Psychosocial hazards in Victoria: the 2025 regulations

What the regulator says

Victoria runs its own Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004, and WorkSafe Victoria’s psychological health pages state that the 2025 regulations have now commenced. WorkSafe lists the topics it covers: bullying, gendered violence, sexual harassment, aggression or violence, and work-related fatigue. It runs free sessions for small and medium employers.

What is particular to Vic

The prevention plan is the Victorian tool most employers meet early. WorkSafe publishes a template and describes a plan as a written record that documents the risk management process. It adds that completing a plan may not demonstrate sufficient compliance on its own, and that employers should assess their obligations and take advice where appropriate. A plan is evidence of a process, not a substitute for the process.

A worked example

A Ballarat civil contractor hears that night-shift crews feel unsafe around a client’s security staff, who have been verbally aggressive. A worker reports it confidentially. The contact logs it against the hazard. The manager fills in the prevention plan template, and the handover changes so the crew no longer deals with security alone.

What a useful record looks like

Victoria’s rules are recent. A useful record shows when a hazard was raised, who looked at it, what controls were chosen and when they were reviewed. Haznote keeps reports and never deletes them. So you can read the history of a hazard from start to finish instead of piecing it together from emails. A prevention plan belongs on a record like that.

How Haznote handles it

Haznote holds the report and the evidence, and keeps the record of what was done. The prevention plan itself is yours to write; Haznote doesn’t draft it. Each change to a report is kept in its history, with the date and who made it.