At the recent 2025 Wellbeing at Work Summit, People & Culture leaders from across Australia came together to talk honestly about what is really shaping workplaces right now. MEC Consulting was proud to be a partner of the Summit and part of those conversations.
What struck me most wasn’t a new wellbeing trend or framework. It was how consistent the stories were.
For years, People & Culture leaders have understood that wellbeing at work is a powerful driver of performance. They’ve seen firsthand how employee wellbeing, psychological safety and organisational wellbeing influence productivity, engagement and retention. They’ve long understood what we see every day through our workplace wellbeing consulting services – that wellbeing is not soft, it’s strategic.
And yet, many acknowledged something quietly but candidly: while P&C leaders have known the benefits of workplace wellbeing as a high-performance tool, it has often taken a compliance “stick” for broader leadership to truly engage.
The introduction of WHS obligations around psychosocial hazards has shifted the conversation. Suddenly, workload, role clarity, leadership behaviour and poorly managed change aren’t just cultural concerns — they’re workplace safety and wellbeing issues. They sit alongside physical risks, with the same expectation of identification, control and review.
For many, this has been the game-changer.
Not because leaders don’t care about workplace wellbeing, but because competing priorities have historically pushed wellbeing down the list. Compliance has given leaders permission (and leverage) to pause, redesign work, and ask harder questions about how work is actually experienced.
One leader described it perfectly:
“We always cared about wellbeing. We just didn’t always have the authority to say no… until the legislation gave us the backing.”
What was interesting, though, was what happened next.
As organisations began addressing psychosocial safety, the work quickly moved beyond registers and policies. Leaders started listening differently. Teams began naming pressures they had normalised for years. Conversations shifted from “pushing through” to “working better”.
Again and again, these discussions naturally led to the same place: change management and engagement.
Almost every conversation at the Summit – regardless of industry – eventually came back to how change was being managed. Poorly sequenced initiatives. Competing priorities. Unclear communication. Constant urgency. It became clear that poorly managed change is itself a psychosocial hazard, and that wellbeing during change must be intentionally designed, not left to chance.
This is the space where human-centred change management makes the biggest difference. Organisations that were seeing real improvements in wellbeing weren’t running more programs, they were managing change better. They were pacing delivery, engaging people earlier, and equipping leaders to have better conversations.
This is where positive psychology at work showed up most clearly – not as theory, but as practice. When people feel psychologically safe, supported and clear on what’s expected, performance lifts. When leaders are supported in their own leadership wellbeing, they lead with more clarity and less urgency. And when wellbeing is embedded into everyday decisions, teams become more resilient and adaptable.
One leader summed it up simply: “Once people weren’t operating in survival mode, everything worked better.”
That link between psychosocial safety and performance was one of the strongest themes of the Summit. High-performing teams aren’t driven harder; they’re designed better. Workplace wellbeing isn’t about removing challenge; it’s about creating the conditions where people can meet it.
Compliance may be the reason many organisations are starting this work now. But the most effective organisations aren’t stopping at obligation. They’re using psychosocial hazard requirements as a catalyst to build better systems, stronger leadership capability, and healthier ways of working, strengthening long-term organisational wellbeing in the process.
This is where compliance turns into capability.
At MEC Consulting, this is the space we work in every day – helping organisations respond to psychosocial hazards, workplace mental health obligations and WHS requirements in ways that genuinely improve how work feels, how change lands, and how teams perform.
We support organisations to embed workplace wellbeing, employee wellbeing, leadership wellbeing and wellbeing during change into the way work is designed and led — using practical, human-centred approaches grounded in positive psychology and real-world change experience.
Because while the stick may start the conversation, it’s what organisations do next that determines whether wellbeing becomes a checkbox — or a turning point.
Ready to turn compliance into meaningful wellbeing?
If you’re navigating psychosocial hazard obligations, rising change fatigue, or simply want to build a healthier, more sustainable workplace, we’d love to talk.
👉 Contact MEC Consulting to start the conversation.
