Psychosocial Inspection Program

The psychosocial inspection program promotes and enables psychological health and safety at work. It helps employers to meet their work health and safety obligations, and prevent work-related injuries and illnesses. It also helps us understand how well employers are managing psychosocial hazards and risks at their workplaces.

As part of this inspection program we will:

• review the employer’s systems for managing psychosocial hazards and risks
• meet with senior executives, human resources and work health and safety team, workers and health and safety representatives (if applicable)
• assess compliance with work health and safety laws and regulations
• report to the employer on its strengths, opportunities for improvement and any non-compliance.

The inspection program is based on a successful pilot conducted in 2023 and 2024. An independent evaluation found the pilot improved employers’ knowledge of psychosocial hazards, increased their commitment to workplace psychological health and safety and helped them comply with WHS legislation.

How the inspection program works

Participating employers

Comcare can require any employer in our WHS jurisdiction to participate in an inspection. We choose employers based on factors such as their assessed risk profile. The risk profile considers data like:

• rate of accepted psychological injury and musculoskeletal disorders claims per full time employee
• number of mental stress notifiable incidents
• number of psychosocial hazard reports made to Comcare
• return to work performance for psychological injuries.

Employers in the Comcare jurisdiction can also ask to take part in the inspection program by emailing whs.help@comcare.gov.au.

Timing and cost

When planning inspections, we work with you to minimise the impact on business operations. It usually takes around 3 months from the start of the inspection until we send you the written inspector report. The timing varies depending on the employer’s size and complexity. We will discuss timing with you when planning our inspection.

Participation in the inspection is at no additional cost to the employer. However, if non-compliance is identified, we will recover the costs of any subsequent inspections through WHS variable charges. Read more about Comcare’s approach to cost recovery at Recovering our costs.

Information we collect

We will ask to review documents that demonstrate your psychosocial hazard and risk management systems. This might include policies, procedures and guidance documents, minutes of meetings and other relevant records.

We will also collect feedback from workers, health and safety representatives and senior leaders through a combination of in-person interviews, surveys and virtual meetings.

Inspection outcomes

The inspector report will identify:

• what the employer is doing well
• recommendations that can guide continual improvement activities
• any areas where psychosocial hazard and risk management systems do not comply with the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) (WHS Act) or the Work Health and Safety Regulations 2011 (Cth).

If we find compliance gaps, we will discuss this with the employer before we send the report. The employer will be able to supply extra evidence to demonstrate compliance, or to develop an action plan to address the compliance gaps. If an action plan is developed, we will undertake a verification inspection, usually within 6–12 months, to determine whether the employer has achieved compliance or if further regulatory action is needed.

Employers are responsible for communicating with their workers about the outcome of an inspection. This includes consulting workers about any changes to be made because of the inspection, as required under the WHS Act.

Start improving psychosocial health and safety now

You do not need to wait for an inspection to start improving psychosocial health and safety in your workplace.

Employers should regularly review their health and safety management systems, including risk controls. Good management of psychosocial risks can:

• increase productivity
• improve workplace culture and team relationships
• lower turnover, complaints and injuries.

More information

For more on psychosocial risks and hazards and how to manage them:

• visit Psychosocial hazards
• find training and learning on managing psychosocial hazards.

For more information on the inspection program, email whs.help@comcare.gov.au.