October marks Safe Work Australia’s national safe work month. In 2025, the theme is “safety: every job, every day” encouraging all workplaces to prioritise safety regardless of role, industry, location or size. It’s a good opportunity to reflect on some of the recent work, health and safety (“WHS”) changes affecting all employers including psychosocial hazards, sexual and gender-based harassment, and, legislative changes.
Psychosocial hazards
Psychosocial hazards has been the buzz word in WHS for 2025. It has been one of the biggest concerns for employers when managing the psychological welfare of their employees, mental health issues and how employees are feeling and responding to events in the workplace.
While psychosocial hazards are a WHS issue, a number of recent events demonstrate how psychosocial hazards can extend into what are traditional thought of as “fair work” matters.
SafeWork NSW recently issued a prohibition notice to the University of Technology (“UTS”) who was undertaking a redundancy process. The prohibition notice ordered that UTS halt its redundancy process because of concerns about the serious and imminent risk of psychological harm. It required that UTS consult with its staff and go through the redundancy process with a plan for the management of psychosocial hazards.
This is not the first time the issue of psychosocial hazards has crossed over into the “fair work” space. Earlier this year an enforceable undertaking was issued over employees’ excessive workloads and additional hours creating psychosocial hazards. You can read about that in our article here. It’s likely that this will continue with the issue of psychosocial hazards crossing over into areas such as workplace change, performance management and investigations.
You can listen to Joydeep Hor’s recent interview on psychosocial safety in the workplace here.
The issue of psychosocial hazards also continues to develop in legislation. From 1 December 2025, employers in Victoria will have new requirements to comply with occupational health and safety obligations for managing psychological safety in the workplace under the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations2025 (Vic) (“Regulations”).
The Regulations provide a more expansive definition of “psychosocial hazard” to include factors in work design, systems of work, management, interpersonal interactions, or how work is carried out that may cause negative psychological responses and risks to health and safety.
WorkSafe Victoria has published a Compliance Code (which you can read here) as a guide to assisting employers demonstrate that they have discharged their obligations under the relevant legislation.
Sexual and gender-based harassment
In March 2025, the WHS (Sexual and Gender-based Harassment) Code of Practice (“Code”) was introduced. This confirmed the need for workplace sexual harassment, and the prevention of workplace sexual harassment, to be seen through the lens of a WHS framework.
The Code itself acknowledges that it is to be read in conjunction with the recently introduced positive duty for employers to eliminate sexual harassment in the workplace. The Code provides practical guidance for employers and is admissible in WHS prosecutions as evidence of what measures are reasonably practicable for an employer to implement.
You can read more about this code of practice in our article here.
Best practice review
While much of the WHS legislation was harmonised and commenced in 2012, Safe Work Australia has been tasked with undertaking a review of the legislation to further strengthen harmonisation between the different states and territories. This is because there are still areas where states and territories diverge from the model WHS legislation.
A discussion paper has been published which poses two key questions:
how to maintain best practice in response to the changing nature of work and emerging risks; and
how the harmonisation of WHS laws can be strengthened and maintained across jurisdictions into the future.
While most states and territories have adopted the model WHS legislation, Victoria continues to remain outside of the harmonised system and the discussion paper acknowledges that “jurisdictions have also increasingly made variations within their own versions of the model laws, which poses a real challenge to the maintenance of harmonisation in the longer term.”
With many organisations operating across various states, inconsistences in the WHS legislation creates confusion and compliance challenges with employers and workers having differing rights and obligations.
It is expected that a final report will be published in mid-2026.
New regulations
2025 also saw the introduction of new WHS regulations in NSW. While most of the regulations remained the same, there were some important updates to note in relation to psychosocial risks, penalty notices and training authorisations:
psychosocial risks have been strengthened with requirements to manage these risks using a hierarchy of controls;
new penalty notice offences have been introduced to strengthen compliance and enforcement, with penalties for individuals and body corporates; and
new provisions enable SafeWork NSW to authorise training providers and courses.
Where to next?
While safety month is a symbolic event, it signals the intentions of the WHS regulatory bodies. It is clear that the climate of safety is shifting with the focus no longer being entirely on physical safety in blue collar industries. All employers must prioritise issues of safety with the various legislative instruments imposing significant obligations on employers to ensure the health and safety of all workers.
This safety month employers should turn their mind to steps they can take to proactively address WHS, including undertaking culture audits, conducting risk assessments, updating policies, consulting with workers, developing a safe culture, and, conducting meaningful training for workers, managers and board level executives about their obligations.
