What are my options and rights regarding psychosocial hazards in the workplace?
I wrote this article because exposure to trauma, crisis, and high emotional demand is often normalised within helping professions. Many workers quietly carry significant strain while feeling unsure about what support they should reasonably expect from their workplace — or when they may need support beyond supervision and debriefing.
There are ways you can prepare yourself to manage some of the psychosocial hazards inherent in helping work. Good external supervision, your own regular therapy, and a purposeful, connected life outside work can all help. One-off debriefing with a trained therapist after traumatic exposure may also help reduce the cumulative effects of working in areas such as child protection, family violence, teaching, or health care.
What perspectives are you speaking from as a manager and therapist?
I am a trained mental health professional and registered counsellor, but I am also a manager and team leader within a professional service, so I speak from several perspectives here. Given my diverse work experience, I have a solid understanding of workplace legislation and what people should reasonably expect from their workplace. You can read more about my background and work experience here.
Please note that if you see me for therapy, I am not providing workplace advice, supervision, or advocacy. The focus would be on your therapy, your struggles at work and in your personal life, and your history and experiences, as how we show up at work and in our personal lives is often inextricably linked.
For example, you may find it difficult to speak up and ask for a reduced caseload because you prioritise your clients' needs over your own well-being. At the same time, workplaces also have a positive duty to provide a psychologically safe work environment and to minimise exposure to sustained levels of stress and strain that can leave workers struggling to recover outside of work.
Creating psychologically safer workplaces is also a shared responsibility that relies on healthy workplace cultures, supportive leadership and supervision, respectful working relationships, and our own personal accountability.
Activist and psychologist Vikki Reynolds, talks about “collective care”, leadership and supervision, and it is worth familiarising yourself with her ideas on countering burnout through solidarity and justice-doing.
What are psychosocial hazards?
Different psychosocial hazards are associated with helping work and can contribute to work-related stress, including exposure to “violent or traumatic events”. The following quote is taken from WorkSafe Victoria, where you can read more about psychosocial hazards.
“A violent or traumatic workplace event is a workplace incident which exposes an employee to abuse, the threat of harm or actual harm and causes fear and distress, which can lead to work-related stress and physical injury. Violent or traumatic events are common in groups such as first responders, health care workers, disaster and emergency services, social workers and defence personnel”.
What can help reduce the impact of psychosocial hazards?
Regular supervision
Supportive team culture
Debriefing after traumatic exposure
Manageable caseloads
Peer support
Clear boundaries between work and home
Personal therapy when needed
Meaningful connection and purpose outside work
What should I expect from my workplace?
If you are in Victoria, Australia, you should expect your workplace to comply with legislation introduced in December 2025 to help protect workers from psychosocial hazards. You may also wish to look at the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission website, which contains information relevant to workplace rights, responsibilities, and protections for employees.
Why is supervision important in helping work?
If you work in a frontline service such as child protection, family violence, or a service that provides counselling and support for victim-survivors of sexual assault, it is important to have skilled supervision. Hopefully, your workplace offers regular internal supervision with someone invested in supporting you and your team.
Depending on your organisation’s resources, it may also provide external supervision, which, in my opinion, is a reasonable expectation in high-exposure helping roles.
Why is regular debriefing after traumatic exposure important?
It is important to debrief after traumatic exposure at work, as this may reduce the cumulative strain that can develop in helping roles over time. I began my helping career as a Lifeline volunteer and later worked at StandBy in suicide bereavement, where I experienced first-hand the value of regular mandated debriefing with a supervisor, as well as peer debriefing after difficult sessions.
I have been fortunate to experience good internal support, as well as external supervision, in the organisations I have worked in — but I know this is not always a given.
Does it matter who I debrief with about traumatic exposure?
It does matter who you debrief with about traumatic exposure at work, but perhaps not in the way you might think. Debriefing with your team or a trusted colleague can be equally important, helping you feel connected and reassured that someone has your back in the workplace.
It is not always helpful for organisations to completely outsource debriefing and supervision to external parties who may not fully understand the clients, systems, and organisational contexts involved in the work. Ideally, managers and team leaders should take an active role in preventing psychosocial hazards in the workplace and ensure staff receive appropriate follow-up after stressful interactions or traumatic exposure.
After all, a team leader is often the person most aware of a worker’s caseload and can recognise when the strain may have become too much. This may mean temporarily adjusting workload demands, lowering caseloads, or changing the mix of clients being seen.
How do I know if I need therapy and not just debriefing and supervision?
Not everyone exposed to stressful or traumatic work needs therapy. Good supervision, supportive colleagues, and regular debriefing may be enough for many helping professionals at different times in their careers.
However, there are times when the strain of helping work can begin to affect your relationships, sleep, sense of meaning, or ability to emotionally recover outside work. You may notice feeling emotionally numb, increasingly anxious, more irritable, hypervigilant, withdrawn, or unable to switch off from work.
Therapy may be helpful when workplace stress and traumatic exposure begin to accumulate in ways that supervision or peer support alone no longer seem to adequately address. Therapy provides a different space — one focused not on case management or professional functioning, but on your own emotional experience and how you are faring in all areas of life.
Can helping professionals experience trauma from their work?
Yes. Repeated exposure to distressing material, traumatic events, crisis work, suicide, violence, abuse, or high emotional demand can affect helping professionals over time. This may contribute to burnout, strain, and compassion fatigue.
What is the difference between supervision, debriefing, and therapy?
Supervision is focused on professional practice and client work. Debriefing is often a more immediate supportive conversation after stressful or traumatic exposure. Therapy is focused on your own emotional world.
Is supervision alone enough to manage psychosocial hazards?
Sometimes it may be, particularly when workplaces are supportive and workloads are manageable. However, there are times when medium to longer-term therapy is needed. In the therapy I provide, I do not just explore the symptoms but also what might be the underlying causes for your distress and problems.
What should workplaces provide after traumatic exposure?
Supportive workplaces should ensure staff receive appropriate follow-up, opportunities for supervision or debriefing, and reasonable consideration of workload demands after traumatic exposure or highly stressful incidents.
What kind of therapy do you provide?
I mostly provide medium to longer-term therapy, and my focus is not just on the workplace issues you may bring, but the whole of you. I am curious about the stories you carry about who you are, who you feel you “should be”, what has happened to you, and what may have brought you to therapy beyond the more obvious symptoms of vicarious trauma and workplace stress.
If you are interested in therapy with me, you may also find the following pages helpful, as they explain more about my background, how I work, and why I believe therapy can be particularly valuable for helping professionals:
