What’s Not Working In Australian Workplace Health

We've never had more resources invested in workplace health, yet issues are worsening. Here's what's not working and how to improve it.

1. The modern Australian workplace presents a paradox: we have never had better tools, awareness and support for worker health, yet burnout rates are climbing, work-life boundaries are blurred, and workplace wellness isn’t delivering what it promised. These challenges are not solely employer failures, they are results of broader changes in work culture, technology access and society's expectations.

These are not insurmountable challenges, but they are opportunities for innovation, leadership and meaningful changes in approach to worker health.

The Burnout Epidemic

The World Health Organisation identified burnout— definition: workplace stress left unmanaged—as an occupational phenomenon in 2019. The WHO further characterised burnout through three dimensions:

1. Feelings of energy depletion or exhaustion;

2. Increased mental distance from one’s job, or feelings of negativism or cynicism related to one's job; and

3. Reduced professional efficacy.

The pandemic caused many people to evaluate the role of work in their lives. The searches for the term “burnout” increased from January 2022 and have continued to climb since. Interestingly, this is aligned when many workers returned to the office for prolonged periods after sustained lockdowns in 2020 and 2021.

An employer’s duty to eliminate or minimise burnout risk to workers will be further solidified as the employer’s positive duty, alongside the Model Code of Practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work matures and interpretations by tribunals and courts evolve.

The burnout problem won’t be solved through morning teas or resilience training — it requires fundamental changes to job design, organisational culture and justice, and leadership. While this may seem insurmountable, small positive changes such as utilising tools to understand worker wellbeing using research-validated tools can help employers understand their workforce's wellbeing support needs.

Work-Life Balance Struggles

Hybrid working arrangements and working from home have blurred the lines between work and home. Many workers now take work computers and devices to their home to perform work during work hours, but this also makes it easier for them to complete work outside of these hours. In addition, flexible working arrangements, including varied work hours, can see requests landing at all times of the day.

The Right to Disconnect laws, introduced in 2024, give eligible workers the right to refuse contact from their employer outside of working hours. However, many workers already had similar protections in place prior to this legislation. It will be interesting to see how disputes related to this legislation are managed by tribunals and courts over time.

Employer contributions to poor work-life balance include excessive job demands, interpersonal conflict and poor organisational culture or justice. Even if the job demands do not require significant work outside of working hours, work-related stress from conflict and culture can impact the workers’ ability to enjoy activities outside of work.

Workers can optimise their physical and mental health outside of work through sufficient physical activity, healthy eating, sleep and mindfulness practices. While these do not negate the need for employers to minimise impacts, they do provide practical actions that workers can implement immediately.

Lack Of Preventive Health Initiatives

Workplace wellness grew in popularity, and possibly peaked, over the past ten years. Employers were promised a 4-12x return on investment for workplace wellness spend, but most employers were not even able to measure the impact of their wellness initiatives.

The poor returns were driven by poor wellness performance measures that were difficult to quantify, a lack of clear strategy and action plans, and insufficient resources. Many employers launched wellness programs with great intentions and fanfare, which are now archaic pages on their intranet (although they still get a line in job adverts).

Innovative employers will transition from abstract workplace wellness to tangible workplace health initiatives over the coming years. This is consistent with the Australian government transition from reactive to preventive health focus, evidenced by the National Health Preventive Health Strategy 2021-2030 and increase in preventive health funding from 3% to 5% of Australia’s health budget ($6 billion total preventive health spend).

Preventive health initiatives include physical activity and healthy eating, wearing a hat and sunscreen, and vaccinations. The workplace plays an important role in helping to improve health literacy and supporting workers to take positive action.

Emerging: Chronic Disease As An Organisational Risk

Chronic diseases can impact performance through increased fatigue, reduced alertness and productivity. It is associated with higher rates of injuries and illnesses, which increase workers' compensation claims and premiums. At an industry level, chronic disease can cause accelerated health decline, leading to skilled and experienced workers leaving the industry.

Despite chronic disease impact on workers, employers and the wider industry, most employers have not considered putting it on their organisational risk register. Proactive organisations that have identified and documented chronic disease risk are able to allocate resources to mitigate chronic disease risks and better supporting worker health. These may include holistic initiatives such as physical activity, healthy eating, sleep and mindfulness support, alongside more tailored interventions and management for workers.

The “move more, eat better” message can seem overly simple, but it is effective. Research from Losina et. al., in 2017 found that physical activity alone reduced unplanned absence in workers with and without chronic disease. Interestingly, the total unplanned absence for healthy with a low physical activity level was similar to those with chronic disease and high physical activity level.

Chronic disease is a challenging risk to manage, as employers cannot ask about worker health status pre-employment or require disclosure during employment. However, the employer is directly impacted. Government initiatives that encourage employer support for managing chronic diseases may assist management of chronic disease by recognising the workplace as a key touchpoint for worker health.

Conclusion

The challenges facing the Australian workplace health reflect the complexity of modern work environments, including the work environment in the home. These challenges cannot be resolved through quick fixes and they require fundamental changes to organisational culture, job design and leadership.

However, Australia is taking steps in the right direction, evidenced by Right to Disconnect laws and maturing workplace health and safety legislation. The path forward presents an opportunity for employers, workers, policymakers and health professionals to collaborate on the research, design, trial and evaluation of innovative ways to use the workplace to improve the health of Australians.