Most of what 365 Rehabilitation does sits after an injury: assessment, treatment coordination, return to work planning. The psychosocial hazards provisions in the NSW Work Health and Safety Regulation sit before it, and they are worth understanding because they change what “reasonably practicable” means for employers managing psychological risk, not just physical risk.

What the regulation actually requires

Part 3.6 of the WHS Regulation 2017 (NSW), in force since October 2022, places psychosocial hazards on the same legal footing as physical hazards. A PCBU (person conducting a business or undertaking, in practice the employer) must identify psychosocial hazards, eliminate them so far as reasonably practicable, and where they cannot be eliminated, minimise the risk using the same hierarchy of controls applied to physical safety.

SafeWork NSW’s Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards sets out the categories that matter most in practice:

None of these are new concepts to anyone who has managed a psychological injury claim. What changed in 2022 is that they are now explicit legal hazards with a duty to identify and control them, not simply background risk factors that surface after a claim is lodged.

Why this matters for claims, not just compliance

The connection between this regulation and the claims data is direct. Harassment and workplace bullying now account for roughly a third of serious mental stress claims nationally, ahead of sustained work pressure as the leading identified cause. These are precisely the hazard categories the WHS Regulation requires employers to actively manage, not simply respond to after someone lodges a complaint or a claim.

There is also a claims-management argument for treating psychosocial risk seriously before an injury occurs. A workplace that can demonstrate a functioning psychosocial risk management process, hazard identification, worker consultation, documented controls, is in a stronger position if a psychological injury claim is later disputed under section 11A of the Workers Compensation Act, the “reasonable management action” defence. A business with no documented process has nothing to point to.

What a psychosocial risk assessment actually looks like

A useful assessment does not stop at a generic staff survey. It typically involves:

• Reviewing incident data, complaints, grievances, and existing workers compensation claims for recurring patterns by team, role, or location
• Structured consultation with workers, not just management, on the specific hazard categories above
• A review of organisational change processes: how restructures, redundancies, and role changes are communicated and managed
• An honest assessment of workload distribution against the roles the organisation actually has resourced

The output should be specific enough to act on. “Improve communication” is not a control measure. “Introduce a documented consultation process for any restructure affecting more than five roles, with a minimum two-week notice period” is.

Controls that hold up in practice

The hierarchy of controls that applies to physical hazards applies here too, and the most effective interventions tend to sit higher up that hierarchy rather than relying on individual resilience training as the primary response:

The hierarchy of controls that applies to physical hazards applies here too, and the most effective interventions sit higher up that hierarchy, not in individual resilience training used as the primary response.

Elimination means redesigning unsustainable workloads, fixing unclear reporting lines, and addressing a specific manager’s conduct directly rather than running a generic training module for everyone. Administrative controls limit exposure through rostering, structured debriefing after traumatic incidents, and clear escalation pathways for bullying complaints. Individual-level support, EAP access, resilience training, wellbeing programs, has a place, but only alongside hazard elimination, not instead of it. A regulator or a commission member reviewing a disputed claim will look for evidence the organisation addressed the source of the hazard, not just offered counselling after the fact.

What this means for your portfolio

• Employers who can show a documented psychosocial risk management process are better positioned in disputed psychological injury claims, particularly where a section 11A defence is raised.
• The categories in the SafeWork NSW code map closely onto the causes now driving national mental health claim growth, which means prevention work here has a direct line to claim frequency, not just compliance.
• A reactive posture, addressing psychosocial hazards only after a claim is lodged, is now a compliance gap as well as a claims cost problem.

How 365 Rehabilitation supports this

We work with employers on both sides of this line: return to work and rehabilitation after an injury, and structured psychosocial risk reviews before one occurs. Where we see recurring patterns across a portfolio, team, or site, we flag them back to the insurer and employer as a prevention opportunity, not just a claims statistic.

Want to scope a psychosocial risk review, or talk through a pattern you’re seeing across a portfolio? Contact us at info@365rehab.com.au or call 1300 742 365.

Sources:

• Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (NSW), Part 3.6
• SafeWork NSW, Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work
• Safe Work Australia, Key Work Health and Safety Statistics, 2025
• Workers Compensation Act 1987 (NSW), s 11A