Strengthening Risk Governance Amid Escalating Enforcement 

In 2026, UK organisations face an unprecedented regulatory shift. The HSE has escalated enforcement on psychosocial risks, with two-thirds of UK employers currently non-compliant. 

The reality is stark: 

• 4,400 enforcement notices issued each year 

• 3,200 improvement notices issued annually 

• 94% HSE prosecution conviction rate 

This is a watershed moment for UK employers. Whether your organisation is just starting out or refining its approach to psychosocial risk governance, now is the time to act. 

In a recent webinar, experts from the Center for Organizational Effectiveness (COE) outlined what leaders can do to stay ahead of evolving requirements—and transform compliance into a competitive advantage. 

Image 1: Promotional graphic for the Center for Organizational Effectiveness (COE) free virtual webinar, “The HSE Escalation: Psychosocial Risk Enforcement and Your Legal Obligations” held on Thursday, June 11. 

Read an excerpt from the session below: 

Ayse Tillman (Moderator): Remember that poll we opened at the start? [See image 2] For those who selected, “We haven’t begun yet,” which was about six percent of you, or “Not sure,” which was about 26 percent of you, this next segment is especially for you. 

How can organisations build the capability to understand psychosocial risk factors? Leona, I’d like to hear your thoughts on this. 

Image 2: Survey results for in-webinar poll asking, “How prepared is your organisation for HSE psychosocial risk enforcement?” with answers varying from “Not sure” (26%) to “We have a comprehensive strategy in place” (3%). 

Leona Thomson: Absolutely.  

So, when it comes to that training and capability-building for leaders, managers, and HR teams, I would say that different groups do need different skills when it comes to approaching psychosocial hazards. For your top-tier leaders, the focus is really on understanding the importance of the topic—the accountability section that David [Stace] talked about. Your leaders need to recognise that psychosocial risk is a business risk, it’s a safety risk, and they need to understand their governance responsibilities to be able to ask the right questions around, “What are the risks?” “What is my current risk level?” “What controls do I have?” and “If I am putting in a protective factor, how can I measure whether that’s been successful?” 

For your management circle, the focus is a little bit more practical. At this level, you really have that direct influence on many of the factors that are creating psychosocial risks. These leaders have that hierarchy of control—primary, secondary, and tertiary. In order to keep my team safe, if I’ve identified a risk or someone at risk, I can’t simply refer them to occupational health or to the employee assistance program and wipe my hands of it—I mean, I could, but it’s not best practice. I should be looking at the psychosocial risk that led to that issue, any hazards I’ve identified that may have contributed to that issue in the first place, and then I should be asking myself, “What can I do to make sure that I’m still achieving my same business outcomes, my same results, without compromising the health of my team?” “How can I do that while isolating my team from the hazard that has been identified?” 

I think what we’re really looking at there is that movement towards the proactive redesign of work—making sure that we’re creating that environment where we can truly have an impact on making the workplace healthier. To give an example, if you are seeing that your team is working an extreme amount of overtime—yes, you can address that at the individual level, you can support that person through coaching, send them to their EAP, as you wish—but then you can also take a step back and say, “Hey, what can I do to avoid this in the future?” “Do I have any process bottlenecks that are causing people to stay overtime as they’re waiting for responses?” “Do I have any policies that can be changed to address this?” So really taking that deep dive and seeing what you can do to support.  

As we’ve worked with different organisations, we have found that those that are the most successful are the ones that are looking at it from various different levels. Not just an understanding, not just an, “Okay, I’ve identified my risk, I’ve done a couple things,” but the full monitoring, the full scale. Many organisations have awareness, but not necessarily that capability. They all understand that psychosocial risk matters, but when Monday rolls around, they’re not quite sure how to move into action and put in place some preventative measures.  

To that end, we recently developed a psychosocial risk training capsule—a series of 45 different trainings around psychosocial risks from A to Z—and rather than focusing purely on legal requirements or theory, we focused on designing a series that really helps organisations build that practical capability, which is where we’re seeing that gap. 

“What do the risks look like?” “How can I assess?” and “What meaningful controls—what meaningful levers—can I pull if I’ve identified a risk—and how do I measure that?” These are the questions the capsule helps organisations answer. 

Ayse Tillman: The capsule sounds like it covers a lot that leaders need to turn awareness into action! To echo what you said, organisations can’t treat training as a check-box, it has to be embedded into the culture. How do you suggest that organisations do that? 

Leona Thomson: You’re absolutely right, Ayse. In my opinion, training is the foundation. It’s creating a shared understanding of what psychosocial risks are and a common language across the organisation.  

What you’re really doing with these trainings is equipping people with the knowledge and skills so they can identify and manage any hazards that are coming up. Without that baseline capability, it is really difficult to achieve consistent practice. If you haven’t had expert guidance, a lot of organisations are going to fall into the trap of not managing risks or hazards in the same manner across departments, across teams—and of course, that’s going to lead to inconsistencies.  

So what we really focus on in our training capsule is… 

Interested in hearing the rest of the conversation? Access the recording now or learn more about the Psychosocial Risk Capsule.