The resources and renewables industry has long been defined by its strong focus on physical safety. High‑risk operations, hazardous environments and the potential for catastrophic consequences have driven sophisticated Safety and Health Management Systems, regulatory scrutiny and sustained Site Senior Executive (SSE) and executive attention.
Recent experience across the sector has demonstrated that workers, unions and regulators are acutely focused on psychosocial safety.
What we’ve seen in the resources and renewables industry
In recent months, a number of operators have reported visits from regulators, including Resources Safety and Health Queensland (RSHQ) and the NSW Resources Regulator, where inspectors are investigating psychosocial safety. At the same time, mine operators have been grappling with tough internal decisions (e.g. Do we report this incident? Is it work related?). We have experienced:
- regulators commencing investigations into alleged sexual harassment and sexual assaults, including incidents happening off-site (e.g. mine camps, private residences and pubs);
- unions and workers raising psychosocial safety during complex disciplinary or performance management processes;
- generative AI driving strongly expressed complaints about work creating psychosocial risk; and
- suicides, or attempts or threats of self-harm, where the role of work is unknown or self-declarations of work involvement are made.
The jurisdictional questions around what to notify, who to notify, and how to respond are increasingly complex and highly fact‑specific. There is often no single clear or risk‑free answer.
What are the regulators doing?
Regulators want to be involved, but finding avenues to examine compliance is clunky with very little in this space being notifiable. We have seen:
- regulators finding gaps between workers’ compensation claims on psychological injury and the notification of incidents (i.e. accepted claims of psychological injury that met reporting thresholds, but no notification was made);
- notices issued by regulators requiring documented risk assessments about people (e.g. a subject officer involved in a disciplinary incident and safety focused risk assessments before large scale redundancies); and
- prosecutions – usually after a worker dies by suicide and a duty holder is unable to demonstrate that a risk management approach was adopted.
What should mine operators and SSEs be doing?
As with physical safety, psychosocial risk management increasingly demands executive‑level oversight. Boards and senior leaders are expected to understand psychosocial risk profiles, resource appropriate controls and set clear expectations about acceptable behaviour. We have been recommending:
- getting the basics right with psychosocial risk frameworks in Safety and Health Management Systems;
- training frontline supervisors on being good people managers, as people leaders have the biggest impact on workplace morale; and
- integration of HR and safety – these teams need to understand what each other do, and how their systems and decisions interact (e.g. procedural fairness, access to a support person and advance notice of HR meetings all mitigate industrial non-compliance, but they are also effective safety controls).
Psychosocial health and safety is rapidly becoming a defining issue for the resources and renewables industry. Those operators that acknowledge this shift early and invest in practical risk management will be best positioned to meet worker, union and regulatory expectations and protect their social licence to operate.