Two Codes, Two Philosophies - What the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice and WorkSafe Victoria Compliance Code reveal — and conceal — about managing psychosocial risk at work

Australia now has two significant regulatory instruments governing how workplaces must manage psychosocial hazards: the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, first issued in May 2021 and updated in light of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025,¹ and WorkSafe Victoria's Compliance Code: Psychological Health (Edition 1, September 2025), which took effect on 1 December 2025.² Together, these documents represent the most substantial regulatory evolution in workplace psychological health in this country's history.

Yet they are not the same document, nor do they reflect the same regulatory philosophy. Practitioners advising employers across both jurisdictions — or those seeking to build genuinely durable psychosocial risk management systems — need to understand not just what each code requires, but what each reveals about how its jurisdiction understands the nature of workplace harm. The differences matter, and the gaps left by both are instructive.

The National Landscape

To understand why the NSW and Victoria comparison matters, it helps to map the full national picture. Across Australia, every state and territory now has some regulatory instrument addressing psychosocial risk — but they do not all reflect the same approach, and the degree of divergence is greater than many practitioners realise.

The Safe Work Australia Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work (2022) forms the backbone of the harmonised-jurisdiction approach.³ Queensland, Tasmania, the ACT, the Northern Territory, and the Commonwealth have all adopted this model code as their approved instrument — Queensland from April 2023, Tasmania from January 2023, and the ACT from November 2023.⁴ South Australia and Western Australia have moved to incorporate psychosocial risk obligations into their WHS regulatory frameworks, though neither has developed a standalone code of practice, instead relying on the national model as a reference point. For practical purposes, these jurisdictions are broadly comparable to one another.

NSW and Victoria are the exceptions — and the most consequential ones. NSW was the first jurisdiction in Australia or New Zealand to issue an approved code of practice specifically addressing psychosocial hazards, doing so in May 2021, before the Safe Work Australia model code was finalised.¹ Victoria, which has never adopted the harmonised WHS framework and operates under its own Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004,⁵ issued its Compliance Code in September 2025 — the most recent and, in several respects, the most developed instrument in the country.²

The result is a regulatory landscape with two distinct poles. On one side, the harmonised-jurisdiction states broadly share a common framework, with the NSW Code sitting slightly ahead by virtue of its earlier development and its shaping influence on the national model. On the other, Victoria stands as a genuinely distinct jurisdiction — operating under different legislation, with a different instrument type, a different enforcement architecture, and a more expansive definition of what constitutes a psychosocial hazard. For multi-jurisdictional employers — and for the advisers, lawyers, and HR professionals who support them — the NSW/Victoria comparison is not merely of academic interest. It is the comparison that matters most in practice.

Different Legal Foundations

The first difference is structural. SafeWork NSW operates under the harmonised Work Health and Safety Act 2011,⁶ a national framework adopted across most Australian states and territories. Victoria remains the notable exception: it retains its own Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004,⁵ and with it, a distinct regulatory architecture that has historically diverged from the national model on several fronts.

This legislative divergence shapes the instruments themselves. The NSW document is an approved Code of Practice under section 274 of the WHS Act⁶ — a formal instrument that courts may treat as evidence of what is known about a hazard and what is reasonably practicable in response. Courts may rely on it to determine whether a duty holder has met their WHS obligations.¹ The Victorian instrument is a Compliance Code under the OHS Act — a document that, if followed, provides a safe harbour: an employer who complies with the Compliance Code is taken to have complied with the relevant duties under the Act and the new Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025.^7,2 Conversely, failure to follow it may be used as evidence of breach.

The distinction is more than taxonomic. It shapes how employers in each jurisdiction should read and apply the documents. In NSW, the Code provides practical guidance toward a legal standard set elsewhere; in Victoria, the Compliance Code is itself a pathway to deemed compliance. Victorian employers who follow the Code can point to it directly in any regulatory or legal proceeding. NSW employers cannot rely on it with equivalent specificity, but nor can they ignore it.

Timing and Context

The timing gap between the two instruments is significant. NSW issued its Code in 2021, making it the first approved code of practice in Australia or New Zealand to address psychosocial hazards.¹ It was a landmark document, not because of its technical depth, but because it established psychosocial risk formally within the WHS compliance framework for the first time.

Victoria's Compliance Code arrived more than four years later, in September 2025, and benefited accordingly. It was developed with the advantage of seeing how the national model had been received, how the 2022 Safe Work Australia Model Regulations had been framed,³ and how jurisdictions across the country had implemented their own versions of the psychosocial hazard framework. It also followed several significant reviews — the Boland Review of Model WHS Laws,⁸ the Productivity Commission's Inquiry into Mental Health,⁹ and the Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System¹⁰ — each of which contributed to a heightened regulatory ambition.

This means the Victorian instrument, despite arriving later, is in several respects more sophisticated. It has had the benefit of hindsight. NSW's Code was a first mover; Victoria's Compliance Code is a more considered, better-evidenced response to a problem the sector now understands more deeply.

Who Bears the Duty

There is a definitional divergence that practitioners often overlook. The NSW Code applies to Persons Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBUs) — the harmonised WHS framework's deliberately broad category, which encompasses employers, principal contractors, and others who direct or influence work.^1,6 The Victorian instrument applies to employers, a narrower category reflecting the OHS Act's older employer/employee architecture.^5,7

This is not merely semantic. The PCBU framework is designed to capture complex work arrangements — labour hire, contracting, platform work — in ways the traditional employer category may not. For organisations with multi-layered workforces, the NSW framework can, in theory, impose duties on parties that Victorian law would not reach in the same way. As non-standard work arrangements proliferate, this distinction will matter more, not less.

How Each Defines the Hazard

Both instruments provide lists of psychosocial hazards — and there is substantial overlap. High job demands, low job control, poor support, role conflict, workplace violence and harassment, poor organisational change management, and low recognition all appear in both.^1,2 But the framing differs in ways that reflect different underlying theories of harm.

The NSW Code, drawing from the harmonised model, defines a psychosocial hazard as any aspect of work design or the work environment that may cause a stress response, which in turn can lead to psychological or physical harm.¹ The emphasis is on work factors that trigger stress. Victoria's definition is more expansive: a psychosocial hazard is any factor or factors in work design, systems of work, the management of work, the carrying out of work, or personal or work-related interactions that may arise in the working environment and may cause an employee to experience one or more negative psychological responses that create a risk to health or safety.⁷ The Victorian definition explicitly includes cognitive, emotional, behavioural and physiological responses — a richer, more clinically informed account of how harm occurs.²

Victoria also specifically recognises gendered violence and vicarious trauma as hazards² — a notable departure from the more generic list in the NSW Code, and one that reflects the particular psychosocial risk profiles of healthcare, social services, and emergency response sectors.

The Hierarchy of Controls: Aligned in Spirit, Divergent in Detail

Both instruments are clear that the preferred response to psychosocial risk is elimination, followed by minimisation through higher-order controls.^1,2 Both explicitly warn against the tendency to default to lower-order individual-level responses — training, counselling, EAPs — as the primary control strategy. This alignment is important. The field has long been prone to treating psychological injury as a worker problem requiring individual solutions rather than an organisational design problem requiring systemic ones.

However, Victoria took a deliberate step away from the standard hierarchy of controls in framing its Compliance Code. The traditional hierarchy — eliminate, substitute, isolate, engineer, administer, PPE — was developed for physical hazards and maps imperfectly onto the psychosocial domain. WorkSafe Victoria adopted what it describes as a 'tailored approach' using different terminology more suited to psychosocial risk management: the emphasis falls on changes to work design, systems of work, the work environment, and management practices as the preferred higher-order interventions, before proceeding to lower-order administrative and individual supports.²

This is a methodologically sound decision. It signals to practitioners that the control logic for psychosocial risk is not the same as for noise or chemical exposure, and that attempts to force-fit the conventional hierarchy can produce compliance theatre rather than genuine risk reduction.

Prevention Plans: A Victorian Emphasis

One of the more practically significant differences between the two instruments is Victoria's engagement with prevention plans. While the Regulations ultimately removed a proposed requirement to submit prevention plans to WorkSafe — a controversial proposal in the earlier draft — the Compliance Code strongly encourages their development and provides a template.^2,7 WorkSafe Victoria has made clear it will look for documented prevention planning as evidence of a mature risk management system.²

The NSW Code does not foreground prevention plans in the same way. The risk management process it describes — identify, assess, control, review — is broadly aligned with the standard WHS risk management framework¹ and is less prescriptive about the form that documentation should take. Victorian employers face a higher implicit expectation around documentation and structured planning, particularly for complex hazards such as bullying and sexual harassment.²

Consultation: Present in Both, Operationalised Differently

Consultation with workers and health and safety representatives is a requirement in both jurisdictions.^1,2 Both codes acknowledge that those closest to the work are often best placed to identify the psychosocial hazards to which they are exposed. But Victoria's Compliance Code goes further in operationalising consultation — it acknowledges that consultation must accommodate the varied capacity and context of different workplaces, and provides more granular guidance on how to engage both workers and HSRs in the hazard identification and control development process.²

This reflects a broader difference in style. The NSW Code is relatively terse — it establishes principles and provides illustrative scenarios, but leaves considerable latitude to employers in how they respond.¹ Victoria's Compliance Code is more directive. It provides worked examples by hazard type, sets expectations about the depth of documentation required, and signals clearly what WorkSafe inspectors will be looking for.² For practitioners in both jurisdictions, this means the bar for demonstrable compliance is, in practical terms, higher in Victoria.

Enforcement Posture

Both regulators have signalled an elevated enforcement posture. SafeWork NSW's Psychological Health and Safety Strategy 2024–2026 announced that inspectors would conduct psychological WHS checks at workplaces with 200 or more employees, and that regulatory action would be taken against high-risk and large businesses and government agencies that fail to meet their obligations.¹¹ WorkSafe Victoria, for its part, has indicated it will expect all Victorian employers to demonstrate safety management systems aligned with the new Regulations and Compliance Code — and that, given the volume of published guidance available in recent years, lack of awareness will carry limited weight as a defence.²

The enforcement trajectory in both jurisdictions is unmistakably upward. Psychosocial risk is no longer a soft issue. It sits squarely within the WHS and OHS enforcement framework, and the standard of evidence required to demonstrate compliance is rising. For multi-jurisdictional employers operating across harmonised and non-harmonised states, the practical challenge is managing two distinct compliance postures simultaneously — neither of which is getting easier to satisfy.

What Neither Code Can Tell You

Read together, the NSW Code and the Victorian Compliance Code represent a genuine advance in the regulatory treatment of workplace psychological health. They have formalised duties, sharpened expectations, and — importantly — shifted the burden of compliance toward organisational systems and design rather than individual resilience.

But there is a limit to what any regulatory instrument can achieve, and it is worth naming it. Both codes are essentially process documents. They specify what employers must do — identify, assess, control, review — and they provide guidance on how. What they cannot do is explain why particular organisations generate psychosocial risk at elevated rates even when all the required processes are ostensibly in place.

The answer to that question lies in culture. Not climate — the momentary perception of how it feels to work somewhere, which survey tools can measure — but the deeper, often pre-reflective patterns of meaning, power, and assumption that determine how an organisation actually functions, as opposed to how it presents itself on paper. An organisation can have a policy framework that satisfies every requirement in both codes and still systematically harm its workforce, if the cultural conditions that produce harm remain unexamined.

This gap — between the compliance artefact and the organisational reality — is not a failure of the codes themselves. It is a limitation inherent to the regulatory form. Regulators can require organisations to have risk management systems. They cannot, through legislation, change what people in organisations actually believe about work, about workers, or about what kind of conduct is acceptable.

The most sophisticated practitioners in this space — those advising boards, senior leadership teams, and regulators — are increasingly asking the question that sits below the compliance layer: what is it about this organisation's culture that makes psychosocial harm not just possible, but structurally probable? And what would it take to change that, rather than simply document it?

That is a different kind of work. It requires diagnostic tools capable of surfacing the cultural dynamics that produce harm — work design failures, yes, but also the normative pressures, power asymmetries, and meaning-making systems that shape how work is experienced long before any individual hazard becomes visible. It requires the kind of organisational ethnography that looks at what cultures do, not just what they say.

The two codes mark a necessary and welcome maturation of the regulatory framework. For those who want to go further — to understand and address the conditions that produce the hazards these codes seek to manage — the real diagnostic work is still ahead.

Dr Anna Kiaos is the founder of Mind Culture Life Australia, a Sydney-based consultancy specialising in organisational culture, psychosocial risk, and workplace mental health, and a researcher at UNSW Sydney's Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health. She is the developer of the Culture Pressure Map™ (CPM), a proprietary framework for diagnosing the cultural conditions that produce psychosocial risk — mapping what codes of practice cannot: the deeper patterns of meaning, power, and assumption that determine how organisations actually function. Mind Culture Life Australia operates from International Towers, Barangaroo.

References

1.  SafeWork NSW (2021, updated 2025). Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work. Approved under s 274 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW). Sydney: SafeWork NSW. Available at: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/resource-library/list-of-all-codes-of-practice/codes-of-practice/managing-psychosocial-hazards-at-work

2.  WorkSafe Victoria (2025). Compliance Code: Psychological Health, Edition 1, September 2025. Melbourne: WorkSafe Victoria. Available at: https://content-v2.api.worksafe.vic.gov.au/sites/default/files/2025-09/Compliane-code-psychological-health-2025-09.pdf

3.  Safe Work Australia (2022). Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work. Canberra: Safe Work Australia. Available at: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/model-code-practice-managing-psychosocial-hazards-work

4.  Foremind (2024). Psychosocial Hazard Laws by State. Available at: https://foremind.com.au/psychosocial-hazards/legislation-by-state/ [summarising commencement dates for Queensland (1 April 2023), Tasmania (4 January 2023) and ACT (27 November 2023)].

5.  Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic).

6.  Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW).

7.  Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic). Commenced 1 December 2025.

8.  Boland, M (2019). Review of the Model WHS Laws: Final Report. Canberra: Safe Work Australia. Published 25 February 2019. Available at: https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/review-model-whs-laws-final-report

9.  Productivity Commission (2020). Mental Health, Inquiry Report No. 95. Canberra: Australian Government. Report handed to government 30 June 2020; publicly released 16 November 2020. Available at: https://www.pc.gov.au/inquiries/completed/mental-health/report

10.  Royal Commission into Victoria's Mental Health System (2021). Final Report. Melbourne: State of Victoria. Tabled in Victorian Parliament 2 March 2021. Available at: https://finalreport.rcvmhs.vic.gov.au/

11.  SafeWork NSW (2024). Psychological Health and Safety Strategy 2024–2026. Sydney: SafeWork NSW. Available at: https://www.safework.nsw.gov.au/hazards-a-z/mental-health