Everyone at work has a responsibility for health and safety, both physical and psychological.

For employers and managers

As an employer, you are responsible for ensuring the health and safety of your workers and others in your workplace, and this includes their psychological health.

You must provide and maintain a safe and healthy working environment, and this includes a mentally healthy one.

So you can and must prevent and manage psychosocial hazards, just as you do other workplace hazards, by:

• identifying their presence or potential
• putting control measures in place to prevent or manage them.

Doing a risk assessment will help you with this. Find how to do this for psychosocial hazards:

• in each type of psychosocial hazard in this section
• in the Code of practice Managing psychosocial hazards at work.

Involve your workers

The workers performing the tasks and being in the work environment every day are essential to help you identify hazards.

Don’t underestimate your workers’ input: they often have first-hand knowledge, experience and ideas about how to reduce safety risks, make improvements and find solutions.

When introducing any changes, make sure everyone knows what’s being done and how you are controlling the hazards. Involving your workers in these ways reinforces the idea that safety is everyone’s responsibility, and ensures you meet your requirements to consult with your workforce.

For workers

As a worker, you must take reasonable care of your own health and safety in your place of work, and the health and safety of others who may be affected by your actions.

You can do this by:

• reporting psychological safety issues to your manager; or you don’t feel safe talking to them, your human resources officer, health and safety representative, union representative, or other person you feel safe to tell
• providing feedback on consultation
• supporting colleagues, understanding that we don’t know the difficulties they may be facing
• ensuring you understand your role and your job description
• asking for any training you may need to do your job properly and safely
• not taking part in toxic workplace interactions
• follow any policies or procedures your manager/employer provides about psychosocial hazards.