2025 Update: The Not-So-Fun Stuff Leaders Really Need to Know (And Can’t Afford to Ignore)

Here’s your quick 2025 pulse check on what’s new (and what’s next) in workplace safety, culture, and compliance. If you lead people or a business - this one’s for you.

What the Law Now Requires

🔹 Sexual Harassment Prevention Plans

From 1 March 2025, under the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011, all (employers) must:

Prepare and implement a written prevention plan if a risk of sexual or gender-based harassment is identified. This could be things like demeaning comments based on gender roles (e.g., “women aren’t suited for leadership”), misgendering or using incorrect pronouns intentionally, asking about someone’s relationship status, sexual orientation, through to the more serious stuff like stalking, sharing inappropriate images, or inappropriate conduct on communication mechanisms like Slack and Teams software. Think this won't happen in your workplace? Think again - all these examples have occurred at clients we work with.

What do you need to do? Apply four-step risk management process: identify, assess, control, and review.

This is not just a complaints policy - it’s a proactive legal duty to prevent harm. That means you need to address the risk before it happens to be compliant not just the incident after it’s raised.

🔹 Psychosocial Risk Management

Under updated Model WHS Regulations and Codes of Practice:

Employers must identify, assess, and control psychosocial hazards. For this one the hazards are wide reaching and can range from what you’d expect such as bullying, and high-pressure workload through to not enough decision-making autonomy, lack of support or feedback, social isolation and noise, lighting and overcrowding. Yep, we said it was broad.

These risks must be treated with the same rigour as physical hazards and failure to comply can result in investigations, penalties, and prosecution.

🔹 Workplace Policies & Training: Your Legal Safety Net

Having clear, up-to-date workplace policies isn’t just best practice - it’s a legal and cultural necessity. Under current WHS legislation, employers must ensure that all staff understand their rights and responsibilities.

If your policies haven’t been reviewed recently, or if training hasn’t been delivered in the past 12–24 months, you’re exposed to risk. Why?

• Employees can claim they didn’t know what was expected of them.

• You may not be able to demonstrate a proactive duty of care.

• Investigators will ask for evidence of training and policy awareness if you have an issue and at the end of the day the onus of proof is on the employer to say the employee was educated not the other way around.

Policies you really need are:

• Sexual Harassment Policy (including Prevention)

• Bullying

• Equal Employment Opportunities

• Disciplinary and Grievance Processes, and

• Code of Conduct

These policies should be living documents, not buried in a folder no one reads.

Psychosocial and Sexual Harassment Risk Management is a consultative exercise you need to go through with employees to meet your employer obligation. Training on these topics should be interactive, scenario-based, and tailored to your workplace - not just a tick-box exercise.

Why This Matters More Than Ever

If breaching legislation and the risk of a claim isn’t motivation enough, then here are some stats to remind you of why this stuff is important:

• 1 in 3 workers in Australia have experienced workplace sexual harassment in the past five years. So if you have 30 staff that’s 10 of them!

• Only 18% of incidents are reported, and 40% of those who are brave enough to report them say nothing changes afterward.

• The economic cost of workplace sexual harassment is estimated at $3.8 billion annually (2018 baseline), excluding reputational and legal costs.

• Psychological injuries now make up 9% of all serious workers’ comp claims, with a

  37% increase since 2017–18.

• The median compensation for mental health claims is more than 3x that of physical injury claims.

• Workers with psychological injuries lose 4x more time than those with physical injuries

🚨 What This Means for You

Leaders are required to lead in this space - not just file it under "i'll get to that later."

Here's what you need to have in place:

• Prevention & Policy: A clear, living policy that sets expectations and guides behaviour.

• Training & Conversation: Awareness beats damage control. You need to be having real conversations with your team educating them on their obligations and building trust.

• Systems & Response: When things happen (and they do), a calm, timely process really matters.

• Review & Improvement: New work models = new risks. Keep your prevention plan current.

✅ Quick Call to Action

If you haven’t recently revisited your sexual harassment prevention plan or psychosocial risk training, now is the time.

We’re happy to offer a short review of your current setup (policy + training + awareness + systems) and identify any gaps - we are aiming for practical, not painful we promise.

We get it - policies and training might not thrill you, but the fun police are cheaper than the real police.

📧 Email us at hello@streamlinehr.com.au or call your consultant any time to talk through where you are at and what support you need.