Overview
This masterclass is designed for WHS, HR, risk, organisational development and public-sector leaders who need to move beyond awareness and apply a rigorous, defensible approach to psychosocial risk management.
Current evidence underlines the need for practical capability: Safe Work Australia’s 2025 statistics show mental health conditions accounted for 12% of serious workers compensation claims in 2023-24p, with a median 35.7 weeks lost. WHO guidance and recent systematic-review evidence also point to organisational-level interventions that assess and change working conditions, rather than relying only on individual resilience responses.
Participants will strengthen their ability to identify hazards, assess exposure and consequence, design proportionate controls, document decisions and review whether controls are working in practice.
Course Content
- Psychosocial hazards, legal duties and the practitioner role in Australian workplaces
- Methods for identifying hazards through consultation, data, observation and workforce insights
- Risk assessment approaches for likelihood, consequence, exposure, priority and vulnerable groups
- Selecting stronger controls that target work design, work environment, systems and workplace behaviours
- Documenting risk decisions, control plans, governance responsibilities and review triggers
- Monitoring effectiveness, learning from incidents and embedding continuous improvement
Course Outcomes
By the end of this course attendees should be able to:
- Identify common and emerging psychosocial hazards using evidence from multiple workplace sources
- Assess and prioritise psychosocial risks in a structured, defensible way
- Select controls that eliminate or minimise risk so far as reasonably practicable
- Engage leaders, workers and stakeholders in meaningful consultation and implementation
- Review control effectiveness and refine actions based on evidence, feedback and changing conditions
Benefits to the Individual
- Gain practical tools for leading the identify-assess-control-review cycle with confidence
- Build credibility when advising executives, managers, HSRs and multidisciplinary teams
- Strengthen judgement about control quality, proportionality and implementation risk
- Leave with a clear practitioner lens for turning evidence into action
Benefits to the Organisation
- Stronger capability to meet WHS duties and regulator expectations for psychosocial risk management
- More consistent risk assessment, documentation and decision-making across teams
- Better-targeted controls that address the causes of work-related psychological harm
- Clearer governance, accountability and review practices for complex psychosocial risks
- Improved prevention focus, with reduced reliance on reactive or individual-only responses
