Promoting compliance and raising awareness.

 

Promoting compliance, including through targeted support and awareness-raising, alongside effective enforcement by regulators, is essential to ensure that legal provisions on psychosocial risks translate into safer and healthier working environments. This is typically pursued through a balanced regulatory mix in which enforcement is combined with education, guidance and capacity building. Such approaches reflect contemporary regulatory theory, including responsive regulation and strategic enforcement, which emphasise combining deterrence with support for compliance rather than relying on sanctions alone. 

Labour inspectorates play a central role in this framework. Across jurisdictions, inspection systems typically combine proactive prevention activities – such as targeted campaigns, preventive visits, sectoral programmes and thematic inspections – with reactive enforcement functions, including responses to complaints, incident notifications and reported harms. This dual role is particularly important for psychosocial hazards, which require both anticipatory engagement with organizational risks and the capacity to intervene where legal obligations are not met. In practice, many inspectorates operationalize this approach by integrating compliance checks with guidance during workplace inspections. Inspectors may verify adherence to legal requirements while also recommending improvements, providing tools or directing duty holders to relevant guidance. Regulatory contact thus functions simultaneously as a compliance mechanism and a capacity-building intervention, particularly for organizational risks that are less visible and more complex than traditional physical hazards. Balancing advice, improvement support and enforcement requires the exercise of professional judgement by inspectors. In the context of psychosocial risks, this task is especially demanding, as it involves assessing work organization, workload allocation, supervision, leadership practices and organizational culture, as well as cumulative and interacting risk pathways. Inspectorate practice therefore influences whether psychosocial hazards are treated as substantive regulatory concerns alongside physical risks, with evidence suggesting that weaker regulatory signals can undermine deterrence and compliance. These challenges are compounded by the scale and pervasiveness of psychosocial risks, which arise across all sectors and organizational sizes, placing sustained pressure on inspection systems with limited resources. This has reinforced the importance of strategic prioritisation, evidence-based targeting and complementary regulatory approaches, including guidance, enforceable undertakings and other mechanisms suited to addressing systemic and organizational sources of risk. Research confirms that traditional inspection methods require adaptation for psychosocial risks. Studies from Europe show that labour inspection can stimulate improvements in psychosocial risk management, but that inspectors require specific training, diagnostic tools and sufficient time to address work-organization problems effectively. In response, a number of inspectorates have developed targeted initiatives and specialized tools to strengthen regulatory capacity in this area. In Europe, coordinated initiatives under the Senior Labour Inspectors’ Committee (SLIC) have played an important role in shaping national approaches. Joint campaigns have supported the development of shared concepts, tools and methodologies for assessing work-related stress and organizational factors, including the Guide for Assessing the Quality of Risk Assessments and Risk-Management Measures with Regard to the Prevention of Psychosocial Risks. Several countries have built on this work within their national systems. In Denmark, the Working Environment Authority has developed dedicated inspection tools and thematic campaigns addressing stress, workload and offensive behaviours. Sweden has similarly integrated psychosocial risks into labour inspection through targeted reviews of workload, working time arrangements and victimisation linked to provisions on the organizational and social work environment. In Spain, Technical Criteria clarify inspection expectations regarding psychosocial risk assessment and prevention, while in Estonia the Labour Inspectorate provides detailed public guidance on organizational and psychosocial risks. Outside Europe, a number of inspectorates have also developed specific approaches to psychosocial risk prevention. In Australia, recent reforms to the model Work Health and Safety framework have expanded incident notification requirements to include serious psychological harm and psychosocial risk outcomes, signalling increased regulatory attention to work-related mental health. In Canada, several provincial regulators provide inspectors with structured guidance and checklists on psychosocial hazards, including work-related stress and workload management. In Chile, compliance with the CEAL‑SM/SUSESO psychosocial risk assessment instrument, mandatory for organizations with 10 or more workers and in force since January 2023, is monitored through the national psychosocial risk surveillance system overseen by the Superintendencia de Seguridad Social (SUSESO) and the Dirección del Trabajo (DT). In Brazil, psychosocial risk factors have recently been included in the requirements of NR-1 concerning OSH regulations and will be phased in through an initial educational period supported by guidance materials and tripartite monitoring. Labour inspection will begin assessing compliance from late May 2026, following an adaptation period for workplaces. In Japan and the Republic of Korea, labour inspections include scrutiny of working time records and overtime limits as part of efforts to prevent overwork-related disorders. In Kenya, Jordan and Lebanon, inspectorates have strengthened their capacity to address psychosocial risks through ILO-supported training, enabling inspectors to integrate organizational and psychosocial considerations into routine OSH inspections. Alongside inspection activities, the development of voluntary standards and guidance tools plays an important role in promoting compliance and supporting employers and workers to identify and manage psychosocial risks. Across regions, OSH bodies, together with social partners, have produced general and sector-specific guidance, checklists and toolkits that translate legal requirements into practical, action-oriented approaches. These resources range from broad guidance on psychosocial risk assessment and preventive strategies to materials addressing specific issues, as well as emerging risks linked to digitalisation, new forms of work and changing work environments. These guidance tools help workplaces apply preventive measures adapted to different sectors, diverse forms of work and evolving challenges.243 Targeted tools have also been developed for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), helping to address practical barriers related to awareness, capacity and resources.

Awareness-raising campaigns play an important role in improving understanding of psychosocial risks and encouraging preventive action at the workplace level. Across regions, OSH authorities and social partners have implemented national and sectoral campaigns to inform employers, workers and the wider public about issues such as work-related stress, workload, work organization, mental health at work and emerging psychosocial risks. These initiatives typically aim to promote early recognition of risks, encourage dialogue and reinforce a preventive culture, often using a combination of public information materials, targeted communication strategies and workplace outreach. In many cases, campaigns are developed through tripartite or bipartite cooperation, which helps ensure credibility and relevance for different audiences. They frequently target specific groups – such as managers, OSH practitioners, workers’ representatives or SMEs – and are rolled out through multiple channels, including dedicated websites, guidance materials, training events, social media, sector-specific resources and inspectorate outreach. In Europe, EU-OSHA has played a central role in coordinated awareness-raising through its Healthy Workplaces Campaigns, including the 2014-2015 campaign on work-related stress, with a forthcoming campaign announced on psychosocial risks and mental health at work. Several countries have complemented these initiatives with national campaigns. For example, France has conducted multi-year national awareness campaigns on psychosocial risks involving labour authorities, social security institutions and social partners, combining communication activities with workplace tools and training. Belgium has implemented joint awareness initiatives on psychosocial risks and burn-out prevention through its Federal Public Service Employment and the social partners, supporting dissemination of preventive approaches across sectors. Beyond Europe, awareness-raising on psychosocial risks and mental health at work is often pursued through national public campaigns or communication initiatives linked to prevention frameworks. For example, in Japan, the government has established an annual “Enlightenment Month” (November) to raise public awareness on preventing overwork-related harm (karōshi), accompanied by outreach activities and events. In Chile, the national psychosocial risk protocol (CEAL-SM/SUSESO) explicitly include a “campañade difusión y sensibilización” [awareness and outreach campaign] as part of its implementation process to encourage understanding and participation. In the Pacific Alliance (Chile, Colombia, Mexico and Peru), a regional initiative is currently developing and implementing a communication campaign aimed at workers and employers to raise awareness and promote participatory management of psychosocial risks and mental health at work.