Australian employers are now required to manage psychological harm at work with the same rigour as physical safety. Culture still matters, but evidence matters more.
A decade ago, workplace safety in Australia pretty much began and ended with OH&S. Hard hats. Exposed wires. Wet floors. If someone got hurt you could usually point at the thing that did it.
Since Positive Duty made it a legal obligation for employers to actively prevent workplace harm, and gave the Australian Human Rights Commission the power to enforce it by the start of 2024, regulators have made it clear they’re going to be taking the less visible risks more seriously.
In December 2025, the Department of Defence became the first Commonwealth employer convicted and fined for failing to manage psychosocial risks, after a 34‑year‑old RAAF technician died by suicide while subject to an intensive performance management process involving multiple work plans. The A$188,000 fine and a court‑ordered adverse publicity notice signalled that regulators are prepared to treat unmanaged psychosocial risk as a breach of WHS law, not just an internal culture problem.
Rebecca Moulynox, General Manager for Great Place To Work Australia and New Zealand, who said of the changes, “regulators aren’t sitting around waiting for complaints anymore. They’ve gone full detective mode, following signals, media stories, and basically anything that looks like a red flag.”
What Does Positive Duty Actually Require?
Positive Duty sits in sex discrimination law, but its expectations reach across your broader approach to psychological health and safety. At its core, it requires employers to take reasonable and proportionate steps to eliminate, as far as possible, workplace sexual harassment, sex‑based harassment and related victimisation, not just respond after the fact.
That means actively looking for risk factors in how work is designed, led and managed, rather than waiting for reports; putting in place concrete measures, policies, training, support, reporting options and controls, that reduce those risks; and checking regularly whether those measures are actually working and improving things over time. For HR leaders, this moves Positive Duty into day‑to‑day decisions about workload, change, leadership capability and culture.
Psychosocial Risk Is Not A Personality Problem
One of the most persistent myths about psychosocial risk is that it is about difficult people. Personality clashes. Fragile employees. Bad fits. The law says otherwise. Regulators define psychosocial hazards as things like high job demands, low role clarity, poor change management, lack of support, exposure to conflict and badly designed systems.
Moulynox puts it simply. “Right now the biggest blind spot is not treating psychosocial risk like part of your actual risk management strategy.” Work health and safety already has a method for dealing with risk: identify the hazard, Positive Duty expects employers to apply that same logic to how work is organised, how power operates and how behaviour is rewarded.
How Great Place To Work Surveys Can Help
The Great Place To Work survey is not a complete Positive Duty solution, but it can be a practical backbone for your risk‑management approach. “Being a GPTW participant does count as a meaningful compliance effort, but only if you do more than print the certificate and blu-tack it to the lunchroom fridge,” says Rebecca Moulynox. “You’ve actually got to act on the data.”
The real compliance value comes when you use results to identify risks, put controls in place, communicate changes, and then check in future surveys whether those controls are working. That plan–do–review cycle is what regulators expect to see. The survey is one component of a broader system. What matters most is how you respond to what people tell you.
What HR leaders need to do next (checklist)
1. Understand your obligations
Brief the executive team that Positive Duty and WHS now require proactive prevention, not just complaint handling.
Confirm and document who owns Positive Duty at ELT level.
Confirm and document how Positive Duty is overseen at board level (committee, reporting line, cadence).
Map the link between Positive Duty, WHS, risk and people strategies in one simple overview you can share internally.
2. Measure and map risk
Pull together existing data sources: culture surveys, exit interviews, grievances, hotline data, absenteeism and turnover.
Look for patterns of harm (teams, locations, roles, leaders, cohorts) and any obvious hotspots.
Map these patterns against known psychosocial hazards such as job demands, role clarity, organisational justice and change management.
Identify which hazards are highest risk (likelihood and consequence) and prioritise them.
3. Act and document
Record psychosocial risks in your WHS or enterprise risk register with clear owners, controls and review dates.
Use tools like the Great Place To Work Trust employee survey and lived‑experience feedback to design targeted controls (e.g. role redesign, workload fixes, better change communication, manager training on respectful performance processes).
Update or create policies, procedures and training that reflect these controls.
It’s also important to keep simple, accessible records: risk assessments, action plans, training logs, updated policies and evidence of follow‑up. Schedule regular reviews to show you are improving things by design.
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FAQs: Positive Duty and psychosocial risk for HR
Is Positive Duty only about sexual harassment?
No. Positive Duty is grounded in sex discrimination law, but regulators expect you to manage the conditions that enable harassment – including workload, power imbalances, poor change, weak reporting systems and cultures of fear – as part of a broader psychosocial risk approach.
How does Positive Duty connect to psychosocial hazards?
Sexual harassment, sex‑based harassment and victimisation are recognised psychosocial hazards that can cause psychological or physical harm. The same risk‑management process applies: identify where and how they might occur, assess the level of risk, implement controls, and review whether those controls are effective.
What counts as “reasonable and proportionate” steps in Positive Duty?
It depends on your size, resources and risk profile, but typically includes: clear policies, regular training, multiple safe reporting channels, support for victim‑survivors, fair investigations, and active monitoring of data to spot patterns and fix root causes. Larger and higher‑risk organisations will be expected to do more.
What will regulators expect to see if they investigate?
They will look for more than policies and values statements. Expect to be asked for:
- Documented psychosocial risk assessments and a live risk register.
- Evidence of controls (for example, redesigns, training, supervision, changes to performance processes).
- Accessible reporting channels and support pathways.
- Data, including survey results, showing that your actions are improving psychological health and safety, not just being announced.
*This information is based on legal advice regarding Australian Positive Duty obligations. Organisations should consult their own legal advisors for guidance specific to their circumstances.
