SafeWork NSW launches a dedicated Psychosocial Advisory Service, its biggest access-to-help move yet

SafeWork NSW has launched the Psychosocial Advisory Service (PAS), a dedicated pathway for workers and employers dealing with bullying, harassment, work-related stress and mental harm. People can reach it through the existing 13 10 50 hotline (press 3 for PAS), via online enquiry, or through the SpeakUp web-based interface, and are connected with trauma-trained advisors rather than a general call-centre queue. The service was developed in partnership with the Black Dog Institute, and SafeWork NSW also worked with Lifeline Northern Beaches to train PAS staff in crisis response and psychosocial risk management. "The new Psychosocial Advisory Service is more than just a hotline," SafeWork Commissioner Janet Schorer said. "It offers in-depth conversations and practical, structured advice for those who need it most." The numbers behind the launch explain the urgency. Between 1 July 2025 and 30 June 2026, SafeWork NSW received 3,145 psychosocial-related requests for service, 20.5 per cent of everything the regulator received, up from 10 per cent in 2021-22. Psychosocial requests have more than doubled as a share of the regulator's workload in five years. The PAS is backed by the NSW Government's $127.7 million investment in SafeWork NSW capability, which also funds the 20 additional specialist psychosocial inspectors announced earlier this year, and sits inside the state's broader $344 million Workplace Mental Health package. That funding link matters, because it shows the PAS is not a stand-alone comms exercise, it is the advisory half of a two-sided build. The inspector uplift gave SafeWork NSW more capacity to enforce. The PAS now gives workers and employers a specific, trauma-informed door to walk through before something escalates to the point an inspector needs to get involved. Combined with codes of practice becoming legally binding in NSW from 1 July 2026, which this blog covered at the time, the state now has the fullest state-level psychosocial regulatory stack in the country: advice, inspection, referral, and an enforceable Code, all sitting under the one regulator. For PCBUs, the PAS being open to employers as well as workers is worth using, not just watching. Calling for advice is a legitimate, low-cost way to test whether a hazard or control is being handled adequately before it turns into a request for service or an incident notification. But an advisory call is not a substitute for the underlying record. If a manager, HR lead or officer calls the PAS about a specific issue, the practical discipline is the same one this blog keeps coming back to: write down what was raised, what advice was given, what control or process changed as a result, and when it will be reviewed. A regulator that has just built a dedicated front door for psychosocial concerns is a regulator that will expect to see what happened after someone walked through it.