Workplace Policy Pack | s.47C SDA & WHS Psychosocial Rules

In Australian practice, a workplace policy pack is a coordinated suite of non-contractual policies that sit alongside each employee's contract and any modern award or enterprise agreement. The contract fixes the core bargain: pay, hours, duties and notice. The policies govern conduct and process, and they can be updated as the law moves without renegotiating every full-time and part-time employment contract on the books. The employer's power to require compliance comes from the employee's implied duty to follow lawful and reasonable directions, so the drafting has to stay clearly on the policy side of the line. In Goldman Sachs JBWere Services Pty Ltd v Nikolich [2007] FCAFC 120, the Full Federal Court treated commitments in a policy document as contractual promises and held the employer to them in damages.

A workplace policy pack is also different from a single harassment policy downloaded in isolation. The Australian Human Rights Commission expects leadership commitment, a reporting pathway, training and a record of how complaints were handled, and WHS inspectors apply the same logic to psychosocial hazards such as bullying, poor workload design and exposure to aggression. One set of definitions, one complaints procedure and one set of disciplinary consequences is far easier to defend than six documents written by six people over ten years, each naming a different person to report to.

The anchor for the Respect at Work workplace policies is section 47C of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth), inserted by the Anti-Discrimination and Human Rights Legislation Amendment (Respect at Work) Act 2022 (Cth). It imposes a positive duty on employers and persons conducting a business or undertaking to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate, as far as possible, sex discrimination, sexual harassment, sex-based harassment, conduct creating a hostile workplace environment on the ground of sex, and related victimisation. Since 12 December 2023 the Commission has been able to conduct inquiries, issue compliance notices and accept enforceable undertakings, measuring employers against the seven standards in its Guidelines for Complying with the Positive Duty. The consolidated text sits on the Federal Register of Legislation version of the Sex Discrimination Act 1984, including the section 47C positive duty.

The Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) runs in parallel. Part 6-4B lets a worker apply for a stop bullying order, with section 789FD defining bullying as repeated unreasonable behaviour that creates a risk to health and safety, and excluding reasonable management action carried out in a reasonable manner. Part 3-5A, including section 527D, has made workplace sexual harassment a civil remedy matter before the Commission since 6 March 2023. Under section 106 of the Sex Discrimination Act, an employer is vicariously liable for an employee's harassment unless it took all reasonable steps to prevent it, and a policy that staff were actually trained on is the first evidence a tribunal asks for.

Regulations 55A to 55D of the model WHS Regulations require a PCBU to identify psychosocial hazards and eliminate or minimise the associated risks so far as is reasonably practicable, and section 47 of the model WHS Act requires consultation with workers on measures affecting their health and safety. The leave policy draws on Part 2-2 of the Fair Work Act, including ten days of paid family and domestic violence leave under section 106A.

The most common trigger is headcount growth. A business hiring its fifth or sixth employee usually finds that the informal "come and talk to me" approach stops working, especially when the complaint concerns the owner's longest-serving manager. The second trigger is a complaint that has already landed. The employer's response is then judged against whatever process existed at the time, and "we didn't have one" is a hard answer to give the Commission or an AHRC investigator.

Audits and tenders account for a steady share of demand, since government panels, head contractors and corporate clients routinely ask suppliers for their workplace policies on bullying, drugs and alcohol and WHS before signing. Hybrid work is another driver. Once staff split the week between home and office, the right to disconnect under section 333M of the Fair Work Act and personal social media use need written answers, and your workplace policies should mirror any flexible work arrangement agreement under section 65 already in place.

One edge case worth flagging is the safety-critical site. Transport, mining, construction and warehousing operators who introduce drug and alcohol testing without a written policy, or without consulting workers first, regularly see the regime and the dismissals flowing from it challenged before the Fair Work Commission.

• The Respect at Work prevention and response policy defines sexual harassment, sex-based harassment and a hostile workplace environment in the language of the Sex Discrimination Act. It sets out the leadership commitments, training cycle and risk review the AHRC standards expect, and gives workers a choice of reporting channels rather than a single line manager.
• The bullying and harassment policy tracks the section 789FD definition and separates bullying from reasonable management action with practical examples. Repeated performance issues move into a written warning and performance improvement plan template so the disciplinary record stays consistent.
• The complaints and investigation procedure covers informal resolution, formal investigation, interim measures such as changed rosters, confidentiality and protection from victimisation. It is written in the person-centred, trauma-informed style regulators now expect.
• The social media policy deals with work accounts and personal posts that identify the employer, colleagues or clients, and explains when out-of-hours conduct has a sufficient connection to employment to justify discipline. Its treatment of personal information lines up with your customer-facing Privacy Act 1988 compliant privacy policy.
• The drugs and alcohol policy sets fitness-for-work standards, disclosure of medication that may affect safety, testing triggers and methods, and the consequences of a non-negative result or a refusal to test. An employee assistance pathway keeps it from reading as purely punitive.
• The leave policy explains how to apply for and evidence annual, personal/carer's, compassionate, community service, parental, long service and family and domestic violence leave, with the confidentiality rules that apply to the last of these.
• The acknowledgement and non-contractual status clause records that each employee received the workplace policy pack and states that the policies do not form part of the contract and may be varied after consultation.

New South Wales employers work under the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 (NSW), which replaced the 2017 Regulation and carries the psychosocial duties in sections 55A to 55D. Unlike the model regulations, the NSW version requires psychosocial risks to be managed through the full hierarchy of controls. Any monitoring clause in the social media policy must also comply with the Workplace Surveillance Act 2005 (NSW), which requires written notice at least 14 days before computer, camera or tracking surveillance begins.

Victoria sits outside the harmonised WHS scheme. Employers owe duties under the Occupational Health and Safety Act 2004 (Vic) and, since 1 December 2025, the Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 (Vic). Information, instruction and training cannot be the only or predominant control for a psychosocial risk unless changes to work design or systems are not reasonably practicable. Victorian employers also carry a separate positive duty to eliminate discrimination, sexual harassment and victimisation under section 15 of the Equal Opportunity Act 2010 (Vic).

Queensland added its own layer through the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2011 (Qld). From 1 March 2025, a PCBU that identifies a risk of sexual harassment or sex or gender-based harassment must prepare and implement a written prevention plan, and our Respect at Work policy is structured to feed into it. The broader positive duty in the Respect at Work and Other Matters Amendment Act 2024 (Qld) was scheduled for 1 July 2025, but its commencement has been deferred, leaving the federal duty and the WHS prevention plan as the working benchmarks.

Western Australia needs separate treatment in any workplace policy pack. Psychosocial obligations sit in regulations 55A to 55D of the Work Health and Safety (General) Regulations 2022 (WA), supported by WA's own Code of Practice: Psychosocial hazards in the workplace rather than the Safe Work Australia model code. More significantly, sole traders, partnerships and other unincorporated employers remain in the state system under the Industrial Relations Act 1979 (WA), so the stop bullying references and parts of the leave policy are adjusted for those businesses.

You start by choosing the state or territory where most of your employees work and confirming whether your business is a national system employer. That answer changes the WHS citations, the long service leave statute (the Long Service Leave Act 1955 (NSW) or the Long Service Leave Act 2018 (Vic), for example) and, in Western Australia, the industrial relations references throughout the workplace policy pack. The form then asks for workforce size and industry, because the AHRC expects measures proportionate to both, and it switches on the testing provisions of the drugs and alcohol policy only where the work is safety-sensitive.

The next screens deal with people and channels. You nominate a primary and alternate contact for complaints, record whether you use an external hotline or employee assistance provider, and select a testing method if testing applies. You then choose optional wording such as the right to disconnect provisions, and the pack recompiles with consistent defined terms across every policy. The finished documents download in Word and PDF. Before rollout, consult your workers and any health and safety representatives on the draft, because consultation is a statutory obligation and a policy imposed without it is much harder to enforce.

The mistake we see most often with workplace policies is the policy nobody was trained on. An employer files a well-drafted bullying policy on the intranet, never runs a session, then relies on it after a complaint. Tribunals give that very little weight, and the AHRC guidelines treat training as a core standard. A close second is making workplace policies contractual by accident, through a contract clause stating the employee is "bound by all company policies as amended from time to time" or policy wording that promises specific outcomes. After Nikolich, that drafting can turn a procedural slip in an investigation into a breach of contract claim.

Drug and alcohol policies generate their own errors. Switching from urine to oral fluid testing, or adding random testing, without consulting under the enterprise agreement or WHS provisions is the classic one. Another is treating a positive result as automatic grounds for summary dismissal without considering prescribed medication, the level detected or the employee's role, which invites an unfair dismissal claim assessed under section 387. Finally, many leave policies still demand detailed proof before approving family and domestic violence leave. Any evidence requested must be reasonable and information about the leave must be kept confidential, so the policy has to limit who sees it and how it appears in payroll records.