SafeWork NSW, the state’s work health and safety regulator, is planning to ramp up enforcement, thanks to a promise of more funding.
But what should employers in the state expect from the major safety enforcement funding boost? And where should they focus their efforts to avoid sanction?
We lay it out in the following article.
State regulator gets major safety enforcement funding boost
So, what’s going on? Well, in its 2025-26 budget announcement, the Minns Labor Government announced AU$127.7 million investment over the next four years to strengthen the state’s work health and safety regulator.
Fifty-one new inspectors are slated to be recruited, owing to the investment. And of the 51, 20 will have psychosocial-focused roles. Another five will serve as psychosocial investigators.
What’s the rationale behind the move?
According to the government, the expanded SafeWork NSW inspectorate should “[sharpen] the agency’s focus on psychological health at work, [providing] dedicated resources on psychosocial injury prevention, investigations and prosecutions, and [ensuring] employers meet their return-to-work obligations to injured workers.”
How employers can avoid penalties from heightened work health and safety enforcement
For employers, the increased funding certainly means heightened regulatory attention on the psychological health of their workers. Indeed, workers around the world, in recent years, have called increasing attention to their wellbeing in the workplace.
For instance, the Dräger Safety and Health at Work Report 2025 showed that 65% of employees believe that poor psychological safety was increasing physical safety risks in the workplace.
And what were the contributing risks to psychological safety? The report found the following:
- High workload or time pressures (48%)
- Stresses in other areas of life, such as financial issues (42%)
- Lack of supportive leadership (30%)
Measures employers can take to improve psychological safety in the workplace
Employers can’t abate stresses in other areas of their employees’ lives. However, they can directly address the other contributing risks to psychological safety, in lieu of the major safety enforcement funding boost.
One surefire way to get attention on this issue is to ramp up senior-leadership involvement.
For instance, best-practice international standard ISO 45003 calls for senior management to demonstrate leadership and commitment to managing psychosocial risk and to promoting wellbeing at work. In practical terms, senior leaders must:
- Identify, monitor, and be aware of their roles and responsibilities with respect to managing psychosocial risks
- Determine the resources needed and make them available in a timely and efficient manner
- Reinforce the sustainability of managing psychosocial risk by including it in strategic plans as well as existing systems, processes, and reporting structures
- Protect workers from reprisals and/or threats of reprisals for reporting incidents, hazards, risks, and opportunities
- Communicate how whistle blowers, victims, witnesses, and those who report or raise workplace psychosocial risk concerns will be protected
- Obtain and provide feedback to determine the effectiveness of managing and preventing psychosocial risk within the OHS management system, both in implementation and operation
- Empower workers and ensure they are competent to fulfil their roles and responsibilities to identify and manage psychosocial risk
- Remove barriers that can limit worker participation and aim to enhance participation
- Actively engage workers in a continual dialogue on the management of psychosocial risk
- Support and encourage workers to actively participate in the management of psychosocial risk in the workplace
The role of digital technology in enhancing psychological safety at work
To support these efforts, employers should also seek out safety management software to take their psychological safety programs to the next level – at whatever level those programs are.
In particular, organizations should be looking for safety management software providers offering the following wellbeing management capabilities:
- Gain situational awareness of current events impacting on personnel through live feeds
- Broadcast communications to distributed personnel in seconds using email, SMS, or voice
- Conduct welfare checks at scale enabling personnel to respond via email, SMS, or voice
- Triage response to events
- Push surveys to personnel to understand how they are coping before, during, and after events
- Launch initiatives with templates that take the heavy lifting out of creation and implementation
- Customize initiatives based on current events or unique organizational requirements
- Schedule periodic working from home ergonomic assessments for distributed staff
- Enable personnel to request mental health and wellbeing support
- Direct personnel to support programs and best-practice content
- Securely store personnel information in a single solution or import from your HR software
Finally, NSW employers are on notice; the state’s safety regulator means business. And thanks to the major safety enforcement funding boost, SafeWork NSW will soon have a slate of new inspectors.
To avoid sanction including financial penalties, employers will have to (re-) commit to building a mentally healthy workplaces to ensure psychological safety. How to do so? Check out our Guide to Developing a Mentally Healthy Workplace for best-practice strategies.
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