Promoting better wellbeing at work
Preventing mental illness and promoting wellbeing are two different jobs. Most workplaces only resource the first. Here's what the law now expects, and where to start as we head into R U OK?Day and Mental Health Month.
R U OK?Day Thursday 10 September 2026 Mental Health Month October 2026
Start here
An aspect of work that can harm someone's mental or emotional health. High job demands, low control, poor support, unclear roles, badly handled change, conflict and bullying are the usual suspects. Most of them live in ordinary conditions rather than dramatic events.
Section 26A of the WHS Act 2011 (NSW) commenced. Approved codes of practice became an enforceable benchmark rather than guidance. You either follow the psychosocial hazards code or show your approach meets an equivalent or higher standard.
With whether people feel safe enough to tell you what is actually going on. You cannot assess a risk that nobody will name, and a quiet reporting line is not the same thing as a safe workplace.
Psychological safety
Risk frameworks assume the information is actually reaching leaders. But what if teams aren't able to speak up about what could be causing them harm in the workplace? How are you meant to manage a risk you don't know is there?
This is the part that gets missed when psychosocial risk is treated purely as a compliance exercise. Psychological safety is not a separate wellbeing initiative sitting next to the risk register. It is the mechanism that makes hazards visible in the first place.
“We're stretched, but we're managing.”
Two roles have been vacant for four months and nobody has said the word unsustainable out loud, because the last person who did was told to be more resilient through the transition.
“No concerns raised this quarter.”
People worked out some time ago that raising something costs more than absorbing it, so the reporting line looks quiet and the risk register looks clean.
“Everyone here gets along fine.”
The team is polite and professional, and also nobody has disagreed with the loudest person in the room since March.
Work demands
Across the workshops Be Well Co runs, high work demands is the first psychosocial hazard participants name. Not sometimes. Every time, whether the room is full of engineers, nurses, public servants or account managers.
Addressing it means looking at job design, which is where a lot of leaders freeze, because job design sounds like headcount, restructures and budget approval. Sometimes it is. Often it is not.
A smaller version: an invitation lands for something worth doing, at a moment where the week is already full. Rather than absorbing it on top of everything else, the date gets moved by a week. Nobody needed to approve that. It was one person using the autonomy they already had to reshape their own workload, and those choices compound when a team sees them modelled.
Small tweaks, designed with the person doing the job rather than for them, tend to move more than a policy does.
The regulatory picture
Every state and territory now places an active duty on employers to identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards. The detail differs by jurisdiction, and the direction does not. What has changed recently is the standard of evidence you are measured against, and how little patience regulators have for good intentions without documentation.
Safe Work Australia publishes the model Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards. NSW makes the duty to eliminate or minimise psychosocial risk explicit in its WHS Regulation from October.
Queensland's psychosocial hazards code of practice takes effect, and is enforceable from the start.
Victoria's Psychological Health Regulations and Compliance Code commence, setting out identification, control and reporting duties for Victorian employers.
Section 26A of the WHS Act 2011 (NSW) commences. Approved codes of practice become an enforceable benchmark, so a PCBU either follows the code or shows an equivalent or higher standard.
A workshop is not compliance. Training is a way to educate leaders on the law and on how to handle it within their own organisational structure and teams. It does not replace considering work design, job structure and management practice. What it does do is build the capability your people need to notice a hazard, name it and respond to it, and that's an essential foundation to get psychosocial risk management right.
General information only, last reviewed August 2026. Obligations differ by state and territory. Check the code of practice that applies to your jurisdiction, and seek your own advice on your specific circumstances.
Beyond the box
Take workplace conflict as an example. Managed purely as a risk, you will most likely land on relationships that are polite and professional. There is nothing wrong with that, and it clears the bar.
Now picture the version where people notice when a colleague has gone quiet, where a win gets celebrated by everyone rather than announced by one person, where there is a long-running and slightly heated argument about whose baking is best. Same hazard, managed. Very different place to work.
A useful question for your leadership team this Mental Health Month: what makes our team specifically ours, and are we doing enough of it?
How we can help
All three run in person or virtually, in one or two hour sessions, tailored to your context. Have a read and see which one matches where your organisation actually is. If you are not sure, the questions at the bottom of this page might help.
For teams who want to work better together
Psychological safety is built in everyday behaviour, not just leadership intention. This session gives a whole team shared language for speaking up, disagreeing well and learning out loud instead of covering up.
For leaders who set the tone, whether they mean to or not
What psychological safety actually is, what it is often mistaken for, and how a leader builds it on purpose. Grounded in wellbeing science and Google's Project Aristotle research into team performance.
For leaders carrying the legal duty
What psychosocial risks and hazards are, how they show up in real workplaces, and what a leader can actually change. Covers legal and leadership responsibility alongside practical control measures.
“The thing I keep coming back to is that you cannot manage a risk you do not know about. Everything else follows from whether people feel safe enough to tell you.”Tegan Davies, Head of Programs, Be Well Co
Free to try, no booking required
Not a humble brag, an actual mistake and what you learned from it. When people see that failing is survivable, speaking up about other things gets cheaper. We have heard this called a flearning, which takes some of the sting out of admitting it.
Then look at whether any of it is within their own autonomy to change. A surprising amount of workload pressure is reshapeable without a restructure, and the person doing the job usually knows exactly where.
Whether it was closed out, and whether the person who raised it ever heard back. People decide whether speaking up is worth it based on what happened to the last person who tried.
Questions we get asked
R U OK?Day 2026 is Thursday 10 September 2026. It falls on the second Thursday of September each year. Mental Health Month runs through October, with World Mental Health Day on 10 October. We recommend using these events as a chance to promote better conversations and wellbeing at work, rather than treating them as the whole of your wellbeing effort.
A psychosocial hazard is an aspect of work that can cause harm to someone's mental or emotional health. Common examples include high or unmanageable job demands, low autonomy, poor support, unclear roles, poorly handled organisational change, and conflict or bullying. They usually sit inside ordinary working conditions rather than dramatic events.
Section 26A of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) commenced. Approved codes of practice shifted from guidance a court may consider to a benchmark a regulator can measure you against. In practice, an organisation either follows the Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work code or demonstrates that its own approach delivers an equivalent or higher standard. The underlying duty has not changed. The evidence expected of you has.
No, and we would rather say so plainly. A workshop is not compliance. Training is a way to educate leaders on the law and on how to handle it within their own organisational structure and teams. It does not replace considering work design, job structure and management practice. What it does do is build the capability your people need to notice a hazard, name it and respond to it, and that is an essential foundation to get psychosocial risk management right.
No. Psychological safety is about candid feedback, open disagreement and admitting mistakes without fear of reprisal. A team where nobody argues is often a team where nobody feels safe enough to. The aim is more intellectual friction, where ideas get challenged, and less social friction, where blame and defensiveness shut people down.
If leaders carry WHS duty and need to understand the risk picture, start with Introduction to Psychosocial Hazards. If leaders understand the duty and need to build the conditions, start with Leading Psychological Safety. If a specific team needs shared language and shared behaviour, run Psychological Safety for Teams. Many organisations pair a leader session with a team session so both groups are working from the same definitions.
In person or virtual, in one or two hour sessions, with group size varying by duration and format. Content is tailored to your organisational context.
Tell us a bit about your organisation and what you are navigating. Someone from our team will come back to you for a short chat, with no obligation to book anything. If you would rather just read more first, the workshop pages are linked above.
