Mentally Healthy Workplaces: Meeting Your Legal and Leadership Obligations
- Sep 7, 2025
- 3 min read
Why Psychological Safety Matters
Psychological health and safety is vital to creating productive, respectful and sustainable workplaces. Employers have a duty to provide safe, inclusive environments where workers feel valued, supported and protected from harm.
Bullying, discrimination, harassment, occupational violence and aggression, and workplace sexual harassment are recognised psychosocial hazards that can significantly impact employee wellbeing, workplace culture and organisational performance.
National Legal Framework for Psychosocial Safety
Australia’s legal and regulatory focus on psychosocial health and safety continues to evolve. Employers across all industries are increasingly expected to take proactive steps to identify, manage and prevent psychosocial hazards in the workplace.
Respect at Work Act 2022 – Introduced a positive duty on employers to take proactive steps to eliminate discrimination, workplace sexual harassment and victimisation.
Secure Jobs, Better Pay Act 2022 – Extended the time limit for sexual harassment complaints from six to 24 months, and empowered the Fair Work Commission to issue compensatory orders.
WHS Amendments (2023) – Updated the Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, setting out how employers must identify and manage risks to psychological health.
Together, these reforms require employers to review their workplace practices, engage employees in consultation, and take meaningful action to prevent harm.
These obligations are reinforced by growing regulator scrutiny, workers compensation claims relating to psychological injuries, and increasing expectations around psychologically safe leadership and workplace culture.
Victoria’s OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations – Now in Effect
From 1 December 2025, Victoria’s new OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations commenced, strengthening employer obligations to identify and manage psychosocial hazards and aligning Victoria more closely with the national model WHS approach to psychosocial risk management.
Under the regulations, employers must:
Identify and assess psychosocial hazards such as bullying, harassment, job stress, and poor role clarity.
Implement and review control measures to reduce psychological health risks.
Update WHS policies to include psychosocial risk management.
Provide leadership and manager training to ensure supervisors can recognise and address psychosocial hazards early.
While these regulations are specific to Victoria, they reflect a broader national shift toward stronger regulation and enforcement of psychosocial risk management. Employers across all jurisdictions should ensure their WHS systems, policies, and leadership capability are aligned with current and emerging expectations.
Looking after employees’ mental wellbeing is just as important as preventing physical injuries. Both are essential to building a safe, sustainable workplace.
Taking Action – Mentally Healthy Workplace Reviews
Employers should take a consultative WHS risk management approach to identifying and managing psychosocial hazards in the workplace, including but not limited to bullying, discrimination, occupational violence, workplace sexual harassment, excessive workloads and poor workplace behaviours.
Psychosocial risk management is an ongoing process involving:
identifying hazards
assessing risks
implementing control measures
reviewing effectiveness over time or following workplace incidents, complaints or organisational change.
How WorkPlacePLUS Can Help
WorkPlacePLUS can facilitate a Mentally Healthy Workplace Review for your organisation and support you to meet your employer obligations. We offer various implementation options such as:
Outsourced - An experienced WorkPlacePLUS consultant conducts a Mentally Healthy Workplace Review and provides clear, practical and independent support to help identify psychosocial risks, strengthen compliance and improve workplace culture.
Empowered – Your managers, supervisors, HR team and WHS representatives undertake our Mentally Healthy Workplace Training, which includes psychosocial risk management, psychologically safe leadership practices, and responding appropriately to psychological safety complaints or claims.
WorkPlacePLUS can also conduct an Independent Workplace Investigation into claims related to psychosocial hazards in the workplace, including but not limited to bullying, discrimination, workplace sexual harassment and victimisation.
To support employee wellbeing and help address early signs of workplace stress, organisations may also benefit from Employee Assistance Program (EAP) services and broader workplace wellbeing initiatives.
Free Download – Psychosocial Hazard Prevention Checklist
To support your psychological WHS risk management, WorkPlacePLUS has developed a free Psychosocial Hazard Prevention Checklist.
For more information, please contact us today.
