000-strong association. 

UNION SAFETY WIN: NSW now has stronger laws to address psychosocial risks at work

by 1 Comment

Alongside other unions, the NSWNMA has been lobbying for workplace safety reforms around psychosocial risks since 2018. Thanks to these efforts, new laws introduced by the NSW government take effect from 1 October 2022, strengthening requirements for employers to manage psychosocial hazards and risks in workplaces.

Pyschosocial risks or hazards are defined as aspects of work and workplace situations that may cause a stress response which can in turn lead to pyschological or physical harm. Examples of how a pyschosocial risks may occur in a workplace include:

  • the way the tasks or job are designed, organised, managed and supervised
  • tasks or jobs where there are inherent psychosocial hazards and risks
  • the equipment, working environment or requirements to undertake duties in physically hazardous environments, and
  • social factors at work, workplace relationships and social interactions.

Under the new Work Health and Safety Amendment Regulation 2022, employers will be explicitly required to implement control measures for pychosocial risks.

The news laws will require employers to:

  1. Identify psychosocial hazards that could cause a risk to health and safety (e.g. work overload; bullying; violence; lack of support; poor change management, poor organisational justice etc – for a more detailed list see the code of practice or the NSWNMA factsheet on psychosocial hazards)
  2. Once identified, the employer must
    • Eliminate risks to health and safety so far as is reasonably practicable, and
    • If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate risks to health and safety—minimise those risks so far as is reasonably practicable
  3. The employer must ensure that the control measure/s implemented are and remain fit for purpose and suitable for the nature of the work
  4. The employer must review and revise control measures to maintain a work environment that is without risks to health and safety (there are certain times that employers must do this, including on request by a HSR).

These new laws will be legally binding for NSW employers and means that workers, including nurses and midwives, will be able raise pyschosocial risk matters as safety matters and employers must address them.

This new regulation is supported by the Code of Practice – Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work which was gazetted in 2021. The Code outlines details about what psychosocial risks are and what is expected from employers to manage them.

The code of practice lists role overload as a key psychosocial risk and defines role overload as having “too much to do in a set time or with insufficient workers”. The code of practice also detailed several health case studies with nurses and midwives which highlighted the need for additional staffing and improved skill mix.

The NSW instrument states that employers must manage psychosocial risks in accordance with the risk management provisions of the NSW Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017.

When determining which controls to implement, employers must have regard to:

  • the duration, frequency and severity of the exposure of workers and others to psychosocial hazards;
  • how the hazards might interact or combine;
  • the design of work; how work is managed, organised and supported;
  • the workplace’s design, layout and environmental conditions;
  • the design, layout and conditions of workers’ accommodation;
  • the workplace’s plant, substances and structures;
  • workplace interactions or behaviours; and
  • the information, training, instruction and supervision provided to workers.

Do you believe psychosocial hazards are causing risks to your health and safety at work? Read more on what nurses and midwives can do in this Psychosocial Hazards Factsheet developed by the NSWNMA.

Your Work Health and Safety Rights

Free webinar series for Safe Work Month

As part of Safe Work Month in October this year, the NSWNMA is hosting a free 4-part webinar series to assist nurses and midwives with information about work health and safety rights and how to have a stronger voice in workplaces.

The second webinar in the series focuses on psychosocial risks and mental health of nurses and midwives. Register here for the series, you only need to register once to RSVP for all four sessions.

Employers need guidance on psychosocial hazards, says minister

by Leave a Comment

Two Association members recently met with Kevin Anderson, the NSW Minister for Better Regulation and Innovation, to discuss the urgent need to combat non-physical hazards in the workplace.

Nick Howson, an RN and branch president at Cumberland Hospital, and Skye Romer, secretary of the Prince of Wales Mental Health Branch, spoke to the minister about their harrowing experiences of psychosocial hazards at their workplaces.

Nick and Skye, accompanied by NSWNMA professional officer Veronica Black, met with Kevin Anderson at his Martin Place office, ahead of a meeting of all Australian ministers responsible for workplace health and safety laws.

The ministers will be voting on the 34 changes recommended by Marie Boland, a former executive director of SafeWork SA, who recently conducted an independent review of Australia’s model workplace health and safety legislation. In her review, Boland found that workplace health and safety laws lacked regulations and specific guidance for managing psychosocial risks.

“In submissions to Boland’s review process, the NSWNMA argued that occupational violence and other psychosocial hazards were not being effectively addressed and prevented under the existing system,” said NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary, Judith Kiejda.

“A lot of psychosocial injuries in the workplace occur when there are feelings that there is no organisational justice, leaving workers feeling unsupported,” Judith said.

“When Marie Boland’s recommendations came out, she was really clear that employers don’t have any guidance to help them understand what their obligations are in managing hazards such as workloads, bullying and sexual harassment. SafeWork inspectors can’t write notices for things that aren’t in the law, so we argued that psychosocial injuries must be clearly identified and be notifiable injuries.”

Currently, the onus is on workers in the healthcare system to follow up if they need mental health support. Nick told The Lamp, “If big organisations like health aren’t able to psychologically protect workers, what chance do other organisations have?”

Skye spoke to the minister about the lack of workplace support she received after an attack by a consumer that resulted in surgeries and an ongoing recovery process.

“I’ve had firsthand experience of what it is like to be injured in the workplace. It has been absolutely horrendous. Coming into work after you’ve already been injured, your body is in a flight-or-fight response. At the same time, you are investigated by the insurers in a way that is verging on stalking.”

A lack of support

Skye has had to attend multiple medical appointments and undergo numerous treatments.

Skye also suffered a “massive drop in pay” and had to move out of her home when the workers’ compensation system did not take into account her history of overtime.

“In my mind, I was paying for being assaulted at work.”

Nick said they asked the minister to support all 34 of Boland’s recommendations, as well as implement the proposed code of practice.

“When we spoke to the minister, he conceded that there is clearly a problem, and that bosses need guidance,” Nick said.

In a separate process to the Boland recommendations, the NSW government has released a draft code to cover psychological risks.

“The code gives an outline for everyone to work to, so they don’t have to make it up,” Nick said.

“I was pleasantly surprised by the minister’s willingness to listen. He even went as far to say that he thought the input of unions was of vital importance, because they see how it affects workers.”

Beefing up the law

In 2011, Australian states and territories began to harmonise the different acts and regulations covering workplace health and safety so that there was consistency between the rules and regulations in each jurisdiction.

In 2019, after a long-delayed independent review of the model act, Marie Boland made 34 recommendations for changes. Ministers from all jurisdictions will soon meet to vote on whether to update the act with each of Boland’s recommendations. Each recommendation needs a two-thirds majority vote to change the act.

In a separate process, the NSW government has released a draft code of practice for managing workplace risks to psychological health. The code – developed by a working group that included Safe Work Australia and SafeWork NSW, unions, employers and academic experts – provides detailed information on how to manage risks to psychological health in the workplace.

New South Wales will be the first Australian state to develop a code of this kind.

“We strongly support a code of practice,” NSWNMA Assistant General Secretary, Judith Kiejda, said. “It is a good document, and while it doesn’t do everything, it goes a long way to filling the gap.”

STOP PRESS

As The Lamp goes to press the WHS ministers have agreed to regulate psychosocial hazards.

The ACTU said the decision “was a major step towards the prevention of mental illness”.

“Years of campaigning from working people and their unions have gone into winning this regulation. It will make Australian workplaces safer for future generations of workers,” said ACTU assistant secretary Liam O’Brien.

Psychological welfare is a health and safety issue

by

Employers have a legal responsibility to manage psychosocial hazards, says Dr Carlo Caponecchia.

When managers at one workplace offered staff the opportunity to have a massage at work, the stress levels of employees increased, according to Dr Carlo Caponecchia, an expert in psychosocial workplace safety and a senior lecturer at the University of New South Wales.

“Staff became so tense … because they had to finish all their work quickly before going to get massaged and then come back to finish the work they weren’t able do before they got their lovely massage,” Dr Caponecchia told delegates who attended a recent NSWNMA professional day.

If they aren’t well implemented, wellness and resilience programs can backfire, says Dr Caponecchia. He gave another example of workplaces that encourage employees to bike to work and then don’t provide showers or spaces to park bikes. Even more importantly, he said, wellness programs are too often used to ‘tick a box’ when they should just be one small part of an organisation’s psychological health and safety plan.

“Preventing psychological injury in the first place should be the main focus of a workplace,” says Dr Caponecchia. “Organisations have a responsibility to make sure that what they are doing in their organisation, and their work systems, don’t cause harm.”

Psychosocial workplace hazards can include any aspect of work, including job content, work organisation, reporting relationships and environmental and organisational conditions that have the potential to cause psychological harm. And employers have a legal responsibility to manage them just like any other workplace health and safety issue, says Dr Caponecchia.

“Managing psychosocial hazards is part of workplace health and safety duties. The Workplace Health and Safety act now explicitly includes psychological health, but it was always there implicitly.”

Employers need to apply a basic risk management model to psychosocial hazards, which means controlling hazards at the source, being preventative, and not focusing on interventions that are about individuals, Dr Caponecchia says.

“The assumptions of risk management are that we are being proactive and preventative. We are not sitting around waiting for things to go wrong. We’re predicting them and we’re acting before people are harmed.”

“Rather than just telling people how to get some help with how they are feeling … redesign what is going on in the workplace that is making them feel that way.”

Focus on fixing the workplace

Instead of telling people how to get better or how to deal with workplace issues better, employers should instead focus on fixing the workplace. Too often, however, employers are putting the responsibility back onto employees, Dr Caponecchia says.

“We’d never accept these kinds of individualistic strategies in other kinds of hazards. Where someone works in a noisy work environment, can you imagine ever telling them to just get better and deal with the noise? At the very least we’d give them some hearing protection. And that would be at the very bottom of controls. What should happen is trying to reduce that noise, trying to use a different machine that makes less noise and trying to isolate that person from the noise.”

Often mental health issues and psychosocial hazards are being dealt with under human resources, but they need to be dealt with in workplace health and safety systems, he said. “All the frameworks and the guidance for managing psychosocial hazards are all pointing in that direction.”

Psychosocial factors also contribute to other types of injury, most notably musculoskeletal disorders and manual handling issues, according to Dr Caponecchia. “They are absolutely fundamental to workplace health and safety. They should be one of the first things we should talk about when we are thinking about work and when we are thinking about safety.”

He advises employees to ask questions about whether their workplace treats psychosocial safety as a health and safety issue. “When you go to the safety meeting, asking whether psychosocial issues are included is a very practical first step.”

The language used is important too. Dr Caponecchia recommends avoiding using terms such as ‘complaints’ and ‘grievances’, which make something sound like a personal issue, and instead use the word ‘reports’. “When people are experiencing an issue that is of a psychosocial nature they should be making a ‘report’, not a complaint and not a grievance. ‘Report’ is the language of safety.”

Dealing with psychosocial risks does not have to mean completely overhauling a workplace. “When people hear ‘work’ design they think they need to knock the system down and start again, but it is about making small, manageable changes, talking to people and being collaborative about how work can change. Who could report to who differently? How can the workflow change? It can be about making small changes that make big differences.”

Resources on psychological health and work

Safe Work Australia has issued a guide called Work-related psychological health and safety: A systematic approach to meeting your duties. Issued by Safe Work Australia in 2019.

A new international standard on Safety Management Systems has been adopted in Australia AS/NZS ISO45001. It explicitly says that organisations now have to include how work is organised as part of their safety management. This can include identifying factors such as workload, work hours, victimisation, harassment and bullying, leadership and the culture of the organisation.

Verified by MonsterInsights