A change in your business can change how work feels and gets done. New reporting lines, a growing workload or a different system may create uncertainty even when the change has a clear business purpose.
A psychosocial risk review helps you understand those pressures and decide what to change in the work itself. Start by talking with the people affected, looking at their day-to-day tasks and agreeing practical actions with clear owners.
What should a psychosocial risk review look at?
Psychosocial hazards can arise from the way work is designed, organised and managed. SafeWork SA identifies high demands, unclear roles and poorly managed change among the hazards that can affect office-based teams. They can also affect people working from home. Read SafeWork SA’s office and home-based work guidance.
Make the review specific to the change. If two teams have merged, for example, map who now allocates work, which responsibilities overlap and where employees go when priorities conflict.
- Workload: Which tasks have been added, and what has been removed or resourced differently?
- Role clarity: Does each person know what they own and who can make decisions?
- Support: Can employees get timely help from someone who understands the work?
- Communication: What is decided, what is still uncertain and when will the next update happen?
- Working relationships: Are handovers, disagreements and concerns being handled constructively?
These questions are a starting point, not a complete assessment. Look at the actual work and the hazards relevant to your workplace. A quiet team or an absence of formal complaints does not, by itself, tell you whether the arrangements are working.
Give people a practical way to contribute
SafeWork SA’s risk-management guidance places worker consultation throughout the process. Discussions, surveys, observation and existing workplace information can help build a fuller picture. Include health and safety representatives where applicable. See the four-step guidance.
Choose an approach people can use. Explain the purpose, who will see the findings and how the business will respond. In a small team, avoid promising anonymity that the process cannot deliver. Offer an appropriate private route for concerns that someone may not want to raise in a group.
Useful opening questions include:
- Which part of your work has changed most?
- Where are you receiving competing instructions or priorities?
- What makes it difficult to finish the work within the time available?
- What decision, resource or support would make the biggest difference?
Ask for examples of tasks and situations. If a person raises a specific complaint or an urgent safety concern, arrange the appropriate response promptly; a general team review should not delay it.
Turn findings into changes people can see
South Australia’s February 2026 psychosocial hazards code explains that risks must be eliminated where reasonably practicable, or otherwise minimised so far as reasonably practicable. Consider how often people are exposed, for how long, how severe the exposure is and how hazards combine. This article uses South Australian guidance; check the applicable requirements for workplaces elsewhere.
A practical action record connects each finding to a decision. For example, “improve communication” is difficult to follow up. “The operations manager will publish one weekly priority list and resolve conflicting deadlines at Monday’s planning meeting” makes the responsibility clearer.
- Describe the work problem. Record the situation, the people or roles affected and what the review found.
- Choose the control. Identify what will change in work allocation, staffing, decision-making, equipment, systems or support.
- Name an owner and date. Make sure that person has the authority and resources to carry out the action.
- Set a review point. Decide how you will check whether exposure to the hazard has reduced.
Training and wellbeing support can help, but should sit alongside action on the underlying work. The SA code prioritises controls at the organisational and work-design level. A workshop alone will not resolve an ongoing mismatch between workload and available capacity.
An illustrative example
After a reporting-line change, a project coordinator receives urgent requests from two managers. A possible response is to agree one person who resolves priorities, make the workload visible and set a clear route for raising conflicting deadlines. A follow-up conversation can then check whether the coordinator can use those arrangements in practice. This is a hypothetical example, not a CCG client case study or a guaranteed outcome.
Check the actions in day-to-day work
Keep a short record of the findings, agreed controls and review dates. Tell workers what you heard, what will happen and which issues still need a decision. Then ask about the work again after the changes have had time to operate.
Our supervisor check-in guide offers useful prompts for regular conversations. Those conversations can support follow-through, alongside the consultation and risk-management processes your workplace needs.
Look for evidence that the original problem has changed. Are conflicting instructions being resolved? Are the new responsibilities understood? Can people access the support promised? If the controls are ineffective or the work changes again, revisit them.
Make your next steps clear
CCG can help scope a psychosocial risk review, support consultation and turn findings into practical people-management actions. We provide general WHS support and work with a dedicated specialist partner for technical risks in settings such as laboratories and factories.
Explore our HR advice services or tell us what has changed in your business. We’ll agree the scope and fee before work begins.