The evolution of psychological safety duties

Psychosocial safety has become a “core aspect of doing business”, a law firm partner has said.

In a recent podcast of The Legal Brief, Kingston Reid partner Liam Fraser talked about how psychosocial safety has evolved into a core governance risk.

This comes with organisational restructures, change programs, and the rapid adoption of artificial intelligence, now all being considered high-risk psychosocial events.

Psychosocial safety in the workplace has shifted from being something that is an issue for HR to navigate and grapple with to being more of a core governance risk and a work health and safety risk for the entire business to be across.

Fraser said: “Psychosocial safety was always kind of implicit in safety law. It was never as expressed as it is now.”

Accordingly, there have been changes in the code of practice and codifying of psychological safety duties coming in across jurisdictions, something that Fraser said has brought it from an “implicit requirement” to now part of the “core aspect of doing business”.

Driven by factors such as post-pandemic shifts, cost-of-living and more, there has been an increased focus on mental health in the workforce in recent years.

“People spend a lot of time at work, so it stands to reason that protecting people’s psychological safety is just one core aspect of doing business,” Fraser said.

“So I think as social attitudes have changed, the regulatory has kind of moved to codify what people otherwise expect, which is that you go to work and you’re not exposed to psychosocial hazards, or if you are, that there are control measures in place to try and minimise the harm of those.”

Fraser highlighted that it is crucial for organisations to recognise that any regulatory shift has the potential to impact individual employees uniquely. Understanding this nuance is essential for effective risk management.

“Any change to somebody’s workplace has the potential to introduce a hazard, and that hazard is going to manifest in different ways for different people,” he said.

“When we’re looking at those sorts of company-wide approaches, HR needs to embed the psychosocial hazard identification and psychosocial risk assessment as part of the whole process to ensure that when those decisions are being made that there is some thought being put into it.”

Psychosocial risk management is a technical discipline that leverages evidence-based controls, such as job redesign, to clarify roles and manage workloads effectively.

Technology, particularly AI, functions as a double-edged sword that can cause stress while simultaneously offering the potential to automate routine tasks and improve productivity.

Given the complex technological shifts and their potential impact on workplace wellbeing, the role of HR becomes increasingly pivotal in navigating organisational change.

“Far too often, what we see with clients is that HR owns the problems caused, but doesn’t necessarily own the decisions that were taken earlier on in the piece that caused the problem,” Fraser said.

Fraser showcased the role of HR in 2026 to have a key focus on effectively re-anchoring its strategy in the fundamental human elements of workplace safety.

By taking a more active role in the decision-making process, practitioners can ensure that psychosocial risks are managed holistically from the outset.

“HR needs to be focusing itself on, what are the things that this organisation is doing that potentially expose our people to psychosocial hazards?” Fraser said.

“It’s not the case that HR owns the risk assessment process that might be a safety side of the business, but HR needs to be involved in that.

“So HR needs to have the tools to be involved in [the risk assessment process] and be equipped with the right language to be able to speak in terms of psychosocial hazards.”

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