Australia spent a decade teaching workers to be more resilient. Claims went up 161%. Here is what everybody got wrong.
Safe Work Australia publishes the causes of serious mental stress claims. Harassment and workplace bullying account for 33.2%. Work pressure accounts for another 24.2%. Exposure to violence and harassment makes up 15.7% more.
Take the first two together and you have 57.4% of Australia's psychological injury. Those are not accidents, and they are not weather. They are things specific people do, and most of those people are senior to the person it lands on.
It is asking the person being harmed to get better at being harmed.
Every survey, every app, every half-day on managing your own stress works on the person receiving the pressure. None of it goes near the person generating it. You can run all of it and the hazard is still sitting in the executive meeting on Monday morning.
Since 1 December 2025, every Australian state and territory has enforceable obligations to identify, assess and control psychosocial hazards. Prevent, not respond. Victoria was the last jurisdiction to close.
In March 2026 SafeWork NSW added 51 inspectors, 20 of them focused on psychosocial safety, backed by a $127.7m enforcement investment.
On 1 July 2026, under s26A of the NSW WHS Act, approved Codes of Practice stopped being advisory guidance and became legally enforceable compliance benchmarks.
And in Secretary, NSW Department of Education v SafeWork NSW (No 2), two psychosocial improvement notices were upheld. One employee complaint was enough to sustain the duty.
A system finds hazards. It cannot change the person generating one. When your risk register says “leadership behaviour” or “work pressure”, you have reached the end of what a process can do, and the beginning of what has to happen in a room.
We are not a compliance product and we will never tell you we are.
We do not certify anyone. Your WHS consultant or platform does that work and you should have one. We do the layer above it, which is the human change your system will eventually tell you that you need.
Serious psychological injury claims in Australia hit 17,600 in FY2023-24, up 161% over the decade. The median claim costs AU$67,400 and takes 35.7 weeks off work, against AU$16,300 and a fraction of the time for other serious claims. Since 1 July 2026 in NSW, codes of practice are legally enforceable benchmarks rather than guidance. Bullying, harassment and work pressure account for 57.4% of these claims, and both of those causes originate above the people they harm.
Work delivered personally by our founder, Cameron Quin.
Twenty minutes, no charge. If we are not right for you, we will say so, and we will point you to the people who should be doing it.
Which one is closest, right now?
How we hold a room safely, written down before you ask.
Our safeguards