The partnership that most organisations still haven't made

At a recent event hosted by The Next Step and The Safe Step at PwC's Barangaroo offices, this came into sharp focus. The panel included senior mental health, people and safety leaders from Westpac, PwC, and Team Global Express, and the question of who owns psychosocial risk generated one of the most honest exchanges of the evening.

Danielle Odd, Director of Wellbeing, Health and Safety at PwC, put it simply:

"It's all three. It's a safety issue, a people and culture responsibility, and a leadership challenge."

What's the regulatory context?

From December 2025, every Australian jurisdiction now requires employers to explicitly identify, assess, and control psychosocial hazards, completing a national shift that has been building since the 2023 amendments to the Work Health and Safety Act.

Large employers of 200 or more staff are already experiencing heightened regulatory scrutiny, with increased audits and investigations

underway.

A disconnect between P&C and WHS often leads to delays in risk identification, poor communication, and inconsistencies in managing psychosocial risks. For people leaders, that disconnect creates a compliance exposure.

What are the organisations doing this well getting right?

Jo Cairns, Chief People Officer at Team Global Express, described a deliberate structural choice. People and safety at TGE co-design everything. Both teams are jointly accountable to governance committees and separate leadership forums are dedicated to keeping both aligned.

"This is the first role I've had where I have responsibility for both people and safety,” Jo said.

“When you've got those themes combined, it really enables you to put cultural outcomes at the heart of what you're doing."

At PwC, Danielle and Margherita Maini, Managing Director of Culture, Leadership and Talent, sit within the same leadership team. Their psychosocial risk data and engagement data are presented as a single narrative.

"When you hear from either of us, we are singing from the same hymn sheet," Margherita affirmed.

The consistency of message matters. When safety and P&C are telling different stories to leadership, each gets treated as a separate agenda item. When they're aligned, the conversation becomes strategic.

Our partner firm, The Strategic Step Advisory, are seeing more C-suites finding confidence in connecting safety and HR functions. As Rod Maule, Principal Advisor – HSE Critical Risk, Safety Culture & Organisational Performance notes:

“The importance and benefits of HR and Safety experts collaborating to improve an organisations ability to identify and manage psychosocial risk factors is becoming increasingly obvious to leaders in this space.”

What happens when these functions are siloed?

In 2025, Safe Work Australia reported serious psychological claims in Australia have risen 161% over the past decade, with mental health conditions now accounting for 12% of all serious workers' compensation claims. The median time lost is 37 weeks, compared to seven weeks for other injuries. The median compensation paid is $65,400.

Workplace mental ill health is estimated to cost Australian businesses up to $39 billion each year in lost participation and productivity. These numbers reflect, in part, the consequence of risks that were visible somewhere in the business, like in engagement surveys, turnover data, or performance conversations, but were never connected to change. P&C has the data. Safety has the framework. When they work separately, they’re operating with incomplete information.

What I'd encourage people leaders to do

Psychosocial risk is a core People & Culture responsibility with a WHS regulatory dimension.

Bring your engagement and people data into the same conversation as your safety data. Co-design your response with your safety counterparts. Make sure your leadership capability programs address psychosocial risk directly, because leaders, as every panellist at this event agreed, are the single greatest lever for either generating or reducing harm.

Dave Burroughs, Chief Mental Health Officer at Westpac and Principal Psychologist at Australian Psychology Services, said it on the night:

"Unless there's absolute collaboration across both, I just don't know how anyone does this well."

The Next Step works with people leaders navigating this space. Get in touch to find out how we can help.

For strategic HR, culture, safety and organisational support, contact The Strategic Step Advisory.