NSW Psychosocial Hazard Laws Just Changed. Here's What That Means for Us

Why Psychosocial Hazards Hit AuDHD Workers Harder

Psychosocial hazards are the aspects of work design, management, and environment that create a risk of psychological harm. The Code identifies a broad range of them: job demands, low job control, poor support, role ambiguity, workplace violence and bullying, and lack of recognition, among others.

People who are both autistic and have ADHD are not equally exposed to these risks. We are disproportionately affected, and the research backs this up. Those os us with AuDHD are more likely to experience the below issues as mentally damaging:

• Chronic role ambiguity. Unclear expectations, shifting goalposts, and inconsistent feedback create a disproportionate cognitive and emotional load for people whose brains depend on predictability and explicit structure.

• High-demand, low-control environments. Open-plan offices, unpredictable schedules, and back-to-back meetings are standard in many Australian workplaces. For AuDHD workers, these are not merely uncomfortable. They are genuinely hazardous.

• Social and communication-based exclusion. Informal social norms govern who gets heard in meetings, who gets mentored, and who gets promoted. AuDHD workers frequently navigate these environments without the neurotypical social scripts that make them easier.

• Workplace bullying and harassment. AuDHD workers are significantly more likely to be targeted for bullying at work, including subtle forms such as social exclusion, undermining, and being passed over for opportunities.

• Failure of reasonable adjustments to be provided or sustained. Where accommodations are promised but not implemented, delayed, or quietly removed, the resulting uncertainty creates compounding psychosocial risk.

Under the previous regime, an employer could point to a general duty of care and argue they were doing their best. From 1 July 2026, "best" has a definition, and it is codified.

What Has Actually Changed

The duty to manage psychosocial hazards in NSW existed before today. What Section 26A changes is the evidentiary standard.

An employer who does not follow the Code must now demonstrate, with evidence, that they are managing the risk to an equivalent or greater standard. SafeWork inspectors will ask for documented risk assessments, evidence of consultation with workers, and records of control measures, their implementation, and their review.

That is a meaningfully different conversation from "we have an EAP and a mental health policy."

The Code sets out a risk management process that includes:

1. Identifying psychosocial hazards

2. Assessing the risk they pose

3. Implementing control measures, prioritising elimination or minimisation at the source

4. Monitoring and reviewing those controls

Critically, the Code requires consultation with workers in each of these steps. Workers must be involved in identifying the hazards that affect them, and in designing the controls. For AuDHD workers, who are often invisible in workplace design processes, this is a significant provision.

What Employers Need to Know

If you are a leader or people manager, your fundamental duty to protect the psychological safety of your workers has not changed. What has changed is that you now need to be able to prove how you are discharging it.

SafeWork NSW inspectors can issue improvement notices and prohibition notices for non-compliance. This is not a compliance exercise to be delegated to HR and filed. It requires active engagement from leadership, genuine consultation with workers, and documented evidence of a systematic approach.

For employers of neurodivergent, and AuDHD workers specifically, meeting the standard requires going beyond generic psychosocial risk frameworks. It requires understanding the specific hazards that affect this cohort, which are often invisible in standard workplace assessments because they are embedded in how work is designed and managed, not in discrete incidents.

What the AuDHD Council Is Watching

We will be closely monitoring how the enforcement of Section 26A plays out in practice, particularly in relation to:

• Whether psychosocial risk assessments identify neurodivergence-specific hazards or continue to rely on frameworks designed for neurotypical workers

• Whether the consultation requirement is met in a way that genuinely includes AuDHD workers, who may face additional barriers to participating in standard consultation processes

• Whether reasonable adjustment failures are being treated as psychosocial risk, or continue to be siloed in disability discrimination frameworks

If you work in NSW and you believe your employer is not managing psychosocial hazards adequately, you have options. SafeWork NSW accepts complaints, and the new legal status of the Code strengthens the basis on which those complaints can be made.

The Bottom Line

This is not a symbolic change. From 1 July 2026, NSW employers who cannot demonstrate a systematic approach to managing psychosocial hazards face real regulatory consequences. For AuDHD workers, who have long carried disproportionate psychosocial risk in workplaces designed without us in mind, a legally enforceable standard represents genuine progress.

The question is whether employers will engage with it seriously, or treat it as another compliance checkbox.

We will be paying attention.