Thought Leadership

Australia now has two significant regulatory instruments governing how workplaces must manage psychosocial hazards: the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, first issued in May 2021 and updated in light of the Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025, 1 and WorkSafe Victoria's Compliance Code: Psychological Health (Edition 1, September 2025), which took effect on 1 December 2025. 2  Together, these documents represent the most substantial regul

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

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

Author Details: Dr Anna Kiaos is the Founder of Mind Culture Life Australia and a researcher at the University of New South Wales within the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health. The Australian Government’s Department of Health released its National Men’s Health Strategy 2020-2030, yet little evidence supports the strategy is effective in reducing men’s experience of stigma due to widespread hegemonic masculinity, writes Dr Anna Kiaos.   The Australian Government has re

Australian employees are increasingly lodging workers' compensation claims for psychological injury Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) appear to be the first line of defense for Human Resource departments when employees are observed to be experiencing stress and ill-mental health at work, yet are Human Resource personnel and EAP service providers as effective as they need to be? With poor mental health costing the Australian economy from $12.2 to $22.5 billion each year [1]

Dr Anna Kiaos is the Director of Mind Culture Life Australia and a researcher at the University of New South Wales within the Discipline of Psychiatry and Mental Health. Australia’s cost-of-living crisis has promulgated a need for a proportion of employees to engage in generating multiple sources of income, typically by holding concurrent employment [1] . According to the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS), in September 2024 there were 986,400 multiple job-holders (6.6% of