The five questions that can change a check-in conversation

The acronym stands for Stimulating, Mastery, Agency, Relational, and Tolerable Demands. Danielle shared a manager’s experience using it in a routine one-on-one. By the end of the conversation, he'd discovered his team member was struggling with a university course, considering leaving the team for a client, and quietly overwhelmed. He was able to help with all three, and afterwards he told Danielle: 

"If I didn't have that framework and that language, I would not have asked her about uni,

I would not have asked her about her work relationships, and we could have lost an amazing talent." 

That outcome is not unusual. What's worth understanding is why frameworks like this one work, and how it compares to others in the space. 

Where does SMART come from? 

The SMART Work Design model was developed by Professor Sharon K. Parker, a John Curtin Distinguished Professor in Organisational Behaviour at Curtin University's Centre for Transformative Work Design, in collaboration with Dr Caroline Knight from UQ Business School. It was formally published in Human Resource Management journal in 2024, though it has been in active use and development for considerably longer. 

Prof Parker is one of the world's most cited researchers on work design. Her work has been cited more than 26,000 times internationally and she was recognised on the Stanford University World's Top 2% Scientists list. The SMART model draws on decades of empirical research across multiple industries and has been validated by quantitative surveys measuring job satisfaction, wellbeing, and retention outcomes. 

As Dr Knight put it when the research was published: "Offering an already overworked and burnt-out employee productivity tips and ways to assert healthy boundaries isn't helpful, when it's clear the job entails long hours and unreasonable workloads. The SMART framework encourages managers to think more broadly about how they curate work that allows their employees to thrive." 

It sits within the broader Thrive at Work initiative, also led by the Future of Work Institute, which frames work design around three goals: helping people get well, stay well, and be the best they can be. 

What does each element actually mean? 

The five characteristics are straightforward enough to use in a conversation, but each one maps to specific psychosocial hazards recognised under current WHS obligations. 

• S — Stimulating: Work that uses a person's skills, offers variety, and feels meaningful. Roles low in stimulation generate boredom and disengagement, which are recognised psychosocial risk factors. 
• M — Mastery: Knowing what's expected, having the skills to deliver it, and receiving feedback on how you're going. Low mastery typically reflects role ambiguity or poor change management — both formal psychosocial hazards. 
• A — Agency: Having some control over how, when, and in what order work is done. Low agency is one of the most consistently identified contributors to workplace stress across the research literature. 
• R — Relational: Quality of relationships at work — with team members, leaders, and clients. Social isolation and poor working relationships are both listed as psychosocial hazards under the model WHS Regulations. 
• T — Tolerable Demands: Workload and pressure that is demanding but manageable. The distinction matters: some demand is healthy and motivating; demands that consistently exceed capacity are harmful. 



Taken together, the framework maps closely onto what Australian WHS regulations now require employers to identify and control. It gives managers a practical way into those conversations without requiring them to understand the regulatory framework in detail. 

What does the evidence say? 

In a study of 1,300 healthcare and social assistance workers in NSW, conducted by Curtin University and the University of Sydney and funded by Insurance and Care NSW (icare) over 18 months, the results were clear. Professor Parker summarised the core finding: 

"Individuals with high SMART work design, compared to those with moderate or low SMART work design,

report lower levels of burnout and mental ill-health, lower intention to leave, and higher job satisfaction." 

The same study found that 37% of healthcare workers reported not having enough time to do their work, 40% said their jobs were highly emotionally demanding, and 22% reported high work-related burnout. The framework was used to redesign work in ways that directly addressed those conditions, through changes to how work was structured and managed. 

PwC's early experience, as Danielle described at the event, reflects a similar dynamic. In the first six months of the Work Well, Stay Well program, giving managers language and structure for check-in conversations was already producing retention outcomes that would otherwise have been missed. 

How does it compare to other frameworks? 

SMART is not the only structured approach to this space. A few others are worth knowing about. 

The Job Demands-Resources model (JD-R), developed by Bakker and Demerouti, is the dominant academic framework underpinning most psychosocial risk work globally. It maps the relationship between job demands (what depletes) and job resources (what sustains) and has been validated across dozens of industries. SMART can be understood as a practical, manager-facing application of the same underlying logic; it’s easier to use in a one-on-one, and more actionable than the JD-R in a people leader context. 

The PERMA model, developed by psychologist Martin Seligman, covers Positive emotion, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment. It's a broader wellbeing model used frequently in coaching and leadership development. PERMA is more oriented toward individual flourishing than work design specifically, which makes it a useful complement to SMART but a less precise tool for identifying psychosocial risk. 

The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire (COPSOQ) is a more comprehensive diagnostic tool used to measure psychosocial risk at an organisational level. It covers a wide range of factors including job demands, control, social support, and role clarity. It's better suited to organisational assessment and benchmarking than manager check-ins. 

ISO 45003, the global standard for managing psychological health and safety at work, provides the regulatory and governance framework into which all of these tools sit. It's a management system standard rather than a check-in framework, but it gives SMART and similar tools their organisational legitimacy. 

What distinguishes SMART in practice is its accessibility. It was explicitly designed to be used by managers in ordinary conversations, not just by psychologists or safety professionals. That's where PwC found the value and it's why frameworks like this one are increasingly relevant for HR and people leaders trying to build manager capability at scale. 

How should HR professionals use these tools? 

The most direct application is as a manager check-in tool, a structured way to move beyond "how are you going?" and into a conversation that surfaces what's actually happening for someone. 

Margherita Maini, Managing Director of Culture, Leadership and Talent at PwC, described how her team is embedding the SMART framework into goal-setting conversations at the beginning of the year: 

"Let's not just say, 'What are you working on this year?' Let's talk about what a really good achievement looks like.

And ask, ‘And how are you looking after yourself to do that work?’" 

Integrating performance and wellbeing in the same conversation is a practical expression of what good work design looks like in a people leader context. It doesn't require a new process, just a different set of questions. 

For HR professionals, the framework also offers a useful lens for reviewing roles and team structures. Each of the five elements maps to psychosocial hazards that are now formally regulated. If your managers are consistently finding that people score low on Mastery or Agency, that's a job design problem — not a personal one. 

More information on the SMART Work Design model is available via Curtin University's Future of Work Institute at futureofworkinstitute.com.au. 

If you'd like to talk through how to build manager capability in this space within your organisation, get in touch with The Next Step.