Embedded Expertise, Published: October 26, 2025 - Updated: October 26, 2025
October is National Safe Work Month, an annual reminder that our shared goal is to ensure every team member gets home safe, every day and across every industry.
This year’s theme from Safe Work Australia, “safety: every job, every day,” reminds us that safety goes beyond a checklist. It must be a part of workplace culture and lived across every role. Traditionally, this message has centred on physical safety, but in recent years, we’ve understood how mental wellbeing is just as important.
In particular, the spotlight has been firmly placed on an essential layer: psychosocial safety.
What Is Psychosocial Safety?
Psychosocial safety refers to the way work design, management practices, and workplace relationships impact workers’ mental health and wellbeing.
This includes hazards such as:
- high job demands
- poor role clarity or organisational change management
- bullying, harassment or discrimination
- poor physical environment
- conflict or poor workplace relationships
- exposure to traumatic or distressing events.
When these hazards go unmanaged, stress levels rise, morale and productivity fall, and the risk of mental injury increases.
Psychosocial safety is a shared responsibility and collective effort, but it also calls for a level of personal awareness. That might be knowing when to pause, when to rest, and when habits like doomscrolling or lack of sleep are affecting how we show up at work.
Why it matters for industry
In industrial environments, where physical risks are often front of mind, it can be easy to overlook the toll of long hours, high pressure, or unpredictable conditions. Unfortunately, the reality is that time off related to psychosocial hazards are increasing.
It can have lasting effects for individuals, as well as for teams, productivity, and reputation.
A psychosocially safe workplace, on the other hand, fosters engagement, reduces absenteeism, and improves overall performance.
What the law requires of employers
Recent changes to Work Health and Safety (WHS) laws across Australia have strengthened employers’ obligations to manage psychosocial risks.
Since April 2023, national model WHS Regulations have included specific requirements for psychosocial risk management, and 2025 has seen further updates at the state level.
Victoria's new Occupational Health and Safety Regulations (Psychological Health) 2025, for instance, place psychosocial hazards on equal footing with physical ones, requiring employers to identify, assess, and control mental health risks in their workplaces. This aligns with similar obligations already established in other states and jurisdictions.
Psychosocial safety refers to the way work design, management practices, and workplace
relationships impact workers’ mental health and wellbeing.
Putting psychosocial safety into action
Implementing psychosocial safety in the workplace requires deliberate and consistent action.
This includes designing roles with clear responsibilities, establishing flexible work arrangements where appropriate, and fostering a culture of open communication.
People leaders are instrumental in setting the tone by demonstrating respectful behaviours, conducting regular wellbeing check-ins, promoting positive mental health practices and responding promptly to concerns. Leaders also help to create an environment where people have the right to stop work should they feel unsafe physically or psychosocially.
These reforms extend to contractors as well as permanent staff. For embedded professionals, like those placed by Embedded Expertise, clear expectations and a shared responsibility between host employers and contracting agencies is an essential partnership.
On paper, embedded resources may feel that they are at a slight disadvantage when speaking up about an issue. Newly placed within a team and finding your feet, or knowing that your contract will be reviewed and performance considered, it may not feel like the best opportunity to be open and transparent about potential psychosocial hazards.
Laura Mabikafola, Executive General Manager for Embedded Expertise, says the shared responsibility between organisations like Embedded and host employers is for contractors to feel supported and to be open at all stages of their employment.
“We’re all working in a time where the landscape is moving quickly, and when there are difficult social, economic and political matters that we’re exposed to day-to-day. For all of us to bring our best to our roles, we have to create an ecosystem where our people feel supported and encouraged to bring their whole selves to work.”
Structured onboarding, proactive communication, and regular wellbeing check-ins are key to ensuring contractors feel safe and supported.
Embedded Expertise’s talent managers engage with organisations to foster openness and psychosocial safety, enabling teams to flourish, and the business benefits too. Organisations equally actively seek contractors/experts who value safety and respect this shared responsibility.
Training organisations like Skills Lab can also play a role in modelling strong psychosocial safety behaviour.
This includes supporting teams and leaders to engage with good work design and embedding psychosocial risk awareness into leadership and technical training. Inclusive teaching practices, feedback tools, and psychologically safe learning environments help prepare individuals to recognise and manage psychosocial hazards in their own careers.
Leading with care: what comes next
Psychosocial safety isn’t a legal checkbox; it’s an investment in people.
Prioritising psychosocial safety enables organisations to build a culture of trust and inclusiveness, enhance workforce engagement, and reduce risk, ultimately driving stronger performance, greater retention, and long-term operational resilience.
As we mark National Safe Work Month, reflect on your own team, and consider:
- Are workloads, rosters, and expectations sustainable?
- Do workers feel safe speaking up about stress or conflict?
- Are leaders equipped to recognise and address psychosocial hazards?
Effective leadership means equipping your teams with the tools, systems and support for taking care of both physical and mental safety.
Curious to understand how our Talent Managers embed experts as an integrated part of your team? Speak with us today.
