By Charlie Cole
The complaint was investigated. The file was closed. The hazard was still there. A worker was injured while a serious concern went unanswered – and the investigation missed a critical question. Could your organisation be making the same mistake?
When I was a regulator, I attended a workplace to make enquiries into a serious concern that an employee had raised about a co-worker, with their manager. The complaint was twofold: there had been an altercation between the employee and a co-worker, and the manager had been informed and had done nothing about it.
When the employee raised the issue, the manager told the worker they were too busy to deal with it but would look into it when things calmed down. This was a retail store during peak season. The manager held on to the complaint, noting it was a serious matter and that he would action it as soon as he could. But while he waited for a quieter period, the impacted worker sustained a psychological injury and lodged a workers’ compensation claim. At that point, the matter was escalated to HR and an investigation followed.
That investigation examined the actions of the individuals involved. It reviewed the manager’s failure to respond and the circumstances of the complaint. It was conducted as per the organisation’s procedure, which led to findings, recommendations, and was ultimately closed.
But from an OHS perspective, the inquiry shouldn’t have stopped there.
The question the investigation didn’t ask
There was another question that needed to be considered. Was the manager’s role during peak season designed in a way that allowed them to respond when a worker raised a serious concern?
The manager was required to work on the floor while simultaneously carrying their management responsibilities during one of the busiest periods of the year. The complaints system itself wasn’t absent, employees had received training and information at various points of their employment, and managers had received robust training on receiving and actioning complaints. The pathway for raising a concern existed. But the system hadn’t accounted for whether the person responsible for responding to that concern had sufficient capacity to do so during peak seasonal periods.
That was a system failure. The investigation didn’t address it, not because it wasn’t important, but because there was no OHS overview or input into the investigation process.
The investigation addressed who did what, but it didn’t ask why the conditions existed for it to happen. That distinction, between individual conduct and the system of work, is where many workplace investigations fall short when it comes to psychosocial risk.
Conduct vs. conditions
When an organisation treats a psychosocial incident purely as a behavioural matter between individuals, it risks overlooking the employer’s broader obligation to identify, assess and control hazards arising from how work is designed, organised and managed.
In this case, the hazard wasn’t just a manager who failed to act. It was a system of work that made failure to act predictable. High workload during peak periods, no escalation pathway for serious complaints, and a management structure that assumed supervisors could absorb competing demands without limit, are the psychosocial hazards that are embedded in the design of work. They don’t show up in an investigation scoped to individual conduct.
The organisation reviewed its complaint process and realised there was a gap. The control turned out to be straightforward. A new escalation pathway was developed so that during peak seasonal periods, the manager could immediately escalate serious complaints to a senior health and safety manager. The conditions that had allowed the risk to exist were changed.
Where this gap sits
Australian jurisdictions now expect employers and PCBUs address psychosocial hazards through their workplace health and safety frameworks. The obligation on employers is to identify, assess, control and review or revise risks in the way work is designed, organised and managed. That obligation doesn’t stop at the boundary of an HR investigation.
Yet in practice, when a complaint is made involving worker conduct and an injury follows, the organisational response often defaults to an investigation framed around the individuals. HR follows it processes, the complaint is investigated, findings are made about the people involved and outcomes are determined. The complaint is then closed.
None of that is wrong. But if it’s the only response, the system of work that created the conditions for the incident remains unexamined and unchanged. The hazard persists. The next worker walks into the same gap.
This isn’t a failure of HR, it’s a structural problem. In many organisations, HR and OHS sit beside each other. HR manages conduct and complaints, OHS manages physical hazards and compliance. Psychosocial risk doesn’t sit neatly in either lane. When a workplace complaint also involves a potential hazard in the design of work, the employer’s obligation to manage both individual conduct and health and safety needs to be addressed as a whole. That requires HR and OHS to work together, not in parallel.
The changes you can make immediately
If your organisation conducts workplace investigations into psychosocial incidents, ask whether those investigations also examine the system of work, or whether the focus is only on the behaviour of individuals. Regardless of whether a complaint is upheld or an injury occurs, the follow-up question should be: did the way work was designed, organised or managed create the conditions for this to happen?
An investigation that examines only individual conduct while leaving the system of work untouched hasn’t resolved the risk. It’s just closed the file.
Charlie Cole is the co- founder of Clear Boundaries, a consultancy specialising in psychosocial risk, workplace investigations, and leadership training. A former WorkSafe Victoria Psychosocial Inspector, Charlie spent 11 years conducting inspections, investigating complaints, and issuing compliance notices. She previously served 11 years with New Zealand Police and Victoria Police.
