Psychosocial Health Check for Every Brain Type
A practical WHS-aligned checklist with guidance to help you interpret psychosocial risk for neurodivergent workers and all brain types.
Interpreted through an all-brains lens — not just a neuronormative one.
General guidance only. This tool does not replace legal advice.
Choose your jurisdiction below to begin the checklist.
Start the Health Check
Choose your workplace location
Legislative references differ by jurisdiction. The questions are similar, but the legal wording is tailored to your location.
Choose the checklist that matches your workplace location.
If your workplace is in Victoria, choose the Victorian checklist. If it is anywhere else in Australia, choose the national checklist.
Victorian Psychosocial Safety Health Check
Use this quick checklist to review your organisation's current approach to psychosocial health obligations in Victoria, including consultation, risk controls, leadership capability, and neuro-inclusive practice.
Australian Psychosocial Safety Health Check
A practical self-assessment for employers who want to identify psychosocial risk gaps, strengthen workplace belonging, and plan informed next steps.
Want help interpreting your result?
Joy Diving Australia offers psychosocial risk audits, neuro-inclusive workplace consulting, leadership capability support, and practical next-step guidance tailored to your context.
Submitting this form does not create a consulting relationship. Any further support is by agreement.
What your answers may mean
Your answers can help highlight whether key psychosocial safety steps are in place, but they do not tell the whole story on their own. Two organisations may tick the same boxes on paper and still create very different experiences for workers.
For neurodivergent workers, psychosocial risk may show up through sensory overload, unclear expectations, communication strain, low job control, unsupported masking, poorly managed change, or systems that assume one ‘normal’ way of working.
A stronger result may suggest that important foundations are in place. A weaker result may indicate gaps in how psychosocial hazards are being identified, discussed, controlled, reviewed, or experienced across different brain types.
The key question is not only ‘Do we have the right policies?’ It is also ‘How is this work actually being experienced by different people, and where might hidden risk still be sitting?’
Common hidden risk patterns
Psychosocial risk is not always obvious. It can sit inside everyday systems, expectations and environments that appear manageable on paper but create strain for different brain types in practice.
Sensory overload
Open-plan noise, harsh lighting, frequent interruptions or visually busy environments may increase fatigue, stress and shutdown risk.
Unclear expectations
Ambiguous instructions, shifting priorities, or vague role boundaries can create ongoing stress and reduce confidence.
Communication strain
Indirect communication, inconsistent feedback, or reliance on unwritten social rules may increase confusion and anxiety.
Poorly managed change
Last-minute change, unclear transitions, or lack of preparation can heighten distress and reduce psychological safety.
Low job control
Rigid work patterns, limited autonomy or lack of flexibility may increase psychosocial strain for workers who need different ways of planning, focusing or recovering.
Unsupported masking
When workers feel pressure to hide needs, suppress natural communication styles, or constantly self-monitor, the cumulative psychosocial load can become significant.
What this page helps you examine
This health check is designed to help organisations identify psychosocial risk across eight practical domains of work design, support, communication, environment and system capability.
Workload, cognitive demand and control
Workload, pace, task switching, cognitive load, autonomy and break control.
Emotional demand, customer aggression and recovery
Distressed customers, conflict, aggression, traumatic material and recovery time.
Physical, sensory and remote or hybrid environment
Noise, lighting, space, hot-desking, sensory load, isolation and hybrid work practices.
Digital systems and workflow friction
CRMs, portals, filing, forms, approvals and workflow complexity.
Communication, meetings, role clarity, change and interpretation risk
Instructions, ambiguity, feedback, meetings, change and autistic communication being misread.
Accommodation pathways, disclosure safety and organisational justice
Adjustment processes, disclosure safety, fairness, minimisation and bias.
Manager capability, support, conflict and repair
Manager knowledge, support, escalation, repair and neurodivergent communication.
Pattern learning, consultation, recognition and system redesign
Consultation, repeating patterns, recognition, redesign and action learning.