As the 2025 Victoria's OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations come into force, many organisations are trying to understand what "good" looks like — and where they actually sit against the new compliance code.
To support business leaders, InCheq released a free online self-assessment checklist. Twenty-three organisations from across Victoria have now completed the checklist, offering a rare real-world snapshot into how prepared workplaces truly are for the new regulatory environment.
The Findings Are Clear
There are champions who genuinely care and are doing their absolute best to create change. They're engaged and they're willing.
But they're being blocked by systems, gaps in capability (their own or others) and they're battling a lack of ownership either from the business or from executive leadership.
Who Participated?
23 organisations across Victoria, representing public sector, private sector, and NFPs.
Industry Distribution
The participating organisations represent a strong cross-section of Victoria's economy, showing that psychological safety is relevant and important across all sectors:
- Professional Services (26%): Including consulting firms, training providers, and specialised service organisations
- Local Government (22%): Covering shire councils and regional government authorities
- Healthcare & Aged Care (13%): Representing critical frontline service providers
- Technology/Biotech/Finance (13%): Spanning innovative and knowledge-based industries
- Manufacturing (9%): Industrial and production-focused businesses
- Regulatory/Government (9%): Government agencies and regulatory bodies
- Retail/Hospitality (4%): Customer-facing service industries
- Other (4%): Specialised sectors including animal services & training and education
Notably, the strong participation from local government (five shire councils) highlights the leadership role that public sector organisations are taking in setting standards for psychosocial safety.
Organisation Size
Participating organisations were also diverse in size, with medium (26%), large (48%) and enterprise (26%) businesses completing the checklist.
Overall Maturity Levels
Across all organisations:
- 7% Basic - with largely informal, reactive processes. While they have a journey ahead of them, engaging in a self assessment shows stakeholders who are keen to understand where they currently sit and are actively seeking information about how to best proceed.
- 76% Developing - have moved beyond ad hoc approaches to establish initial policies and processes. This is progress worth acknowledging - these organisations are engaging seriously with the requirements. However, "Developing" also means systems are not yet formalised, consistently applied, or adequately resourced.
- 17% Established - with formalised, consistent systems. These organisations had established processes and were engaging in continuous improvement.
- 0% Leading - where psychological health and safety is fully embedded into strategy and culture. This is unsurprising - given the infancy of this space.
The overwhelming majority are stuck in the "Developing" zone — the "good intentions but weak systems" stage. Highly common, but no longer acceptable under the new regulations.
This means:
- Policies exist, but processes aren't systematic
- Leaders care, but accountability is inconsistent
- Some consultation occurs, but it isn't embedded
- Risk assessment is happening… sometimes
- Controls exist, but aren't prioritised, documented, or measured
Where Organisations Are Performing Well
Across the 23 organisations, a few compliance areas show stronger maturity:
1. Hazard Identification
Developing → Established for several. Many organisations have some form of hazard identification, whether it be surveys, HR data, or informal consultation.
2. Consultation
Councils, healthcare, and larger public agencies performed comparatively better. Some even reached Leading levels, with multilingual or inclusive consultation processes.
3. Incident Reporting & Response (for larger agencies)
The more regulated the industry, the stronger the systems. Many large or public bodies have formal reporting channels and fair investigation pathways.
Where Organisations Are Struggling
Before we get into the most common challenges, there is one area that rated the most poorly and has the added benefit of being a crucial enabler of all other efforts.
1. The Critical Role of Leadership: More Than Commitment
The uniformly low scores for leadership and organisational culture (1.00/4.00) reveal what may be the single most significant barrier to progress: the absence of active, resourced executive engagement.
This finding cannot be overstated. Without visible, committed leadership with decision-making authority, psychosocial safety initiatives risk being relegated to compliance exercises rather than meaningful cultural transformation.
The data suggests that in many organisations, psychosocial hazards are still viewed as "HR issues" rather than strategic business priorities requiring executive ownership.
True leadership engagement in psychosocial safety means:
- Executive-level accountability with a designated senior leader (C-suite or equivalent) who has both authority and resources to drive implementation
- Board-level governance where psychosocial safety performance is regularly reviewed alongside financial and operational metrics
- Strategic integration where psychosocial safety considerations inform business decisions, restructures, and change initiatives
- Resource commitment including budget allocation, dedicated personnel, and access to expertise
- Role modelling where senior leaders visibly demonstrate psychosocial safety behaviours and priorities
The Leadership Gap
Without executive-level engagement, organisations will struggle to progress beyond the Developing stage. Well-intentioned middle managers and HR professionals cannot drive systemic change without executive sponsorship and decision-making authority.
2. Risk Assessment: The Weakest Category Across the Entire Cohort
This is consistent across every sector except a small number of high-maturity agencies.
Most organisations have:
- No formal psychosocial risk assessments
- Assessment occurring after incidents
- Limited or inconsistent processes
- No consideration of interaction effects
- No linkage to workforce planning or KPIs
The new regulations require this explicitly - meaning this is the most urgent gap for most workplaces.
3. Risk Controls: Largely Reactive
Typical patterns:
- Training is used as the default "control"
- Very few organisations are applying the Hierarchy of Control for psychosocial hazards
- Controls are rarely documented or monitored for effectiveness
- Design-level interventions are missing almost entirely
This is a major exposure area for regulatory action.
4. Training & Supervision: Outdated, Generic, Not Refreshed
Most organisations:
- Provide some form of training
- But it's generic
- Not role-specific
- Not refreshed
- Not evaluated for effectiveness
Given that training is often the only control being used, its quality becomes even more important — and currently insufficient.
5. Reporting Systems: Many Gaps in Confidentiality & Consistency
Private businesses especially reported:
- Basic HR logs
- Poor confidentiality
- Fear or reluctance to report
- Inconsistent escalation pathways
- No trauma-informed response capability
Under OHS laws, this places organisations (and Officers) at significant risk.
Looking Forward: The Opportunity for Leadership
The opportunity for sector leadership is significant. The organisations that invest now in genuine, resourced implementation will establish themselves as:
- Employers of choice in competitive talent markets
- Organisations with measurably better safety, retention, and performance outcomes
- Leaders who shaped sector standards rather than followed them