TLDR – Don’t wing this one. The new psychological health laws in Victoria demand real, ongoing effort. Assemble your OH&S committee and go through the identify, assess and control process and keep good records while you’re at it.
If you run a business in Victoria and you’ve been putting off dealing with the ‘mental health stuff’, there’s no more hiding.
As of now (1 December 2025) the new OH&S Psychological Health Regulations 2025 are in place. That means psychosocial risks at work such as stress, bullying, overwork, trauma, poor management and toxic culture now have the same weight of responsibility as a slippery floor or dodgy wiring risk in your workplace.
If you’re thinking “That’s fine, I’ve got a poster and did that one training session back in 2012”, think again. The new rules require serious, ongoing risk management, not tick‑and‑flick compliance.
What exactly are you required to do?
Under the regulations as an employer you must, so far as is reasonably practicable:
- Identify psychosocial hazards
Anything from high job demands, job insecurity or unclear roles, to bullying, harassment, poor support or traumatic content. Put all of these potential hazards in a spreadsheet. - Assess the risk
How badly could this make someone feel, or impact their mental health, performance or safety? What is the worst case scenario? - Eliminate the risk where possible
If elimination isn’t doable, you must reduce the risk as much as you can. That means changing work design, management systems, workload, communication (not just doing a one off training or sending out a memo or email). - Review and update risk controls regularly
Especially after any incident, complaint, change in work or new info comes to light.
In other words: this is serious. It’s not “mental health nice to have” or something that Gen Z is harping on about. If you have staff, it is part of your legal duty.
The new regulations come against a backdrop of rising mental health claims, long term psychological injury, and workplaces where ‘just coping’ has too often been the norm until something breaks.
In 2023, there was a highly publicised instance of this being done poorly. Court Services Victoria (CSV), was found to have allowed psychosocial hazards to run rampant in the Coroners Court. A workplace where exposure to traumatic material was a daily occurrence.
As well as being exposed to that material, there was also role conflict, high workloads and excessive work demands, poor workplace relationships and inappropriate workplace behaviours. There were ongoing workplace complaints about bullying and anxiety, and high levels of personal leave being taken. CSV didn’t respond to these concerns which should have operated as red flags. After an incident and subsequent investigation, CSV was fined nearly $380,000.
The regulators have made it clear: posters, training modules and token “mental health days” don’t cut it. They want real system level change: culture, leadership, job design and documentation that shows you’ve actually done the work.
So, what happens if you don’t do anything about it?
Non compliance isn’t without consequences. Breaches can result in improvement notices, prohibition notices or even prosecution, depending on the severity. Fines are on offer of up to $19 million and imprisonment for directors.
More importantly, it’s about keeping people safe at work. Workplaces where psychosocial hazards go unaddressed are a breeding ground for burnout, mental injury, staff turnover, culture collapse. We see it all too often. Don’t be that workplace.
And if you’re not in Victoria, don’t think you are in the clear! Equivalents of these laws are in place in every state and territory of Australia.
Talking to employers every day, we know that it can sometimes be hard to differentiate work related stress from personal stress that workers bring to the workplace and to design a proper response. That’s what we are here for. We help people with these extra tricky high level problems that you might come across once in a blue moon, but we see regularly and can bring that expert, impartial perspective to help you through.
Contact Sarah Gee, Bendigo business lawyer via phone, email or book in directly online.
