How to Conduct a Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A Step-by-Step Guide for Safety Leaders

In 2026, workplace safety extends beyond hard hats and hazard signs, it now encompasses the mental and emotional wellbeing of your people. With new regulations in Victoria mandating proactive action on psychosocial hazards, organisations must shift their focus from compliance alone to fostering psychologically safe environments.

So, where should you begin? This guide offers a clear, step-by-step psychosocial risk assessment process, helping you stay compliant and build a workplace where employees feel safe, supported, and empowered.

Why Psychosocial Risk Assessments Matter More Than Ever

Psychosocial hazards, such as excessive workload, bullying, a lack of support, or workplace isolation, can be just as harmful as physical dangers. Under Victoria’s Occupational Health and Safety (Psychosocial Hazards) Regulations, these risks are now a legal obligation for employers to address.

Neglecting them can result in:

• Financial penalties and legal scrutiny

• Increased mental health-related absences

• Lower morale, retention, and productivity

However, a proactive approach brings powerful benefits:

• Higher employee engagement

• Stronger organisational culture

• Compliance with evolving legal requirements

Step-by-Step Psychosocial Risk Assessment Process

1. Identify Psychosocial Hazards

Begin by mapping out the potential psychological stressors in your workplace. Common hazards include:

• High job demands

• Poor managerial support

• Lack of clarity in roles or responsibilities

• Bullying or harassment

• Remote work-related isolation

Collect data through:

• Confidential surveys

• One-to-one interviews

• Incident and absenteeism reports

• SafetySuite’s hazard identification tools

Focus especially on high-risk teams, frontline roles, or those with significant emotional demands.

2. Assess the Risks

Next, evaluate each hazard based on:

• Likelihood - how often could it occur?

• Severity - what is the potential impact?

Use a risk matrix to prioritise your responses. SafetySuite provides automated scoring tools and visual heatmaps, making this phase more efficient and data-driven.

3. Control the Hazards

Now turn insights into action.

Apply the hierarchy of controls:

• Eliminate the hazard where possible

• Substitute practices that reduce psychological strain

• Engineer systems to improve clarity, communication, and fairness

• Administrative controls - updated policies, training, open-door systems

• Individual support - mental health resources and EAPs

SafetySuite helps you assign, track, and verify these actions, ensuring no control measure is overlooked.

4. Review and Monitor

Psychosocial risk management is ongoing, not a one-off task.

Set up:

• Monthly wellbeing check-ins

• Annual reassessments or post-incident reviews

• Dashboards that track key risk indicators

With SafetySuite’s real-time reporting and alerts, you can stay ahead of new risks and regulatory expectations.

Tools to Simplify the Process

Relying on spreadsheets or disconnected tools makes it harder to manage psychosocial hazards consistently, and nearly impossible to demonstrate compliance if regulators ask for documented evidence.

Instead, a digital platform like SafetySuite gives you centralised visibility and accountability for all your risk processes.

SafetySuite offers a suite of configurable modules built to cover key areas of workplace health and safety, including:

• Risk & Hazard Management – Log and track hazards, including psychosocial ones, from identification through to control actions and closure. This module enables you to assign responsibilities, monitor tasks, and measure outcomes with real‑time dashboards and reporting features.

• Proactive Safety Initiatives – Plan, schedule and verify safety activities such as surveys, training initiatives, and wellbeing check‑ins. Proactive initiatives help reinforce psychological safety behaviours and embed them into everyday safety culture.

• Incident & Event Management – Capture events such as near‑misses or stress‑related reports, ensuring a structured response and investigation process.

• HR Case Management – Manage sensitive cases like bullying, harassment or grievances with structured workflows, confidentiality and audit trails.

• Injury Management – Oversee wellbeing outcomes following work‑related illness or injury, ensuring an integrated view of physical and psychological health.

Together, these modules help organisations build a single source of truth for all safety risks, physical and psychosocial, with tools to assign actions, escalate overdue items, and report on progress with clarity and confidence.

Victoria’s Psychosocial Safety Laws at a Glance

The Occupational Health and Safety Amendment (Psychological Health) Regulations 2026 require that Victorian employers:

• Identify and assess psychosocial hazards

• Implement reasonable and proportionate controls

• Maintain documentation and evidence of their efforts

• Demonstrate continuous improvement and consultation

Authorities are now actively auditing compliance, particularly in high-risk sectors.

Final Thoughts: Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace Today

Mental health is now a core pillar of safety leadership. Organisations that prioritise psychosocial wellbeing gain not only legal compliance, but also a competitive edge in employee engagement and retention.

📣 Ready to take the stress out of compliance? Book a demo with SafetySuite.

 Let us help you simplify assessments, track actions, and lead confidently.