Workplace Health And Safety Issues

Workplace health and safety issues used to mean physical hazards. Regulation has widened the category, and the newer half is the one most organisations still manage informally.

Physical. Manual handling, slips and falls, plant and equipment, hazardous substances, working alone. Well understood, with mature controls.

Psychosocial. High job demands, low control, poor support, bullying and harassment, exposure to traumatic material, and conflict. These must now be identified, assessed and controlled through the same process as physical hazards.

The gap shows up in the register. Most risk registers list the physical hazards in detail and carry one line about wellbeing with no owner and no control attached.

Closing that gap starts with asking where job demand, individual control and available support are actually out of balance, then treating the answer as a hazard with an owner.

Safe Work Australia publishes guidance on both. This is general information rather than legal advice.

See Sentrient’s work health and safety course and risk management system.