Guidance from the experts

Volleyball NSW and Squash Australia both walked away with recognition this year. The interesting part isn't that they won. It's how they got there, and what their stories tell other sporting organisations about the gap between policy and practice.

The gap between what a company says it stands for and what it actually does is where many risk, safety and HR failures live. It is also where most organisational energy is wasted. Values posters, town halls, lanyard cards, induction videos: a generation of artefacts aimed at shifting motivation, almost none at shifting ease.

Forty-one percent. That's the proportion of Australian workers aged 14 to 24 who report living in a state of psychological distress for six months or more. Not a bad week. Not exam stress. Six months or more of sustained mental ill health — and they haven't even hit the middle of their careers yet.

In the financial year 2022, Australia accepted 13,000 workers' compensation claims for mental health. In that same period, 4.1 million Australian workers reported living with a mental ill health condition for six months or more. That's 4.1 million out of a total workforce of 14 million and barely a fraction of them showed up in the system.