For local government

Nearly a year in. Did anything actually change?

For council CEOs, directors and the managers who hold the budget. 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.

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Dr Brad Hodge speaking to a leadership group

The moment

The duty is positive. The paperwork is not the point.

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. Ten 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

Some of this will be familiar.

What I hear from councils
- An executive asking what the council's exposure actually is, and needing an answer that is more than a risk register
- A People and Culture team of a handful, covering depots, libraries, maternal and child health, planning and the customer centre, all with different pressures
- A staff survey that says almost exactly what it said last year, and a leadership group that has stopped expecting it to move
- Frontline teams absorbing abuse from the public, and a wellbeing offer that is an EAP number on a poster
- Amalgamated roles and restructures that nobody was given time to absorb
What is actually going on
- None of that is a resilience problem. It is a design problem, and design belongs to leaders
- People do not break under challenge. They break when they are cut off from the work they came for, and left carrying loads nobody chose and nobody sees
- Which is why the wellbeing day never moved the number. It treated the person instead of the conditions

How I work

I will never sell you the instrument.

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

Where to start.

1 · Free

The five-minute check

What's most likely wearing your team down, and one thing to change this week.

Start the check

2 · After the check

Talk it through

Twenty minutes on your result: what it means for your team, and what I'd try first.

3 · If it's worth it

Hear from the team

I listen to your team, play it back to you, then spend half a day with them that ends in one move worth making.

Looking for a talk for a conference or an all-staff day? See Speaking.

For councillors. A chamber is a team too, with its own conditions, and the tone it sets travels all the way down the organisation. I work with councillor groups as well as with staff: a talk or a working session on how the chamber works together, and with the executive.

Is this the right thing

Worth doing, or worth skipping.

This is for you if
- You have a psychosocial risk register and no real confidence it is changing anything
- Your survey has told you the same thing more than twice
- You want something your directors and your frontline supervisors can both use
- You would rather change how the work is designed than run another awareness session
It is not for you if
- You want a compliance document. There are cheaper people for that, and it will not reduce your risk
- You want the survey tool itself. That is free and I am not going to charge you for it
- You want it done to your leaders rather than with them. The plan has to be theirs or it will not survive the first hard month

Where to start

Start a conversation.

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.

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.