From Guidance to Duty: What Section 26A Means for Psychosocial Risk in NSW

From 1 July 2026, a quiet but consequential shift took effect in NSW work health and safety law. Under the new section 26A of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), approved codes of practice stopped being guidance you could weigh up and started being a benchmark you have to meet — or beat.¹

The distinction matters more than the word "code" might suggest. Until now, a code of practice was admissible evidence: a court could treat it as an indication of what a business ought reasonably to have known about a hazard, and what was reasonably practicable to do about it.² Helpful, but soft. A PCBU could depart from a code and argue the point later. From 1 July 2026, the burden has moved. If an approved code covers a risk present in your workplace, you now have exactly two lawful options: comply with it, or demonstrate — with evidence — that your own approach delivers an equivalent or higher standard of health and safety.³ There is no third option in which the code is treated as optional best practice.

It's worth being precise about what has and hasn't changed, because the loose framing circulating online gets this wrong. Section 26A does not create new WHS duties.⁴ Your obligation to manage psychosocial and physical risk already existed. What has changed is the standard of proof. The code is now the default position, and departing from it is what needs justifying.⁵ This is a change in where the onus sits, not in what you were always meant to be doing.

Two features make this more than a technical amendment. First, it applies across the full library of NSW codes — around thirty of them — not only the high-profile Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work code.⁶ Second, an inspector no longer needs to show that anyone was harmed. A failure to meet the standard in an applicable code can itself establish a breach, enforced through the offence provisions already in the Act.⁷ That, combined with a materially expanded SafeWork NSW inspectorate, means the practical exposure is real rather than theoretical.⁸

Why psychosocial risk is where the pressure lands first

Every approved code gains enforceable status at once, but the psychosocial hazards code is the one that touches every workplace with people in it. High workload, low job control, poor support, badly managed organisational change, role ambiguity, bullying and harassment — these are not fringe risks confined to hazardous industries.⁹ They are features of ordinary organisational life, and they are precisely the hazards that are hardest to evidence with a tidy checklist.

This is where most organisations will find their gap. The physical-safety codes tend to map onto controls that are visible and auditable — a guard, a permit, a training record. Psychosocial controls are harder to point at, because the hazard lives in how work is designed, distributed and led. You cannot bolt a psychosocial control onto a poorly designed job the way you bolt a guard onto a machine. "We take mental health seriously" is not a compliance position. The regulator will be looking for documents: hazard identification mapped against the code, controls applied through the hierarchy, consultation records, and evidence of review.¹⁰

The evidentiary problem, and where the Culture Pressure Map fits

The recurring theme across every credible reading of section 26A is evidence. The question an inspector or a court will ask is not "do you care about psychosocial risk" but "can you show, systematically, where the psychosocial pressure sits in your organisation and what you did about it."

This is the specific problem the Culture Pressure Map™ (CPM) was built to address. Psychosocial hazards are not distributed evenly across an organisation — they concentrate. A shared organisational ethos can look healthy in a staff survey while a particular subculture or a single microculture, a team, a shift, a reporting line, carries most of the actual pressure. Aggregate engagement scores routinely mask exactly the pockets where the code's named hazards are live. The CPM works across three levels — Shared Ethos, Subcultures, and Microcultures — precisely to surface that structure rather than average it away.

For a PCBU now operating under section 26A, that structural view does three things. It identifies where the code's hazards actually sit, rather than assuming uniform risk. It produces a documented, defensible record of hazard identification and control at the level the regulator cares about. Moreover, it gives officers, who carry their own due diligence duty under section 27, the assurance evidence they need to demonstrate the organisation is meeting the standard, not merely asserting that it is.¹¹

That last point deserves weight. The 26A shift flows directly into officer accountability. An officer's due diligence obligation now includes ensuring the organisation complies with an applicable code or holds the evidence that its alternative approach is equal or better. "The safety committee was across it" is unlikely to satisfy that duty for psychosocial risk, where more direct and substantive engagement is expected.¹²

What to do now

There is no indication of a transitional grace period.¹³ The planning assumption should be that the duty applies in full. Practically, that means identifying which codes are relevant to your operations, assessing your current systems and controls against them, and — critically — closing the gap between having controls and being able to evidence that they meet or exceed the code. Where you depart from a code, the alternative approach needs to be documented, not merely intended. Any changes coming out of that review should be made in consultation with your workers.¹⁴

The organisations that will come through regulator scrutiny well are not the ones with the strongest intentions. They are the ones holding the documents — the risk assessments, the mapped controls, the review minutes — that turn a duty into a position of strength.

Where to start

If you want to see where psychosocial pressure actually concentrates in your organisation — and to build the documented, defensible evidence base that section 26A now demands — the Culture Pressure Map is where that work begins. Learn more at culturepressuremap.com.

This article is general commentary on recent changes to NSW work health and safety law and reflects the position as at July 2026. It is not legal advice and should not be relied on as such. Organisations should refer to SafeWork NSW and the current Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW) for guidance specific to their circumstances, and obtain their own professional advice before acting on any WHS obligation.

About the author

Dr Anna Kiaos is the Founder and Director of Mind Culture Life Australia, an organisational culture and psychosocial risk consultancy based in Barangaroo, Sydney. She holds a PhD in Management, and her work spans organisational consulting, psychosocial risk advisory, and workers' compensation factual investigation. She holds an affiliation with UNSW Sydney's Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health, and her research on workplace culture and psychosocial risk has been published across peer-reviewed outlets including the Journal of Workplace Behavioral Health and the Health Promotion Journal of Australia. She is the creator of the Culture Pressure Map™.

References

1. SafeWork NSW, Codes of practice, SafeWork NSW website. Available at: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/codes-of-practice

2. SafeWork NSW, Codes of practice, SafeWork NSW website. Available at: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/codes-of-practice

3. Voice Lawyers, NSW Codes of Practice and Psychosocial Hazard Compliance from 1 July 2026. Available at: https://www.voicelawyers.com/news-and-updates/uwqxu3if4hviflsfnge5swq8sh18fz

4. Orana Skills Centre, NSW Codes of Practice Changes — What's Coming on July 1? Available at: https://www.oranaskillscentre.com/post/nsw-codes-of-practice-changes-what-s-coming-on-july-1

5. Sonder, Psychosocial hazards: What NSW's 1 July 2026 code of practice change means for employers. Available at: https://sonder.io/resources/blog/psychosocial-hazards-1-july-2026/

6. ClinicComply, NSW WHS Codes Become Enforceable on 1 July 2026: Practice Guide. Available at: https://www.cliniccomply.com.au/blog/nsw-whs-codes-of-practice-enforceable-healthcare-2026

7. Paradigm Safety Consulting, NSW WHS Update: Changes to Codes of Practice from 1 July 2026. Available at: https://www.paradigmsafety.com.au/blog/nsw-whs-update-changes-to-codes-of-practice-from-1-july-2026

8. FMS Training, NSW Codes of Practice Now Enforceable: The 1 July Psychosocial Shift. Available at: https://fms.edu.au/nsw-codes-of-practice-enforceable-2026/

9. Voice Lawyers, NSW Codes of Practice and Psychosocial Hazard Compliance from 1 July 2026. Available at: https://www.voicelawyers.com/news-and-updates/uwqxu3if4hviflsfnge5swq8sh18fz

10. FMS Training, NSW Codes of Practice Now Enforceable: The 1 July Psychosocial Shift. Available at: https://fms.edu.au/nsw-codes-of-practice-enforceable-2026/

11. Lockton, Enforceable Codes of Practice: What expanded WHS obligations mean for NSW organisations. Available at: https://global.lockton.com/au/en/news-insights/enforceable-codes-of-practice-what-expanded-whs-obligations-mean-for-nsw-organisations

12. Lockton, Enforceable Codes of Practice: What expanded WHS obligations mean for NSW organisations. Available at: https://global.lockton.com/au/en/news-insights/enforceable-codes-of-practice-what-expanded-whs-obligations-mean-for-nsw-organisations

13. Compliance Council, Comply or Prove It: The Quiet Shift Inside the 1 July Code of Practice Duty. Available at: https://compliancecouncil.com.au/insights/comply-or-prove-it-the-quiet-shift-inside-the-1-july-code-of-practice-duty/

14. SafeWork NSW, Codes of practice, SafeWork NSW website. Available at: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/codes-of-practice

Legislation referenced: Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), s 26A, s 27; Industrial Relations and Other Legislation Amendment (Workplace Protections) Act 2025 (NSW).