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Workplace health and safety | 12 October 2026

When work takes a life: why DOSH now treats psychosocial risk as a safety issue

Since the 2022 amendment to the Occupational Safety and Health Act, psychosocial risk assessment sits inside Malaysia's safety law.

By eBen Assist  |  12 October 2026  |  4 minute read
Psychosocial risk assessment illustration

As an illustration

If a sudden accident or death happens at your workplace, DOSH can take the initiative to check whether a psychosocial risk assessment under PRisMA has been performed.

The questions are practical. Did the company assess workload and support as a workplace risk? Is there a written policy and an action plan? Could employees raise concerns, and was each concern recorded and acted on? If the answer is no, the company is exposed, whatever anyone intended.

Why DOSH acted

Since 1 June 2024, Malaysia's safety law covers almost every workplace and makes risk assessment a legal duty, so mental strain at work now sits inside the same rulebook as machines and falls.

1 June 2024
The Occupational Safety and Health (Amendment) Act 2022 comes into force.
All workplaces
The Act now applies to all places of work, including the public service.
Section 18B
A new duty: every employer must conduct and implement a risk assessment.

The Occupational Safety and Health (Amendment) Act 2022 extended the Occupational Safety and Health Act 1994 to all places of work, including the public service, and added a new duty in section 18B. Every employer must now conduct and implement a risk assessment of the hazards at work.

DOSH then published the Guidelines on Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Management at the Workplace 2024, known as PRisMA. It gives employers a framework to identify psychosocial hazards, assess the risk, prioritise controls and write an action plan. It targets work-related risks, not personal or non-work issues.

The logic is simple. Stress from workload, unclear roles, poor support or isolation can damage health and judgement, and the damage can be as real as a physical injury. This harm can build quietly, with no single incident to point to, until it is too late.

What employers must do

The binding duties come from the Act itself; PRisMA is the recognised way to meet them for psychosocial risk.

Section 15
General duty
Ensure, so far as practicable, the safety, health and welfare at work of all employees.
Section 16
Safety and health policy
Prepare and regularly revise a written policy.
Section 18B
Risk assessment
Identify hazards, assess risk and apply controls, and this includes psychosocial hazards.
Appointment
OSH coordinator
Workplaces with five or more employees that are not required to appoint a safety officer must appoint a coordinator.
Employee right
Worker rights
Employees may remove themselves from imminent danger of death or serious bodily injury.

Practitioner guides describe PRisMA as using a trained person and a screening tool called LEO26. Confirm those details in the DOSH guideline itself before you build a programme around them.

Penalties

RM500,000
Maximum fine
2 years
Maximum prison term
Or both
At the court's discretion

Since the 2022 amendment, an employer who breaches these duties faces an increased fine of up to RM500,000, up to two years in prison, or both.

The charge would most likely rest on the section 15 general duty or the section 18B risk assessment duty. Both fall under the same penalty provision of the Act.

What to do before it gets this far

Start with a psychosocial risk assessment, because it is both your legal duty and your best early warning.

  1. 1
    Add psychosocial hazards (workload, role clarity, support, isolation, relocation) to your section 18B risk assessment.
  2. 2
    Use the PRisMA framework to assess each work unit and record an action plan.
  3. 3
    Give new joiners and relocated staff extra support, including a named person to talk to.
  4. 4
    Check workload against headcount, especially in understaffed teams.
  5. 5
    Make it easy to raise concerns or ask for a transfer, and record how each request was handled.
  6. 6
    Train managers to spot warning signs and act on them.

How eBen can help

As an MDEC-recognised AI-powered company, eBen can provide the portal for the psychosocial assessment, so results are analysed more efficiently and solutions are managed in a structured way instead of by hand.

Running an assessment on paper or spreadsheets is slow. Forms travel by email, answers are keyed in, results are consolidated manually, and follow-up actions get lost between departments. A single portal replaces that with three connected steps:

1
Assess
Employees complete the assessment online, so responses are collected consistently with no re-keying.
2
Analyse
Results are compiled and analysed in one place, so HR can see where risk is concentrated without consolidating by hand.
3
Manage solutions
Each identified risk is given an action, an owner and a due date, and tracked until it is closed.

The result is a clear, dated record of what was assessed, what was found and what was done about it. That is exactly what you want on hand if DOSH asks whether your psychosocial risk assessment has been performed.

To discuss using the portal for your company, speak to the eBen team.

See our EAP and PRisMA support Talk to the eBen team

Sources

This article is general information, not legal advice.

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