The 16+5 Hazard Model
Sixteen hazards are already recognised under WorkSafe Victoria’s Compliance Code. We add five more that no other framework assesses, because they were never built to see them.
Why 21 hazards, not 16
Mainstream psychosocial risk frameworks were developed to address the hazards most commonly experienced across the general workforce. They weren’t designed with First Nations workplace experience specifically in mind.
That’s not a criticism, it’s a gap. And gaps in a risk assessment are exactly where liability lives.
Burriin’s 16+5 model closes that gap. It starts with the full 16 hazards from WorkSafe Victoria’s Compliance Code Appendix C, then adds five hazards specific to First Nations employees and communities, grounded in Balit Murrup, VACCHO’s Balit Durn Durn, and the Gari Yala research findings.
The result is a complete picture. Visible hazards lead to controllable risks, and controllable risks lead to a defensible position.
The 16+5 model won the Innovation in Psychosocial Risk Management category at the 2026 Psychosocial Safety and Leadership Institute Awards. The judges highlighted the integration of First Nations-specific hazards and culturally informed controls into risk management frameworks.
The 16 Standard Hazards
WorkSafe Victoria Compliance Code, Appendix C. Every Burriin assessment covers all sixteen as a baseline.
The 5 First Nations Hazards
Presented to and engaged with by WorkSafe Victoria’s Psychological Health Leadership Team, who are adopting this into their own internal practices.
Community Weight
The responsibility many First Nations people carry for family and community, including the expectation of succeeding on behalf of community.
Culturally Unsafe Environment
A workplace where a First Nations person cannot be themselves fully, where raising concerns isn’t possible without fear of professional consequences.
Cultural Load (Unpaid Workplace Demands)
The additional work First Nations employees carry because of their cultural identity, organising NAIDOC events, advising on RAP, educating colleagues, being the go-to person for anything First Nations-related. For First Nations professionals hired in cultural roles, cultural load extends beyond formal responsibilities to include the excess expectations placed on them above and beyond what the role accounts for. Paid or unpaid, this load causes burnout, stress and resentment when it isn’t recognised, limited, or resourced appropriately.
Identity Strain
The psychological pressure of navigating a workplace where being First Nations is treated as something to manage, explain, or conceal.
Social and Emotional Wellbeing (SEWB) Disruption
Social and emotional wellbeing is a holistic concept used across Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health frameworks. It is broader than the Western idea of mental health, covering connection to body, mind and emotions, family and kinship, community, culture, Country, spirituality and ancestors. Disruption occurs where work design interferes with those connections, through rostering, leave, travel or relocation requirements. Disruption to connections to body, mind, family, community, culture, Country, and spirit, not consistently captured by measures calibrated to non-Indigenous norms.
Grounded in the evidence
The five First Nations hazards aren’t a marketing framework, they’re built on established research: the Victorian Government’s Balit Murrup framework, VACCHO’s Balit Durn Durn, and the Gari Yala report into First Nations workplace experience. Where possible, each hazard is tied back to a documented finding rather than an assumption.
A note on terminology
In June 2026, the UTS Centre for Indigenous People and Work released Gari Yala 2 and announced a change in language. After consultation with their Indigenous expert panel, they stepped away from the terms cultural load, colonial load, cultural responsibility and identity strain, and moved to unpaid workplace demands.
Their reasoning was twofold. Indigenous workers had told them the earlier terms did not clearly articulate that this is additional work done on top of the job and not paid for. And the language was judged deficit-based, framing the issue as something Indigenous people carry rather than something workplaces create.
Burriin has adopted the term Cultural Load (Unpaid Workplace Demands) in recognition of that change, while retaining the original term because it remains in wide use across Australian workplaces and regulators.
The underlying position has not changed. Culture is not the hazard. The risk arises from how work is designed, allocated, expected, recognised and controlled. Burriin names these as hazards in a risk register, not as characteristics of workers, which is the same approach applied to all sixteen hazards in the WorkSafe Victoria Compliance Code.
Gari Yala 2 found that 64% of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander workers experience high cultural load, and that three in four say their organisation does not formally recognise or remunerate it.
See the full model in action
The 16+5 model isn’t just a page on a website, it’s built directly into every assessment we run and every control plan we deliver.