This report draws from three main data sources to examine characteristics and trends in the worker experience of psychosocial hazards and mental health conditions in Australian workplaces. This analysis is intended to further inform the public policy debate on how improvements in workplace psychological health and safety can be made. 

The datasets examined are Safe Work Australia’s National Dataset for Compensation-based Statistics (NDS), People at Work (PAW) survey data and the National Return to Work (NRTW) survey. Each of these datasets measure the impact of exposure to psychosocial hazards at work in different ways, and in different subsets of the Australian population, so in combination the data enable unique insights to be identified and explored.

Key findings

• Mental health conditions accounted for 9 per cent (11,700) of all serious workers’ compensation claims and 7 per cent of all work-related injuries and illnesses in 2020-21. This represented a 37 per cent increase in claims since 2016-17, compared to an increase of 18 per cent for all serious claims over the period.
• The most common mechanism attributed to claims for mental health conditions were work related harassment and/or workplace bullying (28 per cent), work pressure (25 per cent) and exposure to workplace or occupational violence (16 per cent).
• Women were more likely than men to experience poor work-related psychological health outcomes. This is because they were exposed to more psychosocial hazards, including work pressure, work-related bullying and harassment, occupational violence and workplace sexual harassment than men.
• Workers in the health care and social assistance, public administration and safety and education and training industries accounted for the highest number of serious claims for mental health conditions out of all industries.
• Workers with claims for mental health conditions reported poorer return to work outcomes and were more likely to report stigma from colleagues and their employers.