WHOSE RESPONSIBILITY IS IT ANYWAY?

29 July

Do you know what the most vital safety control is for psychosocial hazards?

You might think resources, information or training — which are all vital — but in our experience, the answer is leadership. We spoke about this at the 2024 Psychosocial Risk Management conference in Sydney. Since then, we’ve continued to work with leaders in different organisations to bring their psychosocial risk programs and initiatives to life, sometimes through leadership programs.

We were ready to take this insight into a full-day workshop with an Australian insurance underwriter in Sydney this month. Our hunch going in was that leaders may not be equipped with the knowledge and capability required to properly engage their teams on psychosocial risk management. But as the EM team boarded their flight back to the Gold Coast, they had their eureka moment — accountability was the real barrier.

And it makes sense; Australian workplaces are navigating new expectations, and many health and safety leaders are now holding responsibilities that once sat squarely in the HR and People domain.

But with this shift in regulations comes a risk: when accountability is concentrated in one role, everyone else can feel like it’s no longer their job to act. Ironically, sometimes the more we formalise and concentrate responsibility, the more we can unintentionally weaken the shared ownership that safety culture depends on.

For the workshop facilitator, Everyday Massive CEO, Toby Harrison, it reminded him a lot of a quote he heard while studying politics in the UK.

“Nobody made a greater mistake than he who did nothing because he could do only a little.”

ENTER THE DISENGAGED MIDDLE

The strongest safety cultures we see are those where everyone understands they have a role to play in keeping the workplace safe and well, and importantly, feels empowered to act, even in small ways.

But as new risks and responsibilities emerge, middle managers and frontline leaders are often caught in the squeeze. They’re expected to be the translator, the counsellor, the coach and the compliance officer. It’s no surprise they’re the ones showing the highest rates of burnout and disengagement (see the 2025 State of the Workplace report from Gallup).

If we want people leaders to carry responsibility and accountability well, we have to set them up to succeed. That means giving them training in soft leadership skills, permission to prioritise, and space to connect with their teams in ways that feel authentic.

There’s a reason our bespoke frontline leadership programs lean heavily on so-called soft leadership skills — because they’re often the hardest to master and the most powerful in practice. For example, the APA Group leadership program we built in partnership with D3 Alliance — lead — tackled building trust and managing psychosocial risk, navigating pressure and priorities, giving feedback, influence, coaching teams, leading safety, and, importantly for APA, navigating change.

Big shifts get the spotlight, but it’s the quiet, consistent changes — the ones embedded in soft leadership — that lead to fewer major problems and smoother, more cohesive operations in the long run.

From little things

Sometimes people hesitate to act on safety or wellbeing concerns because they think it’s ‘not their job’ or ‘won’t make a difference’. This is where leadership and accountability have the biggest impact. And just like good leadership, we’re not talking about overhauling safety systems — we’re talking micro-actions. Asking a colleague if they’re okay. Reporting the near miss that seems hardly worth the effort. Speaking up in the meeting. Every little moment of individual ownership builds a culture where responsibility is normalised — and noticed.

As part of a long-term engagement with a global warehousing giant, we introduced new safety observation and reporting technology. As part of this project, we built a brand for the tech, created a narrative and connected workers at all levels to the ‘why?’ for safety observations. We leaned into emotion and helped the team to see the difference that observing and then making a report can make. We also helped uplift the capability of leaders to respond to safety observations reported by their team, and to close the loop so that team members could feel confident that when they took the step to make a report that needed manager support to fix, it would be acted upon.

More than 39,000 safety observations were recorded in the pilot alone. With 94% of those concerns closed on time. And 68% were fixed directly by the people who spotted them. The observations of team members were also awarded, providing further extrinsic motivation to use their agency and report concerns.

the secret sauce of agency

Here’s the truth: if people don’t feel they can act, it doesn’t matter what the policy says. Real responsibility is paired with agency — the belief that your action will be supported, not punished or ignored. And the way to build that agency is by showing workers that when they do feel empowered to act, leaders will listen, follow up, and address concerns.

That’s especially critical in the space of psychosocial risk. We need to move beyond technical controls to human connection. To build cultures where speaking up isn’t a form — it’s a norm.

In one psychosocial risk program we’re building with a Big Four consulting firm, we are creating practical tools that help people to have effective conversations about the way work is designed. Based on a program from the Future of Work Institute at Curtin University, the evidence-based tools support individuals and teams to build and address their agency (among other things). It asks employees to reflect on:

Whether they can decide on the order in which their work is done
Whether they are empowered to make decisions in their work
Whether they can show initiative in their approach to work

These reflections can help people determine if they feel they have enough agency to act at work. They’re also simple enough to work in any workplace context.

The launch of this particular program is happening as we hit post on this blog, so we’re keen to track the effectiveness of the program over time.

Final thoughts

There’s no doubt that accountability starts at the top — when leaders shows up consistently, it inspires teams to do the same. We’re not talking grand gestures or heroics, but the small, everyday actions: not walking past, having the tough conversation, and speaking up. Simply showing people they are empowered to speak up and celebrating when people use initiative creates a more psychosocially safe environment — one that tackles issues early and drives real change for all.

And if you need support to help shift the behaviour in your organisation so people are more open to sharing the load of accountability, get in touch. Shifting behaviour through safety, engagement and leadership programs is our specialty.