Psychosocial Hazards in Education & Care: Are You Meeting Your WHS Obligations?
- Skye Robbins
- Sep 28
- 2 min read
We all know how demanding the education and care sector can be. Long hours. High emotional load. Juggling supervision, documentation, cleaning, parent communication, and everything in between — often with little time to pause.
But what many providers don’t realise is this: those day-to-day pressures aren’t just part of the job — they are classified as psychosocial hazards under WHS law.
And under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, services have a clear legal duty to identify and manage them.
What Are Psychosocial Hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are work-related factors that can lead to psychological or physical harm. In our sector, that might look like:
Constantly forced to work outside safe educator‑to‑child ratios because the service relies on an ‘under the roof’ staffing approach
Educators missing breaks or feeling rushed all day
Staff being exposed to distressing disclosures or incidents
Tension or miscommunication within the team
Sudden changes to rosters or expectations without support
Staff feeling unsupported, isolated, or undervalued
These aren’t just “staff wellbeing” issues — they are compliance matters. The NSW Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work makes this very clear.
Your WHS Duty:
If you’re a PCBU (Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking). That means you’re legally responsible for:
✔️ Identifying psychosocial hazards
✔️ Assessing the risk
✔️ Putting appropriate controls in place
✔️ Regularly reviewing and improving those controls
✔️And you must consult your staff at every step.
It’s not optional — it’s enforceable under law.
How We Can Help
At Yaga Smart, we know this can feel overwhelming — especially with everything else on your plate. That’s why we’ve created a practical 1-hour professional development session designed specifically for the education and care sector.
Yaga Smart bridges the gap between Education and WHS.
We’re dual-qualified — so every resource is built to meet compliance and work on the floor.