The People at Work Psychosocial Survey Is Closing: What Victorian Employers Must Do

When does the People at Work survey close?

Access to the online People at Work platform ends on 2 October 2026. Since its national launch, People at Work has given Australian organisations a free, validated survey for measuring psychosocial hazards and factors, with benchmarking against other users. The official People at Work website states that the survey and platform are being decommissioned, citing changes in legislation, newly developed tools and updated research on psychosocial hazards. It publishes three key dates:

• 1 June 2026 — the final date for new accounts or organisations to register on the platform;
• 1 July 2026 — the final date for new surveys to be launched; and
• 2 October 2026 — the final date for organisations to access the online platform. The site states that organisations need to extract all People at Work reports before this date.

The first two dates have passed. For organisations that have used the survey, the only remaining step on the platform itself is to retrieve what can still be retrieved. After 2 October 2026, the official guidance indicates that remaining data will be removed and the national website closed.

A closed platform does not close the duty

No Victorian law requires an employer to use People at Work, or any other particular survey or tool. What the law requires is an outcome and a process. Losing access to a familiar tool changes the method an organisation may use; it does not reduce what the organisation must do.

The starting point is the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic). Section 5 provides that “health” includes psychological health. Section 21(1) requires an employer, so far as is reasonably practicable, to provide and maintain for employees a working environment that is safe and without risks to health, and s 21(2)(a) includes providing and maintaining systems of work that are safe and without risks to health. The primary duty has therefore always extended to psychological health.

Since 1 December 2025 the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic) have set out more specific duties. In summary:

• Identify (reg 14). An employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, identify psychosocial hazards. Regulation 4 defines a psychosocial hazard by reference to factors in the work design, systems of work, management of work, carrying out of the work, or personal or work-related interactions that may cause a negative psychological response creating a risk to an employee’s health or safety.
• Control (reg 15). An employer must, so far as is reasonably practicable, eliminate any risk associated with a psychosocial hazard. If that is not reasonably practicable, the risk must be reduced so far as is reasonably practicable by altering the management of work, plant, systems of work, work design or workplace environment, or by information, instruction or training, or a combination.
• Limits on training-led controls (reg 15(3)–(4)). Information, instruction or training may be used exclusively only if none of the organisational measures is reasonably practicable, and where measures are combined, information, instruction or training must not be the predominant control.
• Review (reg 16). Controls must be reviewed and, if necessary, revised in prescribed circumstances, including before a change likely to alter psychosocial risks, when new information about a hazard becomes available, when a psychological injury or psychosocial hazard is reported, after certain notifiable incidents, when the controls do not adequately control the risks, and on request from a health and safety representative (HSR).

Consultation runs through all of this. Section 35 of the Act requires an employer, so far as is reasonably practicable, to consult affected employees when identifying or assessing hazards or risks and when deciding on control measures. The notes to regs 14 and 15 point back to that duty, and reg 9 addresses how HSRs are involved in consultation. WorkSafe Victoria’s compliance code on psychological health gives practical guidance on meeting these duties.

What a survey can do, and what it cannot

Annual or periodic surveys are not useless. A well-designed survey, properly administered, can:

• give employees a confidential channel that supports consultation;
• help identify hazards that are not visible to management;
• allow comparison between teams, sites or survey cycles; and
• help an organisation decide where to look first.

Standing alone, however, a survey result is not a completed risk assessment. It does not itself control any risk. A later, better score is not, by itself, evidence that a particular control works, and a survey is not a substitute for consulting the people affected or for reviewing controls when the regulations require it. Survey data is one input into a system; the system is the identification, assessment, control and review that the law requires.

A 2023 case study: Court Services Victoria

The point is illustrated by a prosecution that is now almost three years old, and which predates both the platform closure and the 2025 Regulations. On 19 October 2023 WorkSafe Victoria announced that Court Services Victoria (CSV), the statutory body that administers Victoria’s courts, had been sentenced in the Melbourne Magistrates’ Court after pleading guilty to a single charge of failing to provide and maintain a safe workplace. CSV was convicted and fined $379,157 and ordered to pay $13,863 in costs.

According to WorkSafe’s announcement, the court heard that from at least December 2015 to September 2018 workers at the Coroners Court of Victoria were at risk from exposure to traumatic material, role conflict, high workloads and work demands, poor workplace relationships and inappropriate workplace behaviours. WorkSafe’s published headline described a “deadly work culture”, and its announcement described a “toxic workplace culture” that contributed to the suicide of one worker and to numerous others taking stress leave. Those are WorkSafe’s characterisations. Critically, WorkSafe reported that CSV admitted it failed to conduct any adequate process to identify risks, and any adequate risk assessment of the risks to the psychological health of employees.

The lesson is not that CSV lacked an annual survey. The failure WorkSafe described was the absence of an adequate process to identify and assess psychological-health risks. Under the current Victorian framework, the expectation goes further again: identification and assessment must lead to controls, and those controls must be reviewed.

What Victorian employers should do before 2 October 2026

If your organisation has run People at Work surveys, the historical results may be useful evidence of past hazard identification and a baseline for future comparison. Practical steps:

• Download every available report for each survey cycle, and for each reporting group (team, site or division) the platform allows, not only the organisation-wide report. Use the official export guide linked from the People at Work website.
• Understand what is exportable. Official decommissioning guidance states that results are accessed through reports generated on the platform and that, to protect respondents’ privacy and anonymity, no raw data is available for users to download. Plan on the basis that the reports are what you will keep.
• Preserve securely and consistently. Store the files in a controlled location, name and date them consistently, and record who extracted them, when, and who checked that the set is complete.
• Respect confidentiality. Honour any anonymity or confidentiality commitments given to respondents when storing or sharing the reports internally.
• Record gaps. If only organisation-wide reports were retained for earlier cycles, or some groups fell below reporting thresholds, note that now. It affects how much weight the historical data can bear.

What employers should do after exporting the reports

Exported reports are the beginning of a risk-management record, not the end of it. A workable approach is to:

1. Map findings to specific hazards. Translate survey scores into named psychosocial hazards, such as high job demands, low role clarity, poor support, conflict or exposure to traumatic material, and note where each arises.
2. Assess exposure and interaction. Consider who is exposed, how often and how severely, and how hazards combine. High workload and poor support together may present a greater risk than either alone.
3. Consult. Test the findings with affected employees and HSRs, as s 35 and reg 9 require, before deciding on controls.
4. Select controls in the right order. Eliminate risks where reasonably practicable; otherwise reduce them by altering work design, the management of work, systems of work or the workplace environment. Information, instruction and training have a place, but under reg 15 they cannot be the predominant control where organisational measures are reasonably practicable. Employee assistance programs and other support services help people after exposure; they are valuable, but they are not a substitute for changing how the work is designed and managed.
5. Allocate owners and dates. Each control should have a responsible person and an implementation date.
6. Record review triggers and test effectiveness. Document the reg 16 circumstances that will prompt a review, and decide in advance how you will tell whether a control is working: complaint trends, leave and turnover, workload data, consultation feedback and, where useful, a later survey.

What can replace the People at Work survey?

WorkSafe Victoria lists free tools that may support psychosocial risk management, including the APHIRM toolkit, the ADDRESS tool and the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III), with a comparison resource to help employers choose. It also separately offers the WorkWell Survey, an online self-assessment for employers about psychological health and safety in their workplace. Any replacement tool, free or commercial, raises the same question as People at Work: how will its results feed into identification, control and review?

The takeaway

Export your People at Work reports before 2 October 2026 and keep them properly. Then treat the closure as a prompt to check that the organisation has what the law actually requires: a consulted, documented process for identifying psychosocial hazards, controlling the risks with organisational measures first, and reviewing those controls when circumstances change.

If you would like advice on your organisation’s obligations, please contact Holt & Macdonald. This note was reviewed by Jim Parke. It forms part of Legal Weekly Notes; further guides are available in the Information Centre.