Following years of advocacy by ANMF (Vic Branch) and the union movement, Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations (‘the Regulations’) commenced on 1 December 2025 in Victoria – the last jurisdiction in Australia to introduce such protections for workers.
The Regulations give Victorian employers clear obligations on their requirements to identify hazards and manage risks to psychological health. They recognise that psychosocial hazards are just as harmful to employees’ safety and wellbeing as physical hazards and will support more psychologically healthy and safe workplaces.
The Regulations also create specific duties for employers to identify hazards, control risks and review risk control measures. Importantly, they include a ‘hierarchy’ for control of psychological risks, meaning that employers are not simply able to revert to individual options for addressing these risks as has often been the case previously, such as training. Employers are required to first look at systems of work and other higher order controls.
They are based on a simple risk management approach of identifying hazards, assessing the risks, controlling the risks, and reviewing those risk controls.
The Regulations define psychosocial hazards as any factor or factors in work design, systems of work, management of work, carrying out of the work; or 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. Examples include OVA, bullying, exposure to traumatic events or content, high job demands, poor organisational change management, sexual harassment and poor workplace relationships.
The government acknowledged the role the ANMF and other unions played in the delivery of the regulations, saying ‘Unions are instrumental in raising awareness of work-related psychological health and you have played a crucial role in reaching this significant milestone.’
ANMF (Vic Branch) will be holding information sessions for members early in 2026 around the Regulations and how HSRs (and members more broadly) can apply these in their workplaces.
More information is available at worksafe.vic.gov.au/psychological-health.
