Corporate Health

Level 1 · General arrangement

Corporate health, room by room

Under the model work health and safety laws, “health” means both physical and psychological health. For a person conducting a business or undertaking (a PCBU), Safe Work Australia puts the duty this way: “As part of its primary duty a PCBU must manage the risks to a worker’s psychological health, so far as is reasonably practicable.” This guide walks one office floor, a room at a time, through what that asks of a workplace and the people in it.

General information, not legal or medical advice. A guide to health and wellbeing at work, published by Dotto from the official sources linked on each page. Each state and territory, and the Commonwealth, makes and enforces its own work health and safety laws: Safe Work Australia lists every regulator and workers’ compensation authority.

A quiet corner of a white room: a round white cord chair with copper legs, a timber block stool holding a small cactus, a framed print of a statue among palm leaves, and a radiator beneath a tall window
A quiet corner. Photo by StockSnap on Pixabay
Drawing
General arrangement
Rooms
Six guides
Scale
Not to scale
Checked
8 Oct 2026

The floor plan

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Drawn for this guide. Each lit room is one guide, listed in the schedule below.

  1. 01Workroom

    Psychosocial hazards

    The fourteen things at work that Safe Work Australia names as able to harm mental health, and how the law expects them to be managed.

  2. 02Plant room

    The WHS duty of care

    Who holds a duty for health at work, what “health” covers, and what “reasonably practicable” asks.

  3. 03Quiet room

    Mental health at work

    Preventing harm from the work, and supporting a person with a mental health condition: two different jobs.

  4. 04Meeting room

    Workplace bullying

    The three-part test, what is not bullying, and the path from the workplace to the Fair Work Commission.

  5. 05Break room

    Fatigue and shift work

    Why fatigue is more than tiredness, the examples regulators give for rosters, and the right to disconnect.

  6. 06Reception

    Returning to work

    Early contact, a team that welcomes someone back, and the stigma that can get in the way.

Wellbeing, or safety?

Safe Work Australia draws a firm line between wellbeing programs and work health and safety. WHS, it says, is about preventing workers being harmed at work. Wellbeing initiatives, like meditation classes or nudging people towards better eating and more exercise, can do some good, it says, but they do not shield workers from psychosocial or physical hazards.

Its test for telling the two apart is a single question: is this measure preventing harm from the work?

Wellbeing initiatives

Safe Work Australia’s examples

  • Meditation classes
  • Encouraging healthy eating
  • Encouraging regular exercise

Controls for high job demands

A selection of Safe Work Australia’s examples

  • Save non-urgent work for quieter times
  • Allow enough breaks, and enough time between shifts
  • Provide quiet spaces for workers doing mentally demanding work
  • Plan the workforce so there are enough skilled workers for the job

Notice the quiet spaces in the second list. A quiet room can be a control measure when it answers a hazard in the work itself, which is why the rooms on this plan are drawn lit. Safe Work Australia names fourteen common psychosocial hazards, and the first guide walks through them: psychosocial hazards at work.

Where the rules come from

Safe Work Australia developed the model work health and safety laws in 2011. It maintains them but does not regulate or enforce them: each jurisdiction has to pass them as its own law before they bind anyone there.

The model laws

Implemented by the Commonwealth, New South Wales, Queensland, South Australia, Tasmania, Western Australia, the ACT and the Northern Territory, some with their own variations.

Victoria

The only jurisdiction that has not implemented the model laws. WorkSafe Victoria says its Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 have now commenced; another of its pages gives the start date as 1 December 2025.

Codes of practice

A model code has legal effect only once a jurisdiction approves it as a code of practice there; Safe Work Australia suggests checking with the local regulator.

For that reason the guides here describe the model laws and Safe Work Australia’s guidance first, and name a state whenever a rule or an example belongs to one state only.

About this guide

Corporate Health is a guide to health and wellbeing at work, published by Dotto. It is written for people who run a workplace and for people who work in one, in plain words, from the official pages of Safe Work Australia, the state and territory regulators, the Fair Work Ombudsman, the Fair Work Commission and government health services.

It describes the rules and the official guidance in general terms. It is not legal or medical advice, and it is not a substitute for the regulator in your state or territory, or for a health professional who knows you.

Every guide ends with the list of official pages it was drawn from, so each room can be checked against its source.