Legal Risk Management of Psychosocial Hazards - Perth WA - 2 October 2025

Psychosocial hazards are not just a HR issue. They are a legal, safety and business risk.

Psychosocial hazards are not just a psychological challenge. In Australia, managing these risks means navigating an overlapping and sometimes inconsistent mix of employment, compensation and workplace health and safety laws.

This program addresses both the “what” and the “how” of psychosocial risk management. It is not enough to know your legal duties. You must also know how to apply them in practice, make sound decisions and handle sensitive issues in a way that is both legally defensible and culturally appropriate.

Course Elements

1. Competing Legal Frameworks

   Explore the overlapping and sometimes inconsistent requirements of workplace health and safety, employment and workers compensation laws as they relate to psychosocial hazards.

2. Applying the "What" and "How"

   Understand not only what the law requires but also how to execute these requirements in practice. For example, an employer may have a legal right to request a medical assessment to ensure a worker is fit and healthy to return to work. The real challenge is knowing when it is reasonable to make such a request and how to have that conversation appropriately.

3. Key Psychosocial Risk Areas

   Examine high risk scenarios such as bullying and harassment, performance management, reasonable management action, long term absenteeism, the role of policies and procedures, reporting and investigations.

4. Integrated Business Decision Making

   Learn how to identify critical decision points, integrate legal, safety and human resources considerations and create a framework that manages legal risks while improving workplace culture and safety outcomes.

About the Presenter

Greg is an international award-winning author and qualified lawyer who has spent more than three decades specialising in safety and health management. Greg works with clients helping them to understand their responsibility for safety and health and develop processes to discharge those responsibilities.

In addition to being a lawyer, Greg has worked as the Principal Safety Advisor for a major oil and gas company and General Manager Health and Safety in a transport and mining services company. Greg holds various board positions and taught the Accident Prevention unit at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Greg is the author of, Management Obligations for Safety and Health, Paper Safe: The triumph of bureaucracy and safety management, and Proving Safety: wicked problems, legal risk management and the churning of metrics, co-author of, Risky Conversations: The Law, Social Psychology and Risk and the editor of Contractor Safety Management, which won the 2014 World Safety Organisation’s Educational Award.