The IRC just confirmed your own workplace investigations can be a psychosocial hazard

In Secretary, NSW Department of Education v SafeWork NSW (No 2) [2026] NSWIRComm 1014, the Industrial Relations Commission upheld two SafeWork NSW improvement notices against the Department of Education, and in doing so rejected the Department's core argument: that a workplace investigation process cannot itself create a psychosocial hazard. The Commission disagreed, and the reasoning has direct implications for any PCBU that runs internal investigations, HR, education, health, local government, anywhere disciplinary or grievance processes are part of business as usual. The first notice required the Department to implement a safe system of work for investigations, specifically, giving employees estimated timelines and regular, documented updates while an investigation is underway. The second addressed what happens to the employee during that period: the Department had been assigning alternate duties that were de-skilled or purposeless, not commensurate with the employee's substantive role. The Commission found this can produce exactly the hazards named in the Code of Practice, role underload, loss of role clarity, and diminished professional identity, and that this holds regardless of whether the investigation itself was properly grounded. The significance is in what the Commission rejected. The Department argued that legitimate management action, an investigation conducted for proper cause, should be shielded from psychosocial hazard obligations. The IRC held the opposite: a PCBU must balance the legitimate exercise of management action against the duty to eliminate or minimise psychosocial harm, and an investigation that drags on without a timeline, or that parks someone in make-work duties for months, does not get a pass because the underlying process is legitimate. The Commission also confirmed that a single complaint can be sufficient to ground a systemic improvement notice covering the whole workforce, not just the individual case that triggered it. For PCBUs, this closes a gap that many hazard registers still have. Investigation management is not automatically covered by generic "mental health" or "bullying" hazard lines, it needs its own entry, with its own controls: a stated maximum timeframe or review point, a communication protocol setting out who updates the employee and how often, and a defined process for assigning alternate duties that are genuinely suitable, not a holding pattern. Officers exercising due diligence under s27 should be able to point to a documented investigations procedure the same way they can point to a bullying policy or a fatigue management plan. If that document does not exist yet, or exists but has no named timeframes or communication commitments, this decision is the reason to write one before a SafeWork NSW inspector asks for it.