Australia-first, built for global workplace regulation.
Every market handles psychosocial risk differently. Here’s how each one treats it — and where the direction of travel is the same.
Every Australian jurisdiction requires this now.
Australia has nine work health and safety jurisdictions, each with its own regulator and its own Act. Since December 2025, when Victoria’s standalone regulations commenced, all of them require employers to manage psychosocial hazards — not as guidance, as a duty.
The duty attaches to being a PCBU. There is no employee threshold: what scales with the size of your organisation is what counts as reasonably practicable, not whether the duty applies at all.
Two things hold everywhere. Higher-order controls — work design, staffing, supervision — must be considered before training, posters or an employee assistance programme. And consultation with workers is a legal duty that has to be evidenced.
Some regulators go further and say plainly that training alone is not sufficient as a primary control.
Australia has nine work health and safety jurisdictions. Eight of them — New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, the Northern Territory, Western Australia, the ACT and the Commonwealth — regulate psychosocial hazards through the same four regulations, each with its own approved code of practice. Victoria does it differently, under standalone regulations of its own. Every one of them requires it.
New South Wales made its Code an enforceable benchmark and funds a dedicated psychosocial inspectorate. From March 2025, Queensland requires a written plan for sexual-harassment risk specifically. Those are developments, not the shape of the country — your own regulator’s requirements are the ones that bind you.
When we say audit-ready, this is what we mean: every hazard recorded with the control chosen against it, a named owner, and a dated trail of what you found and when you last reviewed it. The regulator differs by state. What they ask to see does not.
What this covers.
- Measurement on validated instruments, at a cadence you set.
- A hazard record with controls in hierarchy order — elimination asked first.
- A named owner against each control.
- A review trail: what you found, what you did about it, and when you last looked.
- An export a WHS officer can read.
What stays yours.
The duty. It attaches to you as a PCBU and cannot be transferred to a supplier.
The controls. We record what you chose and show whether it moved; choosing it is your judgement, informed by consulting the workers affected.
The legal question. Whether you have discharged the duty is a matter for you, your advisers and your regulator. We produce evidence, not verdicts.
Certified is not the same as current. A certificate shows you have a process; this is the running record that shows what it found.
1 December 2025
Every Australian state and territory now has explicit, enforceable obligations to manage psychosocial hazards — with specific rules on how risks must be identified, assessed, controlled and reviewed. Victoria was last, on 1 December 2025, under its own OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025.
This is not a new duty. The obligation to manage risks to psychological health has always existed under the general duty in section 19 of the WHS Act. What changed is that the benchmark became enforceable.
- From 1 July 2026, NSW businesses have a duty to comply with approved Codes of Practice under the WHS Act 2011 (NSW) — or provide a standard equivalent to or higher than the Code (s26A).
- Regulators no longer need to prove harm occurred; falling short of the Code may itself constitute a breach.
- Higher-order controls — work design and management practices — are required. In New South Wales, Queensland and Victoria, training alone is not sufficient as a primary control.
2015
The Stress Check Programme has been mandatory for workplaces of 50 or more employees since 2015.
The mandate exists now; universal scope is what’s new. Japan is the only one of these markets that mandates a measurement instrument.
- The amended Industrial Safety and Health Act (promulgated May 2025) extends it to all workplaces regardless of size, with a proposed effective date of April 2028.
Nov 2023
The Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-Being at Workplaces (MOM, SNEF and NTUC) was issued on 20 November 2023 as recommendations for employers.
The Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-Being at Workplaces is a set of recommendations — explicitly not legally binding. Employers are strongly encouraged, not compelled. Singapore does not have an enforceable psychosocial duty equivalent to Australia’s.
- The Code of Practice on WSH Risk Management was expanded in 2021 to explicitly cover mental well-being.
- The 2022 Code of Practice on Chief Executives’ and Board of Directors’ WSH Duties refers to directors allocating resources to workplace mental well-being.
- Approved Codes are not laws, but courts may consider compliance with them.
Singapore is legislating in the same direction.
The Tripartite Advisory on Mental Well-Being at Workplaces is guidance, and the Code of Practice on WSH Risk Management was expanded in 2021 to cover mental well-being. Separately, the Workplace Fairness Act — passed in two bills across 2025 and expected in force by the end of 2027 — names a mental health condition as a protected characteristic and will require employers with 25 or more staff to run a written grievance process.
They are different instruments doing different jobs. The Act governs discrimination and grievance handling; it does not require psychosocial risk management, and it does not make the Tripartite Advisory binding. What it does is make mental health legally consequential — and a grievance process needs a record behind it.
Plus Ultra hosts customer data in Australia. We follow Singapore’s direction of travel closely; we don’t yet operate there.
No fixed date
Managing psychosocial risk is a legal requirement under Framework Directive 89/391/EEC: employers must assess and manage all workplace risks, and EU-OSHA explicitly extends this to psychosocial hazards.
The Framework Directive does not explicitly use the terms “psychosocial risk” or “work-related stress”. The extension to psychosocial hazards comes through EU-OSHA guidance and the social-partner framework agreements. Implementation varies significantly by member state.
- The extension is supported by the social-partner framework agreements on work-related stress (2004) and on harassment and violence at work (2007).
- Implementation varies significantly by member state — some have detailed binding legislation, others general legislation.
Plus Ultra provides decision-support and evidence — not legal advice, and not a compliance verdict. The WHS duty of care remains with the employer, as it should.