The People at Work (PAW) survey is being decommissioned. Safe Work Australia and the Queensland Office of Industrial Relations confirmed in March 2026 that the platform will close permanently on 2 October 2026, with changes starting from 1 June. For the approximately 5,000 Australian organisations and 160,000 workers who have used PAW as their primary psychosocial risk assessment tool, the decommissioning creates an immediate question: what replaces it, and how do you maintain compliance through the transition?

This guide covers what the People at Work survey is, why it is being decommissioned, the key dates you need to act on, how to export your existing data, what your alternatives are after October 2026, and how to choose the right approach for your organisation.

What the People at Work survey is

The People at Work survey is Australia’s free, government-endorsed psychosocial risk assessment tool, developed by Australian researchers in partnership with the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities, Comcare, and Safe Work Australia. Hosted at peopleatwork.gov.au, it allows organisations to measure workforce exposure to psychosocial hazards using research-backed scales covering job demands, role clarity, support, recognition, change management, and several other domains drawn from the Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work.

Since its launch in 2020, the PAW tool has been used by tens of thousands of Australian workplaces, particularly in the public sector, education, health, and not-for-profit sectors where budgets for commercial psychosocial assessment tools are limited. For many WHS and people-and-culture teams, People at Work has been the default first step in identifying psychosocial hazards under the WHS Regulations.

When and why the People at Work survey is being decommissioned

The decision to decommission People at Work was made at a national level. The Queensland Office of Industrial Relations, which administers the platform, confirmed the closure in March 2026 and published guidance on the transition. Three factors drove the decision.

First, legislative gaps. The PAW survey was originally developed in 2007 and does not adequately cover all psychosocial hazard categories identified in the current Model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work. Hazards such as sexual harassment, remote or isolated work, and intrusive surveillance are either absent or insufficiently addressed.

Second, declining engagement. Response rates on the platform have dropped over time, reducing the tool’s effectiveness as a reliable hazard identification instrument.

Third, a maturing commercial market. When PAW launched, there were very few purpose-built psychosocial risk assessment tools available to Australian employers. That is no longer the case. The regulatory landscape has changed significantly since the tool was created: every Australian state and territory has now adopted explicit psychosocial duties under model WHS Regulations, with Victoria the last to do so on 1 December 2025. The public investment in PAW is no longer the most efficient way for government to support employers in meeting an obligation the market now serves directly.

Key dates for the People at Work decommissioning

Three dates matter. Missing any of them creates a gap in your compliance evidence trail.

1 June 2026 — final date for new organisations to register on the PAW platform. After this date, no new accounts can be created.

1 July 2026 — final date to launch new surveys. Organisations with active accounts can run one last survey cycle, but it must be launched before this date.

2 October 2026 — the platform closes permanently. All organisational data will be removed. Raw survey response data will not be available for download after this date. There is no recovery option.

How to export your People at Work data

If your organisation has used PAW at any point, export your reports now. Do not wait until September. The Queensland Office of Industrial Relations has published guidance on how to extract your organisation’s survey reports before the platform closes.

Two things to note. First, only reports are available for download. Raw individual response data cannot be exported, by design, to protect respondent anonymity. Second, the deidentified dataset used for industry benchmarking within PAW will be retained by participating jurisdictions for research purposes. The Office of Industrial Relations remains the data custodian for that dataset.

Your exported PAW reports form part of your organisation’s psychosocial compliance evidence base. They document what hazards were identified, when, and at what severity. A regulator may ask for the basis of your current controls, and historical survey data is part of that answer. Archive the reports in your WHS document management system alongside your risk register and assessment records.

What the decommissioning means for organisations using People at Work

If your organisation has used PAW as its primary psychosocial hazard identification method, three things follow.

First, your statutory duty to identify, assess, control, and review psychosocial hazards is unchanged. Section 19 of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011, alongside each state’s psychosocial-specific Regulations, requires employers to manage psychosocial risk. The People at Work tool helped organisations meet the identification step. The duty itself remains in full effect after the platform is retired.

Second, the next survey cycle cannot rely on the People at Work infrastructure. If your organisation runs psychosocial surveys annually or biannually, the next round needs a replacement instrument selected and configured well before the data window opens.

Third, an organisation that does nothing before October 2026 will lose the only structured evidence trail it had, while the underlying obligation, regulator scrutiny, and inspector activity all continue. The PAW decommissioning does not create a grace period. It removes a tool. The obligation it served stays.

People at Work survey alternatives: your options after October 2026

Three categories of replacement exist. They are not interchangeable. Different tool, different job.

Free or open-source validated survey instruments. The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ III) is the closest like-for-like replacement for PAW. It is internationally validated, covers all major psychosocial hazard domains recognised in the Code of Practice, and includes benchmarking capability. The HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool, developed by the UK Health and Safety Executive, is a narrower but practical and action-oriented alternative. Guarding Minds at Work is a third option, particularly suited to organisations earlier in their psychosocial risk management journey that want implementation guidance alongside the assessment. All three are free or low-cost and produce defensible hazard identification data. They suit organisations with the in-house capability to administer the survey, analyse the data, and translate findings into a hazard register independently.

Engagement and culture survey platforms with a psychosocial template. Culture Amp, Officevibe, and similar platforms offer pre-built psychosocial questions inside a broader engagement-survey product. They suit organisations that want psychosocial measurement to sit alongside engagement, retention, and culture data, and that already have a programme for acting on engagement insights. They produce employee voice data, not a structured hazard register, and the data does not flow into a controls plan or audit trail without separate work. A useful contrast for organisations weighing this category sits at our engagement surveys vs psychosocial compliance page.

Psychosocial compliance platforms. Purpose-built platforms manage psychosocial hazard identification as one step inside a complete compliance lifecycle: hazard register, control mapping, control verification, incident management, board reporting, and audit-ready evidence. This category suits organisations where the regulator’s expectations, board oversight, and operational scale require an ongoing system rather than a periodic survey.

How to choose what is right for your organisation

Three questions narrow the decision quickly.

Are you trying to satisfy the regulator, the workforce, or both? A licensed survey instrument or a psychosocial compliance platform meets the regulator’s expectation around hazard identification. An engagement platform meets the workforce’s expectation around being heard. The right answer is often both, run in parallel by different functions, with the regulator-facing data flowing into a documented hazard register.

Does the data need to flow into a hazard register and control plan? A survey produces findings. A hazard register documents which hazards apply to which work activities, what controls are in place, and how those controls are verified. If the survey results sit in a PDF and the hazard register sits in a spreadsheet, the gap between them is exactly where regulators look during inspection. A platform that holds both reduces the gap.

Will you re-survey on a cadence and trend the data over time? A one-off measurement does not show whether controls are working. The Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work expects organisations to review controls and update the hazard register as work, workforce, and conditions change. Cadence matters more than the precise instrument.

Hazard identification is one step of a longer process

The reason People at Work has felt like enough for many organisations is that it produced a defensible artefact: a survey result with validated scales. In an environment where the regulator was still building inspector capacity, that artefact was usually enough to demonstrate good faith.

The bar has moved. SafeWork NSW now runs compulsory psychosocial checks during inspector visits to organisations with 200 or more workers, supported by a 25% increase in inspector numbers. WorkSafe Victoria’s psychosocial regulations have been in force since December 2025. The Court Services Victoria prosecution in 2023, which resulted in a fine of approximately $379,157 for failing to identify psychosocial risks at the Coroners Court, signalled the kind of evidence regulators now expect: identification, assessment, control, review, all documented and current.

A survey, however validated, is one input into that process. Every survey tool, including PAW and its alternatives, has the same structural limitation: it identifies hazards and stops there. The Code of Practice requires four steps: identify, assess, implement controls, and monitor and review. A survey assists with step one. The remaining three steps need to be operated and documented separately.

This is the gap many organisations will discover when they replace People at Work with a like-for-like survey and find the deeper compliance question unanswered. The decommissioning is a useful prompt to ask whether a survey replacement or a compliance system is the right next step.

ReFresh is built for the full lifecycle. It treats hazard identification as the start of an ongoing operation, not the destination. The psychosocial operating system runs the Code’s four-step process as a continuous workflow, maintains the audit trail in real time, and produces inspection-ready evidence on demand. For organisations whose People at Work data has been the spine of their psychosocial compliance, the decommissioning is the natural moment to decide whether to repeat the same pattern with a new survey, or to close the structural gap that People at Work was never designed to address.

Frequently asked questions

When exactly is the People at Work survey being decommissioned?

The platform closes on 2 October 2026. New accounts close on 1 June 2026 and new surveys can no longer be launched after 1 July 2026. These dates were confirmed by the Queensland Office of Industrial Relations in March 2026.

What is the best People at Work survey alternative?

It depends on what you need. For a like-for-like survey replacement, COPSOQ III is the closest match: internationally validated, covers all major hazard domains, and includes benchmarking. For a free, practical option, the HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool is narrower but action-oriented. For organisations that need the survey to connect to a hazard register, controls, and board reporting, a psychosocial compliance platform covers the full lifecycle.

How do I export my People at Work data before the platform closes?

Log into the PAW platform and export your organisation’s reports using the guidance published by the Queensland Office of Industrial Relations. Only reports are available for download; raw individual response data is not exportable. Do this before 2 October 2026. After that date, all organisational data will be permanently removed.

Can my organisation keep using People at Work data we have already collected?

Yes. Historical results remain a valid input to your hazard register and risk assessment as long as the data still reflects the present workforce and work activities. As a guide, hazard data older than 12 to 18 months should be refreshed.

Is a replacement survey enough to satisfy the regulator?

A survey alone is not enough. The Work Health and Safety Regulations require identification, assessment, control, and review of psychosocial hazards, with documented evidence at each step. A survey supports the identification step. The remaining steps need to be operated and documented separately.

Do I still need a psychosocial risk assessment after PAW is decommissioned?

Yes. The duty to identify psychosocial hazards existed before People at Work and continues after it. The decommissioning removes a tool, not an obligation. Organisations must continue to use a systematic method for identifying psychosocial hazards under the WHS Act and the Code of Practice.

What happens if my organisation does nothing before October 2026?

The duty to manage psychosocial risk continues regardless of the platform’s availability. An organisation that does nothing will lose the only evidence trail it had, while the underlying obligation, regulator scrutiny, and inspector activity all continue.

Are there free alternatives to People at Work?

COPSOQ III, the HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool, and Guarding Minds at Work are all free or low-cost validated instruments. They produce defensible hazard identification data but require your organisation to handle administration, analysis, and the translation of findings into a hazard register and control plan.

What to do now

The People at Work survey served a real purpose. It gave Australian employers a credible, free starting point for psychosocial hazard identification in a regulatory landscape that was still finding its shape. The decommissioning is not an ending so much as a marker: psychosocial compliance has moved from a periodic awareness exercise to a continuous operating discipline, and the tools available to support employers have caught up.

For organisations that have relied on People at Work, the next four months are the right window to export your existing data, select and configure a replacement instrument, and run a parallel cycle so the transition does not leave a gap in your compliance evidence.

A short readiness check is the simplest place to start. It tells you what evidence a regulator would currently find in your organisation, where the hazard identification, controls, and review steps sit, and what the highest-priority next move is. Or book a 20-minute walkthrough of the platform to talk through the PAW transition for your organisation.

For broader context on the full psychosocial compliance lifecycle, see our compliance by state collection or the cost of inaction for the financial picture behind the obligation.