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Insights on workplace culture, Respect at Work, DEI strategy, psychosocial safety and inclusive AI — from Felicity Menzies and the Culture Plus team.
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This is the seventh article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. Statutory duties, codes of practice, regulator guidance and the positive duty now establish clear expectations. What they do not provide is an integrated executive governance model for consistently translating those expectations into practice.
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This is the seventh article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. Statutory duties, codes of practice, regulator guidance and the positive duty now establish clear expectations. What they do not provide is an integrated executive governance model for consistently translating those expectations into practice.
Safety teams deliver psychosocial hazards training. HR leads Respect at Work. DEI teams run inclusive leadership. Each may be valuable in isolation, but delivered separately they leave leaders to connect the dots themselves. The problem is not a lack of training — it is a lack of integration. How three foundations of a high-performing workplace can be built through one connected leadership pathway.
This is the sixth article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. While no Australian officer has yet been prosecuted for failing to exercise due diligence over psychosocial risk, section 27 of the model WHS Act provides the statutory basis. Directors and executives should examine whether the evidence required to discharge the duty would withstand regulatory scrutiny.
This is the fifth article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. In December 2025 the Department of Defence was convicted and fined $188,000 — the first conviction of a Commonwealth employer for failing to manage psychosocial risks. The case exposed the gap between documented policy and the manager capability required to operate controls when psychosocial risk emerges during performance management.
This is the fourth article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. In September 2025 SafeWork NSW issued a prohibition notice to UTS during a major restructure, halting meetings with around 800 staff over a serious and imminent risk of psychological harm. The regulator did not stop the commercial decision — it stopped the process. For executive teams, organisational change is now a work health and safety process, and psychosocial controls belong before the announcement.
This is the third article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. Five developments — matured regulation, the changing nature of work, expanded stakeholder expectations, an evidence-of-effectiveness standard, and evolving executive governance — have converged to move psychosocial safety from an operational WHS issue to a board-level governance concern.
Serious psychological injury claims in Australia have risen 161 per cent in a decade — the largest increase of any injury category — even as spending on wellbeing programs has never been higher. The dominant response is not working because psychosocial risk is created by executive decisions but delegated to functions with no authority to change them. This is the first article in a new weekly series introducing The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint™, an executive operating model for governing psychosocial safety.
This is the second article in a weekly series on psychosocial hazard management in Australia. Four figures frame the financial case for CFOs and CROs: 161 per cent growth in serious psychological injury claims, nearly five times the median time lost, $2.8 billion in annual cost in NSW alone, and up to $39 billion nationally in lost participation and productivity. The article argues that prevention belongs in the capability investment conversation, not the compliance budget, and that psychosocial safety is an executive governance capability.
This is the third article in a three-part series on psychosocial hazard regulation in Australia. The regulatory architecture for psychosocial hazard management is now settled across all Australian jurisdictions. What is not settled is employer practice. The gap between what the law requires and what most organisations are actually doing is precisely what regulators are beginning to target.
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