22-23 October 2025, Melbourne
Day One – Wednesday 22 October 2025
8.30 Registration opens
9.00 Opening remarks from conference chair
9.05 Centring overwork and burnout as a key psychosocial risk in your organisation
- Understanding the risks of high job demands for psychological ill-health
- Negotiating potential resources and supports for employees at high risk of burnout
- Designing key strategies to ensure early detection of potential burnout
- Engaging constructively with overworked employees with a person-centred approach
- Revising expectations to balance psychosocial job demands and resources
Rachael Palmer, Manager Change, Department of Health Victoria
9.50 Utilising line manager support sustainably for best-practice psychological wellbeing
- Constructing effective strategies around the capabilities and vantage of direct supervisors
- Allocating training and resources around ‘soft skills’ to commencing line leaders
- Tackling the increased psychological strain placed on line leaders supportively
- Safeguarding coalface employees from worsening psychological health through supervisor engagement
10.35 Morning coffee break
11.05 Navigating the psychological wellbeing responsibilities of WHS and HR business functions
- Developing a realistic understanding of your shared responsibilities for psychosocial safety
- Organising key avenues for collaboration between safety and people management branches
- Generating productive outcomes between service leaders in terms of both prevention and response to psychological injury
- Situating other areas of your organisation in relation to your psychological safety response
Anji Head, Senior Manager Health Safety and Wellbeing, University of Sydney
11.50 Producing a psychologically safe and healthy culture in your organisation
- Collecting useful information around the current wellbeing culture in your organisation
- Organising meaningful interventions for an effective improvement to mental health culture
- Creating opportunities for dialogue and connection around psychological wellbeing
- Knowing the meaningful indicators of positive mental health within your teams
- Strategizing around the results of a cultural intervention based on meaningful feedback
Todd Hopwood, Manager Customer and Business Integrity, Wollongong City Council, and Mental Health Advocate
12.35 Lunch break
13.35 Understanding your legal obligations around psychosocial risk according to recent developments
- Situating your organisational psychosocial risk strategy in the context of current regulations
- Highlighting recent prosecutions and cases when updating your mental health approach
- Investigating your current psychological safety strategy for potential blind spots
- Translating legal expectations into effective psychological safety, beyond compliance
Catherine Dunlop, Partner, Maddocks
14.25 Engaging effectively with regulators around psychological health and safety
- Formulating your psychological safety strategy according to regulator expectations
- Understanding the resources and capabilities which can be accessed through regulators
- Collaborating effectively with regulators during inspections and investigations
- Keeping your relationship with safety regulators appropriate and productive
Narelle Beer, Strategic Safety and Leadership Advisor, Narelle Beer Consulting
15.10 Afternoon tea break
15.40 Case Study:
Developing psychological health and safety effectively at Bupa
- Developing maturity in your psychosocial safety strategy
- Conducting effective psychosocial risk assessments
- Utilising available data for effective safety risk management
- Producing positive outcomes within an effective Psychosocial Hierarchy of Controls
- Supporting your organisational wellbeing with commitment from leadership
Katrina Tsoutsoulis, Psychosocial Safety Lead, Bupa Asia Pacific
16.20 Collaborating effectively with Nominated Treating Doctors and care teams in psychological injury
- Building positive relationships between your employees and their support teams
- Ensuring your communications with treating professionals is meaningful and appropriate
- Taking appropriate action when working with NTDs is not productive
- Supporting an effective recovery process through regular communication with care teams
Associate Professor Caroline Johnson, Academic Specialist Primary Care, General Practice Expert and Practitioner, University of Melbourne
17.00 End of Conference Day One and Networking event
Day Two – Thursday 23 October 2025
8.00 Registration opens
8.30 Opening remarks from Chair
8.35 Upskilling your employees effectively in psychologically safe practices
- Identifying the most useful skills for creating psychologically healthy workplaces
- Developing key mental health skills for supervisors and team leaders
- Engaging internal/external partners to provide evidence-based psychological safety training
- Addressing feedback on training strategies for effective skills development in future
Irina Tchernitskaia, Manager Psychological Services, Fire Rescue Victoria
9.20 Utilising executive support to empower your psychological health and safety programs
- Approaching executive leadership teams with mental health strategies productively
- Appreciating the role of c-suite leaders as key partners in psychological health and safety
- Accessing language and data around psychological wellbeing that resonates with executives
- Utilising executive support to empower your psychological health and safety programs
Dr Megan Dobbie, Director Wellbeing Services, Principal Psychologist, Ambulance Victoria
10.05 Morning coffee break
10.35 Containing the fallout of realised psychosocial risks and critical incidents
- Situating psychosocial hazards within the context of the broader workplace
- Ensuring your incident response addresses the risks of vicarious trauma
- Assessing the long-term risks of secondary injury after a physical safety incident
- Treating psychological safety incidents in consideration of potential cumulative exposure
Nicole Fauvrelle, General Manager Health Safety and Wellbeing, Country Fire Authority
11.20 Dealing with workplace bullying and harassment risks in a psychologically safe way
- Managing different types of bullying and harassment appropriately
- Ensuring incidents of inappropriate behaviour are reported and addressed
- Addressing all involved parties respectfully in accusations of employee misconduct
- Taking account of the broader impact of bullying and harassment and your intervention
Chanelle McEnally, Chief Safety Officer, Ramsay Health Care
12.05 Lunch Break
13.05 Maintaining accurate, current, and accessible data in psychological wellbeing and safety
- Gathering reliable indicators around mental health and wellbeing in your organisation
- Accessing relevant wellbeing data with consideration for confidentiality and privacy restrictions
- Producing useful insights into organisational wellbeing based on collected data
- Supporting your mental health strategy and resourcing with useful data visualisation
Ashley Bennallack, Wellbeing Manager, Village Roadshow
13.50 Case Study:
Providing effective psychological wellbeing and check-ins through peer support – SVHM’s STAR Program
Jacqueline Bloink, STAR Peer Support Program Manager, WHS Psychosocial Risk, St Vincent’s Hospital Melbourne
14.35 Afternoon tea break
15.05 Producing effective return-to-work processes for psychologically injured employees
- Ensuring early intervention into identified risks to minimise injuries
- Engaging professionally with alleged psychological injuries
- Communicating your willingness to provide mental health support convincingly
- Providing a safe environment for psychological injury claimants returning to work
15.45 Managing the effects of change within the process of implementing mental health interventions
- Assessing relative change readiness for psychological wellbeing strategies in your teams
- Collaborating effectively with team leaders to promote buy in for wellbeing strategies
- Engaging in sincere conversations and building from employee feedback on mental health projects
- Showcasing the benefits of positive change to your executive leaders
16.25 Closing remarks from chair
16.30 End of Conference Day Two