Is there a service that manages psychosocial risk and keeps the records for me?

Yes, this kind of service exists, and for a lot of Australian employers it is the sensible answer. If you run a business, you now have a legal duty to manage psychosocial hazards, the same way you manage physical safety, and you are expected to be able to show what you did about it. Plenty of employers do not have a safety team, an in-house psychologist, or the time to build a documented risk process from scratch. A reasonable question to ask is whether you can hand the workflow and the recordkeeping to someone who does this for a living.

This guide explains what a managed psychosocial risk service does, what it does not do, and a practical checklist of what to look for before you pick one. It is written for an employer who is learning the terms, not for a safety professional, and it is decision-support context rather than legal advice.

What “manage the risk and keep the records for me” really means

When people ask for a service to handle this, they usually mean a few things rolled into one. They want someone to help them find the psychosocial hazards that genuinely apply to their workplace, work out which are serious, decide on sensible controls, run the consultation with workers, and then keep an organised, retrievable record of all of it. The record is the part most employers underestimate and the part that matters most when an inspector or an insurer asks to see your working.

The difference between a one-off and an ongoing service matters. A one-off assessment gives you a snapshot: hazards mapped, risks rated, a plan written. That is useful, but the duty does not stop there. Australian work health and safety law treats this as a continuous loop, identify, assess, control, consult, review, so the duty keeps running as the work and the workforce change. A service that hands you a report and walks away leaves you to maintain the record yourself, which is exactly where most organisations fall behind. A managed service is meant to keep the record current, not just create it once.

What a good managed service actually does for you

In practice, a managed psychosocial risk service should cover the full workflow and leave you with documentation that holds together as one continuous record rather than scattered files. The substantive pieces are:

1. A risk register. The hazards that realistically apply to your workplace, mapped and rated by how likely and how serious the harm could be, so you work with named hazards rather than a wall of free-text comments.
2. A controls plan. For your priority hazards, the controls you have chosen and why they are reasonable. A good service pushes you toward higher-order controls, the ones that change how the work is designed and managed, rather than letting you rely on an Employee Assistance Program or a wellbeing app to do a job that work redesign should be doing.
3. Consultation records. Evidence that you talked with workers about the hazards that affect them and the measures you proposed. Consultation is a legal duty in its own right, and one of the records inspectors most often want to see.
4. Action tracking. Each control with a named owner, a due date, a status, and evidence it was done. A plan with no owner and no date is an intention, not a control.
5. Leadership reporting. A short summary showing the issue reached the people accountable for it. Officers such as directors carry a personal due-diligence duty, separate from the organisation’s own duty, so the record needs to show leadership had line of sight.
6. An evidence pack. All of the above kept in one maintained record, in a form designed to drop into your due-diligence file, so an inspector, an insurer, or your own board could follow what you did.

The value of paying someone to run it is that they keep it current and consistent, the part most organisations cannot sustain on their own once the initial enthusiasm fades.

What a managed service should not claim to do

This is worth saying plainly, because the market is noisy and some providers overreach. A managed service supports you to do the work and to evidence it. It does not take the legal duty off your hands. The primary duty stays with you as the employer, and it can also reach individual directors and officers personally. No service makes that go away.

So be cautious of anyone promising to make you compliant, to guarantee a regulatory outcome, or to certify that your organisation is in the clear. A managed service is decision-support and workflow automation. It is not legal advice, and it is not a clinical or diagnostic tool. What it offers is help to implement and maintain the process and to create defensible documentation aligned with applicable WHS guidance, so that if you are ever asked, you can show a genuine, reasonable, recorded response rather than a gap.

What to look for before you choose one

If you have decided you would rather have this run for you, here is a short checklist to separate a serious managed service from a brochure.

1. Does it cover the whole loop, or just one slice? A survey tool that produces results but no controls, consultation, tracking, or review leaves you with the hardest parts still to do. Look for end-to-end workflow support, from hazards through to maintained evidence.
2. Does it produce a maintained record, or a one-off PDF? The duty is ongoing, so ask whether the service keeps the action tracker and the evidence pack current, or whether you are on your own after the report lands.
3. Is the documentation built to be read by an outsider? The real test of a record is whether an inspector, an insurer, or a board member could pick it up and follow what you did. Ask to see a sample evidence pack.
4. Is it honest about its limits? A credible provider will tell you it supports your duty rather than discharging it, and will point you to your own legal adviser for contested questions. Treat compliance guarantees as a warning sign, not a feature.
5. Does it suit your size? A small or medium employer with no in-house WHS or HR specialist needs something that works without a safety department behind it.
6. Can you bring in independent review when you need it? For a board, an insurer, or a higher-stakes situation, you may want your own suitably qualified adviser to review the assessment and add external assurance. A credible service keeps the record in a form that makes that review straightforward, rather than assuming you always need it.

A note on timing, because two dates are pushing employers to act now. Victoria’s psychological health regulations commenced on 1 December 2025, extending psychosocial WHS regulation further across the country. And the People at Work survey platform that many employers have leaned on is closing: new registrations close 1 June 2026, new surveys close 1 July 2026, and the platform closes 2 October 2026. If your process depended on that tool, you will need somewhere else to run and record the work.

Where PsychSecure fits

PsychSecure is a managed service that supports employers to implement and maintain their psychosocial risk-management workflow and to create defensible documentation aligned with applicable WHS guidance. In plain terms, it is built to be the answer to exactly this question: it helps you map the hazards against your own evidence, grade your existing controls as adequate, partial, or absent, build a prioritised plan with named owners and review points, and keep the consultation records, the action tracking, the leadership reporting, and the evidence pack in one maintained record designed to drop into your due-diligence file. Its eyebrow says it simply: assess, control, respond.

To be clear about what it is and is not. PsychSecure is decision-support and workflow automation. It is not legal advice, it is not a clinical diagnostic tool, and it does not by itself make your organisation compliant. The primary duty stays with you. What the service is designed to do is help you implement the process and evidence that you took the duty seriously, quickly and in a form that holds up. Where you want outside assurance, you can engage your own suitably qualified adviser to review it.

A note on what this is and is not

This guide is general information to help Australian employers understand the psychosocial risk-management duty and what a managed service can support. It is not legal, clinical, or WHS advice, and it does not guarantee any compliance or regulatory outcome. The way the duty applies depends on your own circumstances and the rules in your state, and genuinely contested or higher-stakes questions warrant your own qualified adviser. Material here is aligned with applicable WHS guidance as we understand it; confirm anything that matters for your business against the current rules that apply to you.

A next step, if it is useful

If you would rather not build and maintain this on your own, you are welcome to a short call, usually 15 to 20 minutes. We will walk through what a maintained, defensible record looks like for an organisation like yours, show you a sample, and answer your questions, with no pressure either way. If you were simply trying to work out whether a service like this exists, then yes, it does, and we hope this has helped you know what to look for.