Thought Leadership

Author: Dr Anna Kiaos  |  Published: 23 February 2026 Every year, thousands of Australian organisations run an engagement survey, receive a score, and assume they understand their culture. A 72% engagement rate. A 4.1 out of 5 on “I feel valued at work.” A slight uptick on psychological safety questions compared to last year. Leadership looks at the dashboard, notes the improvement, and moves on. Meanwhile, a team on a remote site hasn’t had a psychologically safe conversatio

Dr Anna Kiaos   |  Organisational Ethnographer & Founder, Mind Culture Life Australia February 2026 The Australian mining industry has invested more heavily in workforce mental health than almost any other sector. Employee Assistance Programs, mental health first aid training, R U OK campaigns, peer support networks, wellbeing apps, and resilience workshops have become standard features of the operational landscape. By any measure of effort and expenditure, the industry is ta

Dr Anna Kiaos  |  Mind Culture Life Australia  |  February 2026 In June 2025, Safe Work Australia released its Research and Evaluation Strategy, setting out five priority focus areas to guide national research efforts in work health and safety and workers’ compensation. Two of those priorities are particularly significant when considered together: psychosocial harm prevention and recovery, and advances in technology including AI, automation and automated machines. The strateg

Dr Anna Kiaos  |  Mind Culture Life Australia  |  February 2026 Every leader I work with faces the same tension. They need their people to perform. They need results, accountability, targets met, standards maintained. At the same time, they’re being told — by regulators, by their own People and Culture teams, by the growing pile of workers’ compensation claims on their desk — that they need to manage psychosocial risk. So they try to do both. Push hard, but also be supportive

Dr Anna Kiaos | Mind Culture Life Australia | February 2026 There is a conversation happening in every boardroom, every government department and every hospital in the country right now. It's about AI, and it usually goes something like this: How many roles can we automate? How much can we save? How fast can we move? There is another conversation happening in the corridors, the staff rooms and the group chats. It goes more like this: What happens to me? Does what I do still m

Dr Anna Kiaos | Mind Culture Life Australia There's a conversation happening in every university in Australia right now. It's happening in hallways after faculty meetings, in private group chats between colleagues and in the quiet despair of academics staring at another AI policy update they didn't ask for and don't feel ready to implement. The conversation isn't about whether AI is useful. Most people accept that it is. The conversation is about what AI is doing to the peopl

As a researcher focused on organisational culture and mental health, I have spent years examining how systems, leadership behaviours and workplace structures shape psychological wellbeing. What is becoming increasingly clear is that artificial intelligence is not simply another operational tool — it is a structural force that will redefine how humans experience work. Much of the public conversation around AI has centered on productivity, automation and economic disruption. Fa

Rehabilitation counsellors who work with psychological injury claims occupy one of the most challenging positions in the workplace wellbeing ecosystem. They sit at the intersection of individual trauma, organisational dysfunction, insurance imperatives, and legislative frameworks—tasked with helping injured workers return to the very environments that allegedly harmed them. I've spent years researching organisational culture and its psychological costs. What rehabilitation co

Psychological injury claims in NSW have been rising steadily over the past decade. In response, the NSW Government has introduced significant reforms to the workers compensation scheme that will change how psychological injuries are assessed, supported and compensated. While the reforms are framed around improving sustainability and strengthening return-to-work outcomes, they carry real implications for injured employees. If you are experiencing a work-related psychological i

To be authentically happy is a goal most of us expect to achieve throughout the precious journey of life. Yet along the way, we make decisions we later regret — decisions we believed would make us happy. In doing so, we often restrain the very creativity and uniqueness required to feel truly fulfilled. On the day you were born, you gave the world something extraordinary: you. You arrived with gifts — creativity, individuality, potential — waiting to be explored. The world has

By Dr Anna Kiaos, Researcher & Founder, Mind Culture Life Australia As a researcher in workplace mental health, I have spent years examining why well-intentioned organisations continue to struggle with burnout, stress, anxiety, and psychological injury — even when they invest heavily in wellbeing initiatives. What the research consistently shows is this: mental health at work does not break because people are weak. It breaks because pressure is unmanaged. Policies exist. EAPs

Workplaces across Australia are struggling with rising psychological injury claims, declining return-to-work outcomes, and increasing pressure on workers’ compensation systems. Much of the public discussion focuses on numbers — cost blowouts, claim duration and scheme sustainability. But when we look more closely, a quieter story emerges. It is a story about men at work , how grief and psychological distress show up in masculine-coded environments, and how organisational resp

A Closer Look at Psychological Injury, Rising Costs, and System Strain I come to this work as a researcher who has spent years listening to workers’ experiences of injury, recovery, and return to work — particularly where psychological harm is involved. Again and again, I see the same pattern: people are not only injured by their work, but often further harmed by the systems meant to support them. Workers’ compensation data is frequently discussed in abstract terms — costs, s

Have you ever wondered why you react the way you do in certain situations? Why some relationships feel inexplicably familiar? Why patterns seem to repeat in your life despite your best efforts to change? The answer lies beneath the surface of your conscious awareness, in the realm of unconscious drives and basic life instincts that shape our behaviour in ways we rarely recognise. This exploration draws from the profound intersection of psychoanalysis and contemplative wisdom

When a worker is injured, the focus is usually clear: treat the body, manage the claim, and support a return to work plan. But growing Australian research shows that for many workers, the most damaging injury doesn’t come from the original incident — it develops quietly after  the claim begins. This is known as secondary psychological injury , and it is now recognised as a major driver of prolonged recovery, delayed return to work, and escalating compensation costs. At Mind

Why I Studied Men, Grief, and Work As a researcher working at the intersection of psychology, culture, and organisations, I’ve long been interested in how unspoken rules shape behaviour at work — especially when people are at their most vulnerable. Grief is one of those experiences that everyone will face at some point. Yet in workplaces, grief is often treated as something to be managed quickly , contained privately , or fixed altogether . For men, this pressure is amplified

As a researcher, I have spent years inside organisations observing how people speak, behave, and manage themselves at work. What has consistently struck me is not the absence of authenticity, but at times, how carefully it is performed . In many contemporary workplaces, employees are encouraged to “bring their whole selves to work,” to be open, genuine, and values-aligned. On the surface, this appears progressive and human-centred. Yet through ethnographic research, I began t

As a researcher working at the intersection of organisational culture and mental health, I am often brought into organisations at moments of concern — when stress is rising, when change has unsettled people, or when something feels “off” but cannot be easily named. What I have learned through ethnographic research is that psychosocial hazards rarely sit neatly within policies, procedures, or survey results. They are lived, relational, and often hidden — not because organisati

As a researcher, I spend a great deal of time watching what people do at work — but even more time listening to what they cannot easily say . Over years of ethnographic and qualitative research, I have repeatedly encountered the same pattern across organisations, industries, and roles: employees speak one way in formal settings and another way everywhere else. They perform confidence, alignment, and commitment on the surface, while privately negotiating doubt, ambivalence, fr

I have spent much of my research career immersed in organisations — listening to how people speak, watching how they behave, and paying close attention to what often goes unsaid. Again and again, I have been struck by the same realisation: organisations do far more than coordinate work. They shape how employees experience themselves. Culture in organisations is rarely neutral. It is lived, felt, negotiated, and often internalised in ways that influence how people think, feel,