As illustrated above, psychosocial hazards are hazards that arise from or relate to:
- the design or management of work
- the working environment
- plant at a workplace, or
- workplace interactions or behaviours
and which may cause psychological and / or physical harm.
Workers who may be more vulnerable to work-related stress from exposure to psychosocial hazards include:
- Young workers
- Apprentices and trainees
- Workers with low power to negotiate their pay and working conditions due to power imbalances (such as ‘gig’ workers)
- Workers with existing physical or psychological conditions.
Work-related stress is the physiological and psychological response of workers who perceive that their work demands exceed their resources (e.g. skills, time, support) and/or their abilities to cope with the work.
The pathway to ill-health occurs when there is a significant imbalance between the demands placed on a person, and the resources they have to cope with those demands.
Intense or sustained high mental, physical or emotional effort required to do the job.
Unreasonable or excessive time pressures or role overload.
High individual reputational, legal, career, safety or financial risk if mistakes occur.
High vigilance required, limited margin of error and inadequate systems to prevent individual error.
Shifts/work hours that do not allow adequate time for sleep and recovery, causing fatigue.
Performing emotionally demanding work.
Monotonous, under-stimulating work.
Long idle periods while high workloads are present, for example where workers need to wait for equipment or other workers.
Workers have little control over aspects of the work including how or when the job is done.
Workers have limited ability to adapt the way they work to changing or new situations.
Workers have limited ability to adopt efficiencies in their work.
Tightly scripted or machine/computer paced work.
Prescriptive processes which do not allow workers to apply their skills and judgement.
Levels of autonomy not matched to workers’ abilities.
Tasks or jobs where workers have inadequate practical assistance and/or emotional support from mangers and colleagues.
Inadequate training, tools and resources for a task.
Poorly maintained equipment.
Uncertainty, frequent changes, conflicting roles or ambiguous responsibilities and expectations.
Poorly defined or explained workflows.
Insufficient consultation, consideration of new hazards or performance impacts when planning for, and implementing, change.
Insufficient support, information or training during change.
Not communicating key information to workers during periods of change.
Jobs with low positive feedback or imbalances between effort and recognition.
High level of unconstructive negative feedback from managers or customers.
Low skills development opportunity or underused skills.
Inconsistent, unfair, discriminatory or inequitable management decisions and application of policies, including poor or inadequate responses to complaints relating to psychosocial hazards.
Poor organisational justice involves:
- a lack of procedural justice (fair processes to reach decisions)
- a lack of informational fairness (keeping people informed)
- a lack of interpersonal fairness (treating people with dignity and respect).
Experiencing fear or extreme risks to the health or safety of themselves or others.
Exposure to natural disasters, or seriously injured or deceased persons.
Reading, hearing or seeing accounts of traumatic events, abuse or neglect.
Supporting victims or investigating traumatic events, abuse or neglect.
Working in locations with long travel times, or where access to help, resources or communications is difficult or limited.
Working alone where routine or emergency assistance cannot be provided in a timely manner.
Poor workplace relationships or interpersonal conflict between colleagues or from other businesses, clients, or customers.
Frequent disagreements, disparaging or rude comments, either from one person or multiple people, such as from clients or customers. A worker can be both the subject and the source of this behaviour.
Discrimination or other unreasonable behaviours by co-workers, supervisors or clients.
Inappropriately excluding a worker from work-related activities.
Exposure to work environments that involve poor air quality, high or nuisance noise levels, extreme temperatures, hazardous chemicals, or biological hazards (e.g., blood or bodily fluids or infectious pathogens).
A state of physical or mental exhaustion, or both, which reduces a person’s ability to perform work safely and effectively. This can arise from:
- Jobs where there are high cognitive demands (such as sustained concentration or extended work hours)
- Lack of recovery periods between shifts, roster cycle or shift length
- Environmental stressors at work (e.g. light, noise, climate, vibration)
- Poor design, quality, and management practices for PCBU provided accommodation facilities that compromise the amount and quality of sleep and rest.
More information about fatigue can be found here.
Bullying at work can take different forms. Learn what the law says is bullying at work, and what is not.
The definition of workplace bullying
Bullying at work occurs when:
- a person or a group of people behaves unreasonably towards a worker or a group of workers at work AND
- this happens more than once AND
- this creates a risk to health and safety.
It includes behaviours such as:
- being aggressive or intimidating
- using abusive or offensive language
- mocking or humiliating someone
- holding ‘initiation ceremonies’.
Depending on the situation, bullying can also include behaviour and actions such as:
- teasing or playing jokes
- leaving some workers out of work-related events
- giving someone too much or too little work
- giving someone work above or below their skill level
- not giving someone information that they need to do their job.
What isn’t bullying at work
Not all behaviour that makes you upset or anxious at work is bullying. For example, if someone makes a comment but they only do it once and do not repeat it, this is not bullying.
Reasonable management action
Managers need to be able to give feedback. It is not bullying if:
- the management action is reasonable AND
- the way the manager takes action is reasonable.
‘Reasonable’ may include putting a worker on a performance improvement plan.
A worker may feel bullied when an employer takes performance or disciplinary action. If this action is ‘reasonable management action’, carried out in a reasonable way, the law does not define it as bullying.
What 'reasonable' means
The law accepts that managers and employers may need to act if a worker is not doing their job well. They can take ‘reasonable management action’ to:
- help the employee improve their work
- address poor performance or behaviour.
It is ‘reasonable management action’ for an employer to:
- start performance management processes (such as a performance improvement plan)
- take disciplinary action for misconduct
- tell a worker about work performance that is not satisfactory
- tell a worker their behaviour at work is not appropriate
- ask a worker to perform reasonable duties as part of their job
- take action to maintain reasonable workplace standards.
But the way the employer takes these actions must also be ‘reasonable’. If they are not reasonable, and they are repeated, these actions could still be bullying.
What to do when action is not reasonable
An employee may complain if they believe their employer’s action is:
- not reasonable OR
- not carried out in a reasonable way.
The law says that a person sexually harasses another person if they:
- make an unwelcome sexual advance, or an unwelcome request for sexual favours, or
- engage in other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature
In circumstances in which a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would have anticipated the possibility that the person harassed would be offended, humiliated or intimidated.
Sexual harassment can include:
- unwelcome physical contact
- intrusive questions about a person’s private life or physical appearance
- sharing or threatening to share intimate images or film without consent
- unwelcome touching, hugging, cornering or kissing
- repeated or inappropriate invitations to go out on dates
- sexually suggestive comments or jokes that offend or intimidate
- requests or pressure for sex or other sexual acts
- sexually explicit pictures, posters or gifts
- actual or attempted rape or sexual assault
- being followed, watched or someone loitering (hanging around)
- sexually explicit comments made in person or in writing, or indecent messages (SMS, social media), phone calls or emails – including the use of emojis with sexual connotations
- sexual gestures, indecent exposure or inappropriate display of the body
- unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature that occurs online or via some form of technology – including in virtual meetings
- inappropriate staring or leering
- repeated or inappropriate advances on email or other online social technologies.
Sexual harassment can involve conduct by one or more people and can be a single incident, repeated conduct or part of a course of conduct.
Sexual harassment is against the law regardless of the sex, sexual orientation or gender identity of the people involved.
The intention of the alleged harasser is not relevant. The conduct may be sexual in nature even if the alleged harasser has no sexual interest in the person harassed, or is not aware that they are acting in a sexual way.
Harassment is behaviour which is directed at a person because of a personal characteristic and that could reasonably result in a person feeling offended, humiliated or intimidated or places them in a hostile environment. Harassment does not need to be repeated and can be a single occurrence.
Harassment can entail treating people less favourably on the basis of particular protected attributes such as gender, sexual orientation, race, disability or age.
Harassment can be physical, verbal or visual and can occur through any means of communication, including in person, in writing, by telephone (voice or text messaging), by fax, via the internet (email, instant messaging, social media, photos or videos to cause hurt or embarrassment).
Violence and aggression cover a broad range of behaviours and can include:
- verbal abuse, in person or over the telephone
- written abuse via email or text message
- harassment
- threats and intimidation
- physical or sexual assault
- malicious damage to property.
Violence, threats of violence or aggression in workplaces may be perpetrated by other workers (including workers of other businesses), customers, patients or clients.
Poor workplace relationships or interpersonal conflict between colleagues or from other businesses, clients or customers.
Frequent disagreements, disparaging or rude comments, either from one person or multiple people, such as from clients or customers.
A worker can be both the subject and the source of this behaviour.
These behaviours may not fit the definition of one or more types of harmful behaviours described above but may co-occur with harmful behaviours.