Imagine it is a Tuesday morning. Someone at reception says there is a SafeWork NSW inspector here to see you. They’re not responding to an incident or a complaint; they’re here to talk about psychosocial risk and they would like to see how your business manages it.
Right now, that is not a hypothetical. On 9 October, SafeWork NSW began a six week statewide operation focused on psychosocial hazards, visiting businesses in every industry. It follows a round of inspections in May and June that reached more than 200 workplaces and resulted in more than 80 improvement notices, and this time inspectors are going back to check that those notices were acted on.
So if an inspector walked in tomorrow, what would they actually want to see? Here is how we would walk through it.
Walking in the door
The first thing an inspector learns is not in a folder. It is how you react to the question. If the honest answer to "how do you manage psychosocial risk here?" is a pause, a search for the right person, and then a policy printed from the intranet, that tells them a lot.
The businesses that handle this well can answer in plain language. They can say which psychosocial hazards are most present in their workplace, what they have done about them, and how they know whether it is working.
What they are likely to ask for
Since 1 July 2026, section 26A of the WHS Act means NSW businesses must follow the Code of Practice for managing psychosocial hazards, or show that what they do instead meets an equivalent or higher standard. Either way, an inspector is looking for evidence of a process, and that process has five parts.
They will want to see that you have identified the psychosocial hazards specific to your workplace. That means things like high workloads, unclear roles, poor support, bullying, harassment, conflict or exposure to aggressive customers, written down for your business rather than copied from a template.
They will want to see that you have assessed the risk. Which hazards are most likely to cause harm here, to whom, and how badly?
They will want to see the controls you chose, and why. The Code favours changing the work itself over offering support after the fact. An employee assistance program on its own is rarely enough.
They will want to see that you review those controls. A review date that has passed without a review is a gap an inspector will notice quickly.
And they will want to see that you consulted your workers. Meeting notes, toolbox talk records, or survey results that you visibly acted on all count. A policy announced in an all staff email does not.
The gap we see most often
Most businesses we talk to have a psychosocial policy… far fewer have the evidence behind it. The policy says hazards will be identified and reviewed, but there is no record of when that last happened or what came of it.
That is exactly the gap this operation is designed to find. An improvement notice is not the end of the world, but it is a formal record that your system exists on paper only, and a repeat visit to check you have fixed it is now part of how SafeWork operates.
What to do this week
You don’t need a perfect system before an inspector arrives. You need an honest, documented start.
Write down the two or three psychosocial hazards that are genuinely most present in your business right now. Put one meaningful control in place for the biggest one, ideally something that changes how the work is done. Record a conversation with your team about it. Then set a review date, put a name next to it, and make sure your leadership team knows it exists.
If an inspector walked in after that, you would have something real to show them.
Get a second set of eyes before SafeWork does
If you are not sure whether your current approach would hold up, book a free 30 minute Safety Health Check with Glen Dunkley, our Managing Director. It is a practical conversation about where you stand and what to fix first, with no sales pitch.
If you would rather start with the basics, our free WHS course covers psychosocial hazards and your wider WHS obligations in plain language, in under 30 minutes.
