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Your duty of care covers psychological health as well as physical health. That means the risks that affect your team’s mental wellbeing need to be managed the same way you’d manage any other hazard on site. Here’s what’s expected of you, in plain English.

The same process you already use

You don’t need a new system. You manage psychosocial risk using the same four steps you use for everything else:

1. Identify the hazard
2. Assess the risk
3. Control the risk
4. Review your controls

If you can do this for a fall hazard, you can do it for a psychosocial one.

Psychosocial hazards to look out for

These are the workplace factors that can harm psychological health when they’re excessive or prolonged. The ones to consider include:

• High or low job demands
• Low job control
• Poor support
• Low role clarity
• Poor workplace relationships and conflict
• Poor management of organisational change
• Low recognition and reward
• Poor organisational justice
• Remote or isolated work
• Bullying
• Harassment, including sexual harassment
• Aggression or violence
• Exposure to traumatic events or material

Not all of these will apply to every site, but you’re expected to know which ones are relevant to your work and deal with them.

How to control the risk

Use the hierarchy of controls  in the same order of priority you’d use for any hazard.

Start by eliminating the risk so far as is reasonably practicable (meaning you do what’s proportionate to the risk and what you can reasonably manage).

Where you can’t eliminate it, reduce it by changing how the work is done first. That means looking at things like:

• Workloads
• Rostering
• Supervision
• Staffing
• Site layout
• How people interact

Use information, instruction and training to back up those changes, not to replace them. Training someone to “cope better” with an unreasonable workload isn’t a control. Fixing the workload is. Training supports the higher-order controls; it doesn’t stand in for them.

This is the part employers most often get wrong, so it’s worth repeating: change the work first, then train people on the changes.

Make it safe to speak up

Encourage your workers and contractors to report any psychosocial hazard or psychological injury to their supervisor, the principal contractor, or a manager. They should use the same reporting pathway they’d use for any other hazard, and they should be able to do it without fear of reprisal.

You’re also expected to consult your workers when you identify, assess and control these risks. The people doing the work usually see the hazards first.

When to review your controls

Review your psychosocial control measures and change them when needed:

• You’re about to change the way work is done in a way that could change the risk
• New information about a psychosocial hazard becomes available
• A worker (or someone on their behalf) reports a psychosocial hazard or a psychological injury
• A notifiable incident involving a psychosocial hazard occurs
• Your existing controls aren’t adequately controlling the risk

The bottom line

Managing psychological health isn’t a separate compliance exercise. It’s the same identify–assess–control–review process you already run, applied to the risks you can’t always see. Get the work design right first, make it safe for people to raise concerns, consult your crew, and review when things change.

If you’re not sure how a specific situation applies to your site, give our HazardCo Advisory Team a call – that’s what they’re here for.