One of the challenges for employers who operate across different States and Territories is that each of them have their own laws and regulations on a variety of matters including Workplace Health and Safety. It is often the case that there are differences in obligations in different places which does make life that bit more difficult. So what has happened with the new positive duty to eliminate or reduce risks from psychosocial hazards? 

The Background

Way back in 2022, Safe Work Australia published the Model code for managing psychosocial hazards at work providing the foundation for new positive duty regulation on risks associated with psychosocial hazards. Then each State and Territory and the Commonwealth separately developed their own codes which are enforceable via their own legislation and regulations. And, of course, with a few noteworthy exceptions, they each decided to do their own thing by redefining what the typical psychosocial hazards are.

What’s the same?

Tasmania, the Australian Capital Territory and the Northern Territory sensibly stuck with the 14 psychosocial hazards prescribed in Safe Work Australia’s model code which are:  

1. (High or low) job demands
2. Low job control
3. Poor support
4. Lack of role clarity
5. Poor organisational change management
6. Inadequate reward and recognition
7. Poor organisational justice
8. Traumatic events or material
9. Remote or isolated work
10. Poor physical environment
11. Violence and aggression
12. Bullying
13. Harassment including sexual harassment
14. Conflict or poor workplace relationships or interactions

What’s different?

The Commonwealth Government (as an employer/PCBU) and other States and Territories legislated some differences for their jurisdictions as set out below:

Commonwealth of Australia

• Prescribes 17 psychosocial hazards
• Has added 3 additional psychosocial hazards namely “Fatigue”, “Job insecurity” and “Intrusive surveillance”

New South Wales

• Prescribes 16 psychosocial hazards
• Separation of “Job demands” into “Role overload (high workload or job demands)” and “Role overload (low workload or job demands)
• Separation of “Poor support” into “Poor support from supervisors and managers” and “Poor coworker support”

Queensland

• Prescribes 16 psychosocial hazards
• Has added hazard of “Fatigue”
• Separation of “Harassment including sexual harassment into two hazards of “Harassment” and “Sexual harassment and sex or gender based harassment .

South Australia

• Prescribes 15 psychosocial hazards
• Has added “Fatigue”

Victoria

• Prescribes 16 psychosocial hazards
• Has added additional psychosocial hazard of “Gendered violence”
• Has divided “Job demands” into “High job demands” and “Low job demands”
• Has replaced “Harassment including sexual harassment” with “Sexual harassment”
• Has replaced “Poor physical environment” with “Poor environmental conditions”

Western Australia

• Has prescribed 20 psychosocial hazards
• Has added a psychosocial hazard of “Poor leadership practices and workplace culture”
• Has added a psychosocial hazard of:”Poor or no policies and procedures”
• Has added further a psychosocial hazards of “Fatigue”, “Insecure work” and “Burnout”
• Has separated “Remote or isolated work” into two hazards of “Remote work” and “Isolated work”
• Has replaced “Poor physical environment” with “Adverse environmental conditions” and expanded it to cover “Adverse natural events”

So there is quite a bit of variation in the specific matters covered or how they are expressed or grouped from one jurisdiction to another.

What should you do?

If you operate across multiple jurisdictions (ie you have people working in different States or Territories) you might want to consider taking an aggregated approach whereby you assess and manage risks arising from all of the psychosocial hazards listed in the various jurisdictions to your whole organisation.

For example, if you have employees in Victoria and New South Wales, you might:

• add “Gendered violence” from Victoria, 
• separate the “Job demands” into high and low and “Remote and isolated work” into remote and isolated as NSW has done
• look at “poor support” through the two lenses of “supervisors and managers” and “coworkers” provided for in NSW 
• add “Harassment” as per the “Harassment including sexual harassment” applying in NSW to the “Sexual harassment and sexual and gender based discrimination” from Victoria 

Remember that what each of the State and Territory regulators is enforcing are “minimum standards” so going beyond those shouldn’t be a problem – it should be seen as going “above and beyond”.

Perhaps more importantly, it gives you one framework to cover all of your people across all of those jurisdictions and that should be a positive for employer and employee alike.

Need a hand with managing your positive duty to eliminate or reduce risks from psychosocial hazards? Tell us what you need via the Contact Form below.