Resilience First Aid (RFA) equips workers and leaders with proactive skills to recognise psychosocial hazards early, hold safe conversations, de-escalate risk, and connect people with formal supports. This document explains how RFA aligns with the Safe Work Australia Model Code of Practice on Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work and how it enables employers to meet duties through practical day to day behaviours, clear referral pathways, and measurable capability uplift.
How RFA Enables the Code of Practice Process
The Code sets out a continuous cycle of identifying, assessing, controlling, and reviewing psychosocial risks, supported by consultation and information, training, instruction and supervision. RFA strengthens each step by embedding shared language, practical peer skills, and repeatable micro rituals that make risk management visible in everyday work.
Identify Hazards
RFA builds observational and conversational skills that help workers notice early warning signs linked to job demands, low control, poor support, harmful behaviours, and environmental stressors. Through the PR6 domains – Composure, Collaboration, Vision, Reasoning, Health, and Tenacity – teams develop a common framework to describe what they are seeing. RFA Responders learn to distinguish between transient stress and patterns that indicate a hazard exposure that should be logged or escalated. This improves the quality and timeliness of hazard identification and consultation.
Assess Risks
The programme provides guided check in prompts and the ALL Protocol – Appreciate, Listen, Lift – that allow peers and leaders to explore duration, frequency, and severity without collecting clinical information. These prompts surface context about work design, workloads, role clarity, change impacts, and interpersonal conduct, supporting fair and consistent assessments. Notes taken by leaders can feed risk registers and enable informed decisions about controls.
Control Risks
RFA gives immediate micro skills that reduce exposure in the moment – de-escalation language, boundary setting, workload triage, supportive feedback, and safe bystander actions. Responders are trained to encourage use of formal organisational controls such as rostering changes, job redesign, respectful behaviours procedures, and access to employee assistance or clinical pathways. In this way, RFA is a control enabler that makes policies and systems work as intended.
Review Control Measures
Teams trained in RFA are better able to reflect after incidents, log learning, and participate in consultation forums. Peer level feedback loops help WHS and HR refine controls, update procedures, and target hazard hotspots. Repeat PR6 measurement provides a leading indicator of capability and resilience trends that can be correlated with incident data for ongoing improvement.
Hazard to RFA Skill Alignment Matrix
The table below summarises how RFA skills mitigate exposure to common psychosocial hazards identified in the Code. Note that this list also includes the updated list of 17 hazards in the Australian federal Work Health and Safety (Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work) Code of Practice 2024, Updated 27 October 2024 – www.legislation.gov.au/F2024L01380/latest/text
| Psychosocial hazard | Typical risk mechanisms | RFA modules and skills | Contribution to controls |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1. Job demands | Excessive workload, time pressure, cognitive overload, emotional labour | Reasoning - workload planning and resourcefulness; ALL Protocol - Appreciate Listen Lift; Composure - stress activation management; Tenacity - realistic optimism and pacing | Supports task reprioritisation and escalation; improves self regulation and peer support; encourages help seeking and boundary setting |
| 2. Fatigue | Long or irregular hours, inadequate recovery between shifts, high cognitive load, environmental stressors | Health - sleep and recovery routines; Composure - down regulation skills; Reasoning - pacing and micro breaks; Vision - team norms for after hours boundaries | Reduces fatigue exposure via recovery habits; normalises boundaries; prompts roster escalation and redesign |
| 3. Low job control | Prescriptive processes, machine paced work, unpredictable hours | Collaboration - needs signalling and assertive communication; Reasoning - problem solving and negotiating options | Enables constructive dialogue to adjust systems of work and escalate constraints |
| 4. Job insecurity | Precarious arrangements, contingent contracts, uncertainty over continued employment | Vision - values and meaning to reduce uncertainty load; Collaboration - connection and support seeking; Tenacity - coping with ambiguity; Reasoning - planning next steps | Stabilises immediate stress response; increases support and early reporting of harmful practices; signposts formal consultation pathways |
| 5. Poor support | Inadequate supervision, tools or emotional support | Collaboration - network building and coaching style conversations; Primer - role of peer supporters; ALL Protocol prompts | Builds everyday support availability and signposts to EAP or clinical help; improves quality of consultation inputs |
| 6. Lack of role clarity | Conflicting priorities or ambiguous expectations | Vision - values and goals alignment; Reasoning - clarify expectations; ALL Protocol - listen for mismatch | Facilitates role clarification conversations and early escalation to leaders |
| 7. Poor organisational change management | Insufficient consultation, information or training during change | Vision - change coherence; Collaboration - transparent communication rituals; Reasoning - appraise change impacts | Improves change communication at team level and surfaces risk hot spots for leaders to address |
| 8. Inadequate recognition and reward | Effort reward imbalance, negative feedback culture | Collaboration - constructive feedback and micro recognition; Vision - purpose alignment; Tenacity - learn from mistakes | Promotes positive reinforcement habits within teams and prompts leaders to address systemic imbalance |
| 9. Poor organisational justice | Perceived unfairness or inconsistent rules | Collaboration - respectful interactions; Reasoning - fair process language and documentation prompts | Encourages transparent dialogue and early reporting to formal procedures |
| 10. Traumatic events or material | Exposure to distressing content or incidents | Composure - de escalation and emotion regulation; Health - sleep and recovery basics; Referral protocols | Reduces immediate harm; improves post incident care and referral |
| 11. Remote or isolated work | Limited access to help, communication delays | Collaboration - maintaining connection; Reasoning - structured check ins and escalation rules | Sets team guardrails for contact and proactive check ins; ensures responder coverage |
| 12. Intrusive surveillance | Excessive monitoring of activity, location or keystrokes | Collaboration - respectful conversations about impacts; Reasoning - risk articulation linked to performance needs; Vision - team norms on privacy and trust | Elevates issues early; supports review of systems of work and adoption of less harmful monitoring practices |
| 13. Poor physical environment | Noise, heat, cramped spaces, poor air quality | Health - environment and recovery micro habits; Collaboration - raising safety issues; Reasoning - hazard logging with duration frequency severity | Encourages reporting and temporary mitigations while engineering controls progress |
| 14. Violence and aggression | Threats, verbal abuse, physical intimidation or assault from others | Composure - de escalation model and safety cues; Collaboration - bystander actions and buddying; Reasoning - pre event planning and duress procedures; Referral to formal response | Enables safer in the moment actions; consistent reporting and escalation to engineering and administrative controls |
| 15. Bullying | Repeated unreasonable behaviour creating risk to health and safety | ALL Protocol - safe language and boundaries; Collaboration - bystander and support actions; Reasoning - documentation prompts and referral | Supports early naming and reporting; protects targets; channels matters to investigation pathways |
| 16. Harassment including sexual harassment | Unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature or harassment based on protected attributes | ALL Protocol - validate boundary refer; Collaboration - safe bystander actions; Composure - regulate in moment; clear referral to formal procedures | Encourages immediate safety steps, confidential reporting, and trauma informed referral |
| 17. Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions | Frequent disagreements, rude or exclusionary behaviours undermining work | Collaboration - conflict de escalation and repair conversations; Reasoning - clarify task process agreements; Vision - shared purpose reset | Reduces frequency and severity of conflict; supports early resolution and escalates systemic issues |
RFA does not replace legal duties, investigations, or engineering and administrative controls. It strengthens consultation and training, and helps workers use existing systems effectively.
Where RFA Sits in the Risk Control Approach
The hierarchy of controls prioritises elimination, substitution, engineering, and administrative measures. RFA operates as a capability and culture layer that makes those measures effective in daily practice. For example, eliminating an aggressive customer contact channel is an engineering or design control. RFA ensures staff can recognise escalation earlier, apply de-escalation language, use duress procedures, and log incidents that justify redesign. In workload management, job redesign and staffing plans are primary controls, while RFA equips teams to triage tasks, set boundaries, and escalate resourcing issues promptly. This alignment makes it reasonably practicable for PCBUs to implement controls and verify that they are working.
Example Implementation Roadmap
The following sequence keeps effort focused while aligning to the Code.
- Prepare and consult
Brief officers and leaders on duties and objectives, identify representative worker groups and Health and Safety Representatives, and agree success measures of implementing RFA. This can include successful certification of cohorts, and group-level reporting of pre & post assessments completed through the RFA training program. - Train and activate
Certify a first cohort of RFA Responders across functions, shifts, and locations. Provide Responder Kits and App access so micro skills become daily habits. Introduce simple team rituals – daily or weekly check ins using ALL Protocol prompts, de-escalation language cards, and clear referral steps. - Integrate with existing systems
Embed RFA cues into hazard reporting forms, investigation templates, return to work processes, and change communications. Ensure leaders know how to escalate job design and staffing issues, and that responders are mapped to remote or isolated roles to ensure coverage. - Review and improve
Run JSECC assessments after 6 months to measure work factors and psychosocial hazards. Compare with incident patterns and worker feedback to target hotspots. Update the risk register, adjust training coverage, and refine procedures where gaps remain, integrating with the broader risk management process.
Measuring Effectiveness
A balanced set of indicators helps demonstrate due diligence and improvement.
- Leading indicators – number and distribution of trained Responders, frequency of team check ins, early hazard reports, participation and refresher completion rates
- Lagging indicators – psychosocial injury claims, absenteeism, exit feedback trends, turnover in high-risk teams
- Capability gains – pre and post PR6 scores and peer support confidence, plus qualitative feedback on language and culture shifts
- Audit readiness – documented consultation, training records, and updates to the psychosocial risk register
Common Questions
How does RFA help us meet WHS duties for psychosocial risk management?
RFA strengthens consultation, information, training, instruction and supervision by giving workers and leaders common language and practical skills. It improves early identification, encourages timely escalation, and supports the effective use of formal controls, which is central to the Code.
Which Code hazards are addressed and how?
RFA aligns with both the Safe Work Code of Practice and the Work Health and Safety Code of Practice. The alignment matrix shows the specific skills that mitigate exposure to each common hazard. RFA focuses on daily behaviours that reduce risk while formal controls are implemented.
Where does RFA sit in the hierarchy and what is reasonably practicable?
RFA does not replace elimination or engineering controls. It enables administrative controls and makes reasonably practicable steps more effective by ensuring people can use them well.
What evidence supports outcomes and how do we measure internally?
RFA is built on peer reviewed research and the PR6 model. Organisations can track leading and lagging indicators and re measure PR6 and peer support confidence to show improvement over time. Learn more about RFA’s impact research here – https://home.hellodriven.com/articles/resilience-first-aid-research-proven-resilience-peer-support-training/
What does a realistic plan look like?
Start small, certify a mixed cohort, integrate cues into existing systems, and review at 3 to 6 months. Scale coverage where hotspots persist and refresh annually to sustain gains. For some consistent impact, deploy RFA to entire teams to create a unified language of resilience and a supportive team culture of prevention.
