The IAWBH2026 sessions offered a revealing snapshot of how international practitioners are grappling with bullying, harassment and gendered violence at work—and how closely these discussions align with Australia’s psychosocial‑hazard framework. Several presentations landed squarely within the Australian work health and safety (WHS) model, particularly those that treated these issues as structural hazards requiring organisational controls. Sapphire Parsons’ argument that gendered violence demands primary prevention, equitable decision‑making, and action on power imbalances mirrors the prevention‑first duties under Australian safety law.
However, there were also indications of how far the change has to go.
My recent IAWBH conference articles need an important caveat – I couldn’t be everywhere, so I chose the presentations that were of most interest to me and that I thought would provide good information and evidence and reassurance to SafetyAtWorkBlog readers. A different delegate, perhaps one from Human Resources or social work, would likely have a very different report.
The weakest alignment between the IAWBH2026 presentations and Australian approaches to managing psychological safety emerged whenever discussions drifted from hazard management into leadership aspiration. Australia’s OHS framework is unambiguous: psychosocial risks are hazards to be identified, assessed and controlled. Yet several conference sessions reverted to the familiar pattern of treating bullying, harassment and gendered violence as matters of culture, capability or interpersonal behaviour with little practical change.
Leadership‑focused narratives, particularly those emphasising “inclusive leadership”, “peer support”, or “improving capability”, may be well‑intentioned, but they sit uncomfortably alongside Australia’s legal requirement for PCBUs and employers to implement effective controls. When presenters framed psychological harm as a function of poor leadership rather than organisational design, workload, power imbalance or reporting failures, the compatibility with Australian practice and requirements weakened sharply.
Similarly, sessions that centred on case management, resource constraints or definitional debates, rather than prevention, mirrored the limitations of complaint‑driven models that Australian regulators have been trying to move beyond. These approaches risk re‑individualising what is, in law, a systemic duty.
The conference showcased valuable insights, but the weaker moments revealed a persistent international drift: treating psychological harm as a leadership challenge rather than a safety obligation. It placed Australia, I think, ahead of much of the world in preventing psychological harm at work, but it also revealed the ideological and institutional baggage impeding Australia’s progress.
What I felt was missing from this conference was a speaker who presented on the big picture: the sociological and political pressures within which employers and companies feel they must operate. Employers can produce enormous change, but they feel constrained within their country’s or industry’s economic and political culture. This culture allows and encourages the exploitation of workers’ physical and psychological health. I was hoping for a big-picture analysis, but I will have to look for another conference for that.