NR-1 and Psychosocial Risks: What Does Your Company Need to Put Into Practice?

Prevention requires identifying risks, assessing how work is organized, and implementing measures that become part of the company’s daily operations.

Targets that are incompatible with available resources, excessive working hours, and workplace harassment can undermine employees’ health. Recognizing these conditions and addressing them should be part of a company’s occupational health and safety management.

Following the update to Brazil’s Regulatory Standard No. 1, psychosocial risk factors related to work are now expressly included in Occupational Risk Management. This requires companies to examine how tasks are organized, assigned, and supervised.

What Is NR-1?

NR-1 establishes general occupational health and safety provisions, including rights, responsibilities, and guidelines for Occupational Risk Management, known in Brazil as GRO.

This process involves identifying hazards, assessing risks, and implementing preventive measures. The updated wording of Chapter 1.5, effective since May 26, 2026, expressly includes work-related psychosocial risk factors.

In practice, companies must assess how working conditions may affect their employees’ health and establish measures appropriate to the risks identified.

What Are Work-Related Psychosocial Risk Factors?

These factors involve aspects of work organization, management, and workplace relationships that may contribute to ill health. The assessment should consider conditions such as persistent overload, excessive pressure, harassment, and recurring obstacles to completing tasks.

The focus is on the conditions under which work takes place. For example: are targets compatible with the time and resources available? Do employees receive clear instructions? Can they communicate difficulties? Do leadership practices encourage respectful relationships?

Guidance from Fundacentro, Brazil’s occupational health and safety research institution, emphasizes the importance of examining work organization and involving employees in identifying problems and developing preventive measures.

Documentation Is Necessary, but Measures Must Work in Practice

Maintaining organized records is an important part of management. However, prevention depends on carrying out the planned measures and monitoring their results.

Where required, the Risk Management Program, known as PGR, must contain at least an occupational risk inventory and an action plan. The inventory records identified hazards and assessed risks. The action plan sets out the preventive measures to be introduced, improved, or maintained.

The program must reflect the company’s actual operations and changes that may affect employees’ exposure to risks. NR-1 provides exemptions from preparing a PGR, whose applicability must be assessed according to each organization’s circumstances.

How Can Prevention Become Part of Daily Operations?

A practical starting point is to examine the work employees actually perform. As a management approach, companies can combine observation of their processes with employee feedback to understand where recurring difficulties arise.

Based on this assessment, measures may include reviewing task allocation, adjusting deadlines, providing guidance to managers, and improving procedures for receiving and investigating reports of harassment.

Each action needs assigned responsibility and follow-up. If excessive workloads persist after a change, for example, the company will need to reassess the solution adopted.

Awareness campaigns can support this process, but they must be accompanied by decisions that address the problems identified.

What Is the Role of Legal Counsel?

Legal counsel can support the assessment of applicable obligations, the review of internal policies, and the development of procedures for handling conflicts and complaints. This work should take place alongside occupational health and safety professionals and the teams responsible for business operations.

For employers, the central question is whether daily practices reflect the preventive measures established. A policy promoting respect must guide managers’ conduct. A plan to reduce excessive workloads must lead to changes in how work is organized.

Compliance with NR-1 requires translating prevention into decisions, responsibilities, and verifiable actions within the company.