For local government
The regulations landed in December 2025 and most of the first year went into documentation. I work with Victorian councils on the part a register cannot reach: the conditions your people actually work in.
The moment
Victoria's OHS (Psychological Health) Regulations 2025 commenced on 1 December 2025. They carry a positive duty: identify psychosocial hazards, then eliminate or reduce them so far as is reasonably practicable. WorkSafe published a Compliance Code alongside them. Prevention plans are encouraged rather than mandatory, which is worth knowing before someone sells you one.
Every consultant in the country sent the same message in late 2025. The regulations are coming, are you ready. Nine months on, almost nobody is asking the obvious follow-up.
Has anything genuinely changed in how your teams work day to day, or did most of the effort go into documentation?
That is the question I have been putting to people in your seat across Victorian councils, health services and higher education. The honest answers are remarkably consistent, and they are not about the register.
For context on what is at stake rather than what is required: Safe Work Australia put the median accepted psychological injury claim at $67,400 and 35.7 weeks lost. That is not a compliance number. That is a capacity number, and it lands on the same small team twice.
Your world
What I hear from councils
What is actually going on
How I work
People at Work is free, it is WorkSafe backed, and it is a good survey. I am not going to sell you a survey. What I do is read one with you, and turn it into something your directors and your frontline supervisors can both act on before the next one lands.
I am a behavioural scientist with a doctorate in psychology, and I have spent twenty years working on why capable people do what they do, across not-for-profits, health services, business and higher education. I live in Bendigo. I am not a metro import who has read about regional workforces.
Where this usually starts
Councils usually start with one of these rather than all of them, and the first piece is often smaller than people expect. We work out the shape together, and what it costs is a conversation, not a menu.
Shifts how a whole group sees the work, while they are all still in the room.
Where the leadership group settles the work and cuts the track.
Take the route down a layer and turn it into practice, on your own material.
Tests each leader's own change on real ground, which is what makes the rest hold.
They are not four alternatives. Each one does something the others cannot, and they build on each other in order. Taken together they are one guided season, and that is what I call The Expedition. Most organisations take some of it rather than all of it, which is the design working rather than a compromise.
Is this the right thing
This is for you if
It is not for you if
Where to start
Bring your council's situation as it actually is. I will tell you honestly whether this is a fit, and you will leave with at least one thing you can use either way. No pitch.
Quickest way in: grab a 30 minute conversation in my calendar. Book a 30-minute conversation → Or leave your details and I will come back to you personally.
Thanks, Brad will be in touch.
He'll follow up personally, usually within a day.
Only Human
The diagnostic is the fastest way to find out. It is free, it takes about five minutes, and it shows you the conditions you are creating for the people around you. Take the diagnostic →
Or leave your details for a short piece of thinking, every so often, written for leaders who are curious about the humans they lead, including themselves.