Psychological health regulations – Frequently asked questions

These are regulations that focus on managing risk from psychosocial hazards and create specific obligations for Victorian employers to identify and control psychosocial hazards and risks in their workplaces.

The Regulations seek to strengthen the existing Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) framework in Victoria by:

• promoting the importance of psychological health and safety in the working environment
• ensuring employers eliminate or reduce risks to health and safety associated with psychosocial hazards so far as is reasonably practicable
• providing more clarity for employers about their obligations as they relate to psychological health and safety
• increasing awareness about psychosocial hazards and ways to eliminate or reduce risks associated with those hazards.

The Regulations will achieve its objective by prescribing a tailored risk management process requiring all employers to:

• identify psychosocial hazards;
• control the risks associated with a psychosocial hazard by either eliminating or reducing those risks, so far as is reasonably practicable; and
• review and revise risk controls in prescribed circumstances.

The Regulations will commence on 1 December 2025.

In May 2021, the Victorian Government committed to introducing regulations to better address psychological health in the workplace.

The Regulations follow several recent reviews which recommended strengthening workplace health and safety laws to better address workplace psychological health, including the:

• Review of Model Work Health and Safety (WHS) Laws (the Boland Review)
• Respect@Work Report
• Productivity Commission’s Inquiry into mental health.

The Royal Commission into Victoria’s Mental Health System’s final report also highlighted the need to improve education and awareness around psychological health to build safe and healthy workplaces and prevent psychological injury.

Under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (OHS Act), employers must provide and maintain a working environment for their employees that is safe and without risks to health. Employers must do this so far as is reasonably practicable.

The definition of ‘health’ under the OHS Act includes ‘psychological health’. Any reference to OHS obligations in relation to the health of employees extends to their psychological health.

The Regulations create specific duties for employers to identify hazards, control risks and review and where necessary, revise risk control measures.

The risk management process is designed to help employers comply with their duties under the OHS Act and Regulations relating to psychosocial hazards and involves the following steps:

• identifying psychosocial hazards
• assessing any associated risks to health or safety
• controlling those risks
• monitoring, reviewing and, where necessary, revising risk controls.

Employees, while at work, must take reasonable care for their own health and safety and that of others who may be affected by their acts or omissions at a workplace.

Employees must also co-operate with their employer’s actions to comply with OHS requirements (for example, by following any information, instruction or training provided).

Yes. A compliance code (the Code) has been developed to provide practical guidance, prompting employers on how to comply with their duties under the OHS Act and OHS Regulations in relation to psychological health.

The Code gives examples of psychosocial hazards and what these can look like in the workplace. For example:

• high job demands can look like tasks or jobs with unpredictable shift patterns or work hours, high workloads or emotionally or cognitively demanding work tasks
• low job control can look like excessive monitoring of work tasks, or little control over how work is done
• sexual harassment or gendered violence can look like offensive language being used and offensive imagery being displayed at work.

The Code includes example risk control measures, including for situations where risks may not be able to be eliminated entirely and therefore must instead be reduced.

The Code also gives practical examples of ways for employers to report and respond to incidents of psychosocial hazards as well as ways to encourage employee reporting.

Read the Code

Psychosocial hazard means any factor or factors in any of the following:

• the work design
• the systems of work
• the management of work
• the carrying out of the work
• personal or work-related interactions

that:

• may arise in the working environment, and
• may cause an employee to experience one or more negative psychological responses that create a risk to the employee's health or safety.

The Regulations include a control of risk requirement that has been tailored to controlling the risks of psychosocial hazards.

Employers must first consider if it is reasonably practicable to eliminate the risk associated with a psychosocial hazard.

If it is not reasonably practicable to eliminate a risk associated with a psychosocial hazard, an employer must reduce the risk so far as is reasonably practicable by:

1. altering the:
   
   1. management of work, or
   2. plant, or
   3. systems of work, or
   4. work design, or
   5. workplace environment, or
2. using information, instruction or training, or
3. using a combination of any of the controls listed above.

Information, instruction or training may only be exclusively used as a risk control where none of the other risk controls are reasonably practicable.

Where a combination of risk controls is used, information, instruction or training must not be the predominant control.

While this is similar to the traditional hierarchy in that employers are required to eliminate risks first, then apply more effective higher order controls, the traditional hierarchy is not as well suited to controlling the risks of exposure to psychosocial hazards. The tailored approach uses different terminology applicable to controlling psychosocial risks, so it is easier to apply to psychosocial hazards.

The hierarchy in the regulations enables duty holders to take a tailored and multifaceted approach to controlling risks in response to their organisation’s particular workplace characteristics and risk factors. The hierarchy also accounts for how combinations of psychosocial hazards may co-exist and interact to create new risks.

The triggers for reviews will be specified in the Regulations and will be in instances where the level of risk associated with the hazard may have changed.

This includes:

• if new or additional information about a psychosocial hazard becomes available to the employer;
• if an employee, or a person on behalf of an employee, reports a psychological injury or a psychosocial hazard to the employer;
• after a notifiable incident occurs which involves one or more psychosocial hazards;
• before any alteration is made to any thing, process, or system of work that is likely to result in changes to risks associated with psychosocial hazards;
• after receiving a request from a health and safety representative.

To view a full list of review triggers, please visit the WorkSafe website.

If a risk cannot be eliminated then the employer is required to reduce the risk so far as is reasonably practicable.

The Regulations provide the flexibility for duty holders to identify and control psychosocial hazards and risks in a manner tailored to their working environment. The Code contains examples and definitions of psychosocial hazards and provides practical examples on how to identify hazards and control associated risks.

The Code also acknowledges that there are workplaces with inherent risks where it may not be reasonably practicable to eliminate the risk. The Regulations and Code provide further detail on reducing the risk so far as is reasonably practicable.

Employers must, so far as is reasonably practicable, consult with employees on matters related to health or safety that directly affect or are likely to directly affect them.

If employees are represented by a Health and Safety Representative (HSR), the consultation must involve that HSR (with or without the involvement of the employees directly).

The duty to consult also extends to independent contractors (including any employees of the independent contractor) engaged by the employer in relation to matters over which the employer has control.

The OHS Act says that an employer must allow an HSR for the designated work group (DWG) to have access to information that the employer has relating to:

• actual or potential hazards arising from the conduct of the business or plant and substances used in the workplace
• the health and safety of members of the DWG that the HSR is authorised to represent, which may include independent contractors and their employees.

It is WorkSafe's expectation that an employer would provide an HSR with information regarding any workplace injury of members of the DWG. This would include physical and psychological injuries.

This information must not disclose any medical information unless the employer has the person's consent.

Rights of HSRs to access information about psychosocial hazards and the health and safety of DWG members are provided by the OHS Act. The Regulations do not change any existing rights or limitations on what information a HSR can access.

The process around consulting HSRs and dispute resolution also works the same way for psychosocial hazards as it does for physical hazards.

More information on about the powers of HSRs and obligations of employers to HSRs

Whilst the use of prevention plans is not mandatory, WorkSafe does encourage employers to use the template that has been developed.

The prevention plan template can be used by employers to help guide the risk management process for psychosocial hazards.

To access the prevention plan template, please visit the WorkSafe website.

WorkSafe undertook a significant amount of stakeholder engagement to support the development of the Regulations.

Proactive engagement involved targeted written and face-to-face engagement with WorkSafe’s existing key stakeholder forums and advisory committees, including the Occupational Health and Safety Advisory Committee (OHSAC), WorkCover Advisory Committee (WAC), Health and Safety Stakeholder Reference Group (HS SRG), and Risks to Psychological Health Stakeholder Working Group (RPH SWG). These groups are primarily made up of employer and union representatives, health and legal professionals, business representatives (small, medium and large), multicultural and advocacy groups.

WorkSafe also engaged several other key employer and employee representatives, industry experts, medical and allied health professionals, legal practitioners, workers and members of the community.

The proposed regulations and associated Regulatory Impact Statement were released for a 43-day public comment period from 17 February to 31 March 2022 to provide employers, employees, other interested parties and members of the public with an opportunity to consider and provide feedback. WorkSafe received 79 public comment submissions during this time.

The Victorian Government’s consultation platform (engage.vic.gov.au) provided the Victorian community with information on the proposed regulations along with a summary of changes document and frequently asked questions.

In 2025, WorkSafe established a dedicated Psychological Health Regulations Stakeholder Reference Group which was made up of the Victorian Trades Hall Council and several of their affiliates, the Victorian Congress of Employers and their members, Government departments and agencies, self-insurers, academics, legal and health representatives.

WorkSafe and the Department of Treasury and Finance also established the Psychological Health Regulations – VPS Implementation Working Group in March 2025 to engage government representatives on the Regulations. Members included government departments and agencies.

Deloitte Access Economics (Deloitte) was engaged by the Victorian Government to develop a Regulatory Impact Statement (RIS) to provide an independent assessment of the proposed regulations.

The proposed regulations and associated RIS were released for a 43-day public comment period from 17 February to 31 March 2022 to provide employers, employees, other interested parties and members of the public with an opportunity to consider and provide feedback. WorkSafe received 79 public comment submissions during this time.

View the RIS

To allow stakeholders time to familiarise themselves with the requirements, the Regulations and Code have been made two months before the Regulations commence on 1 December 2025.

Businesses operating in and beyond Victoria will already be complying with similar requirements interstate, which we expect has improved the state of knowledge for many Victorian businesses.

We currently regulate psychological health in the workplace and major changes to our current compliance and enforcement approach following the introduction of the Regulations are not being considered.

We will undertake awareness and education activities ahead of commencement to support employers to understand and prepare for the transition.

While employers will be required to meet all obligations under the Regulations from commencement, businesses may have different experiences with psychological risk management, and may require time to adjust to the Regulations, with these factors being considered by inspectors in forming their basis of belief and determining their regulatory response.

The Regulations were originally intended to be part of the Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (OHS Regulations). This would have allowed the Regulations to be reviewed with the broader OHS Regulations Review before they expire in 2027.

As the Regulations are to commence in late 2025, there will not be enough time to adequately assess their performance ahead of the OHS Regulations review.

Reviewing the Regulations requires measuring changes to key indicators, survey data around employer understanding of their obligations and compliance and enforcement figures. Less than one year of data would be available. An informed review of the Regulations will require a larger amount of data than can be gathered in one year.

The Government has therefore decided to make standalone regulations. These Regulations will be reviewed after five years.

Victoria is not harmonised with the model Work Health and Safety laws in place in other states and territories. The Victorian Government has developed the Regulations to meet the needs of Victorian employees and employers.

The Regulations are not identical to wording used in model law jurisdictions, but the overall Victorian approach is consistent with that in other Australian jurisdictions.

We note that the Regulations also differ between model law jurisdictions, for example the control of risk provisions.

The Regulations will not impact eligibility for workers compensation.

Eligibility for workers compensation is regulated by the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013 (WIRC Act), The Regulations do not affect rights or obligations under the WIRC Act. They only affect duties of employers under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004.

The regulations will also not impact any existing rights an injured worker may have to seek damages at common law.

WorkSafe is engaged in a range of initiatives to support psychological health and safety including:

• development and promotion of non-statutory guidance and supporting resources including prevention plans, fact sheets and videos
• promotion of aggression or violence ‘don’t cross the line’ campaign
• development of Psychological Health Basics Education Program for small/medium duty holders launching early 2026
• psychological health and safety webinars during Health and Safety Month
• psychosocial hazard specific HSR Refresher Training for Aggression and Violence, Gender violence including sexual harassment and general psychosocial hazards
• strategic visits to high-risk industries focused on psychosocial hazards
• WorkWell Communities of Practice and Industry Trials .

WorkSafe’s Psychological Health - Health & Safety Strategic Approach 2025-26

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