July 2026 update
Welcome to July
Halfway through the year and the ground has well and truly shifted. Psychosocial safety is no longer a conversation for large employers or the people and culture team alone. It is enforceable law, a board level duty and increasingly a daily reality for frontline workers.
In this edition
Regulator priorities, frontline aggression, the People at Work gap, Humn IQ™ and governance accountability.
The numbers that matter
Figures should be checked against your preferred source documents before external publication.
The rising risk
Violence and aggression is a serious psychosocial issue
The sharpest trend we are seeing is the rise in violence and aggression that workers face in their day to day work. Retail, fast food, hospitality, transport, healthcare and frontline service teams are increasingly on the receiving end of abuse, threats and physical aggression from customers and members of the public.
This is not simply a security problem or a bad shift. Under work health and safety law it is a psychosocial hazard, and employers have a positive duty to manage it so far as is reasonably practicable.
This is what we are seeing a lot. Organisations are often so busy dealing with the load that they miss the system redesign sitting right in front of them.
New laws protecting frontline workers
Governments have responded with a wave of new protections. The legal message is consistent across jurisdictions: exposing workers to violence and aggression is now treated with the same seriousness as any other safety failure.
Victoria
The Crimes Amendment (Retail, Fast Food, Hospitality and Transport Worker Harm) Act 2025 passed Parliament in December 2025. This sits alongside Victoria's OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025.
South Australia
A Workplace Protection Order framework commenced in May 2026, allowing violent or repeat offenders to be barred from shops and shopping centres.
Commonwealth and NSW
Workplace protection order reforms are strengthening protections for frontline, delivery and retail workers.
Scott Taylor and Praesidium Risk and Resilience
We recently had the pleasure of seeing Scott Taylor of Praesidium Risk and Resilience present at the NSCA Foundation Conference. His work brings a behavioural science lens to occupational violence and aggression, including threat awareness, conflict de-escalation and immersive scenario based training.
His central point resonates with ours: aggression management is a system and capability issue, not something you can leave to individual workers to absorb on the day.
Tips: signs to look for
!A rise in near misses, verbal abuse or threats that staff quietly absorb and never formally report.
!Lone or isolated work, late trading hours or cash handling with no clear escalation pathway.
!Workers describing certain shifts, sites or customers as ones they dread.
!Aggression treated as just part of the job rather than an incident to be recorded and reviewed.
!No debrief, support or follow up after a distressing encounter.
!Rising sick leave, withdrawal or turnover among customer facing teams.
If any of these feel familiar, it is worth naming occupational violence and aggression formally as a psychosocial risk, assessing it and putting controls in place before harm occurs.
Regulator focus
SafeWork NSW has reset its priorities for 2026 to 2027
SafeWork NSW released its 2026 to 2027 Regulatory Statement on 1 July 2026. Psychosocial risks are one of four key priority areas, alongside falls from heights, hazardous substances, and mobile plant, vehicles and fixed machinery.
Source: SafeWork NSW 2026 to 2027 Regulatory Statement media release.
Across Australia and New Zealand
What actually matters by jurisdiction
Psychosocial safety obligations are becoming more specific, more visible and more enforceable. The question for leaders is not whether they have a policy. It is whether they can show what changed in the work.
The gap
You used People at Work to assess your psychosocial hazards and risk. It is now gone. What will you do next?
People at Work (PAW) has wound down, new surveys have closed, and full access ends in October 2026. Built back in 2007, it was never designed for the hazards the Code now expects you to manage, things like sexual harassment, remote and isolated work, job insecurity, poor organisational change, and the violence and aggression we have covered above.
If PAW was your psychosocial risk process, that process just walked out the door, right as the obligation became enforceable. A lot of teams are staring at that gap right now. The good news is you are not out of options.
Survey versus risk assessment
Surveys show how people feel. Risk assessments show what is there.
Surveys can be valuable. They can highlight perceptions, sentiment and themes. But they do not replace a psychosocial risk assessment. A risk assessment looks at exposure, causes, controls, likelihood, consequence and what needs to change.
What we have been building
Built for the way psychosocial risk is now managed
Humn IQ™ is a purpose built psychosocial risk management platform designed to help organisations move beyond surveys and towards a documented, defensible system of work.
Whether you are replacing People at Work or starting from scratch, Humn IQ™ helps you identify, assess, control and review psychosocial risk while creating the evidence regulators and boards expect to see.
Psychosocial risk is no longer something organisations should simply measure. It is something leaders are expected to understand, manage and continuously improve. Humn IQ™ was built to help you do exactly that.
Identify psychosocial hazards across the 17 hazard framework.
Assess exposure, impact, duration and existing controls.
Document actions, ownership, controls and evidence.
Track control effectiveness over time, not just once a year.
Give leaders and boards a clearer risk and due diligence view.
Create the audit trail regulators expect when they ask what has changed.
Not ready for a full rollout?
You do not need to roll Humn across your entire organisation to get started. Manager Essentials can also be completed as a standalone online course if you are the only leader in your organisation, want to build your own capability first, or want to experience the program before introducing it more broadly.
- Learn online and at your own pace
- Practical workplace examples
- Useful for individual leaders
- Apply the tools straight away
Why a system matters
Psychosocial risk requires a system, not a survey.
A reminder we keep coming back to: psychosocial risk management must identify hazards, assess risks, control risks and review whether the controls are working.
Case of the month
A regulator suspended a director. Not the company. The person.
On 18 May 2026, the Australian Charities and Not for profits Commission suspended a Responsible Person of the Royal Australasian College of Physicians under section 100 10 of the ACNC Act. The trigger was a failure to protect the psychological health and safety of staff.
The sequence matters. SafeWork NSW issued an Improvement Notice, then a Prohibition Notice directing board members to stop contacting staff except through the CEO. A director continued writing to staff. SafeWork NSW advised the conduct exposed employees to immediate and serious risks to their psychological health and safety.
Why this matters
Psychosocial safety has moved from a topic that sat inside people and culture to a governance duty with personal consequences.
The regulator did not sanction the organisation in the abstract. It removed a person from their role.
Lesson one
Psychosocial safety is governance, not HR. It cannot simply be delegated away.
Lesson two
The board table itself can be the hazard. Boards are not exempt from the cultures they govern.
Lesson three
Regulator directions are the floor. Compliance is the minimum standard, not a negotiating position.
Source summary: ACNC Enforcement Register, RACP suspension summary, 18 May 2026, with reporting by Medical Republic and Australian Doctor. This case summary is drawn from Humn's Psychosocial Safety as a Governance Duty carousel.
Board and executive accountability
Questions every board and executive team should ask
Where are our psychosocial risks sitting right now, and how do we know?
Are our leaders genuinely capable of managing psychosocial hazards, or are they the source of them?
Is performance pressure in our organisation becoming unsafe?
Are we measuring silence instead of safety?
What evidence would a regulator or court expect from us today if an incident occurred?
Governance is not a spectator sport
The board does not need to run the risk assessment. It does need to understand the system, the evidence and whether controls are actually working.
Build capability
Manager Essentials: Psychosocial Safety for Leaders
Most managers want to do the right thing. They just do not always know what psychosocial hazards look like in practice, what they are legally required to do, or how to act without making things worse. Manager Essentials closes that gap.
Run it as a one off
Bring your leaders together for a one hour briefing, a two hour capability workshop, or a half day deep dive, online or face to face. You can also complete Manager Essentials online as a one off if you are the only leader, want to build your own capability first, or want to try it before rolling it out more broadly.
Or take an annual licence
Roll out self paced learning across your organisation so new and existing leaders can complete it any time.
Let us start the conversation
Need a system, not another dusty survey?
Talk to Humn about strengthening psychosocial risk management, leadership capability and governance evidence.
www.humn.global | Humn IQ™ | hello@humn.global | +61 8 7008 9826
Suite 44, Marnirni-apinthi Building, Lot Fourteen, North Terrace, Adelaide SA 5000
This newsletter is general information only and is not legal advice. Always refer to the legislation and guidance in your jurisdiction and seek advice appropriate to your circumstances.