About psychosocial hazards
Psychosocial factors at work can have both positive and negative effects on workers’ health and safety. Psychosocial factors such as high levels of support and autonomy or job control can protect and enhance mental health. Negative factors are known as psychosocial hazards.
Psychosocial hazards are aspects of work which have the potential to cause psychological and physical harm by causing people to feel stress. Stress is the body’s reaction when a worker perceives the demands of their work exceed their ability or resources to cope.
While stress is not an injury, it triggers physiological and psychological responses in the body that cause harm when they are frequent, prolonged or severe.
Impact of psychosocial hazards
On workers
- Diminished performance, motivation and engagement
- Low energy, fatigue, sleep problems
- Mental health ill health, including anxiety, depression and burnout
- Physical ill health, including cardiovascular disease, obesity, menstrual problems, sexual dysfunction, skin and hair and gastrointestinal problems
- Physical injuries, including musculoskeletal disorders
On organisations
- Poor workplace culture
- Negative or strained work-team relations and team dynamics
- Reduced productivity
- Higher absenteeism and employee turnover
- Complaints from customers or clients
- Financial impacts from workers’ compensation claims
Understanding psychosocial hazards
The Commonwealth Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice 2024 identifies 17 common psychosocial hazards and provides guidance on how to eliminate or minimise them in your workplace. Comcare provides more information to help you better understand psychosocial hazards and risks.
Be aware that there are more psychosocial hazards than the 14 in the code, and each workplace may have a different hazard profile from the next.
Some psychosocial hazards can cause serious harm on their own, for example, workplace violence, but in most cases hazards work in combination with each other and together they increase the risk of harm. For example, high job demands, combined with low support and low job control is likely to be very hazardous.
Some hazards will be constantly present, while others come and go, for example, poor relationships at work may be ongoing, while hazardous job demands may arise at particular times and for limited periods.
People can be harmed by a single instance, such as a traumatic exposure, or over time with repeated or prolonged exposure that causes high levels of stress hormones to remain in the body. Trauma from a single traumatic exposure can also be increased when people are repeatedly required to re-tell the story of their exposure.
Perceptions matter when it comes to psychosocial hazards and risks. For example, research found that what matters most to workers’ outcomes is not the actual workload but how it is perceived by the worker. Another example is that it’s possible to be harmed by exposure to the risk of a hazard occurring – if people don’t perceive that the risk is adequately controlled – such as workplace violence, even when no actual violence occurs.
Work and non-work psychosocial factors can also combine and increase the risk of harm to individuals from workplace psychosocial factors.
When considering psychosocial hazards and risks it’s important to:
- seek information on psychosocial risks from a wide variety of sources
- look at what risks may be present beyond the 17 identified in the Code of Practice
- consider the whole picture, including interactions between hazards.
More information
On psychological health and safety
- Work-related Psychological Health and Safety: A Systematic Approach to Meeting your Duties guide – Safe Work Australia.
- Psychosocial risk assessment tools - Comcare has compared 3 psychosocial risk assessment tools so you can consider which one is best for your workplace.
