Beyond psychosocial risk compliance: the commercial case for good work design

As organisations respond to growing regulation and expectations around psychosocial risk, many have focused on identifying hazards, strengthening controls and meeting compliance obligations. While these efforts are important, they are only the starting point. Organisations that look beyond compliance and focus on good work design can unlock significant benefits for their people and their business. 

This is becoming even more important as organisations adapt to AI-enabled ways of working. Sustainable high performance in the AI era requires organisations to continually redesign work, including how people collaborate with AI tools and agentic systems. Good work design helps organisations unlock the benefits of AI while managing the psychosocial risks that can accompany rapid change.

Work design shapes the way people experience their jobs every day, including their tasks, activities, relationships and responsibilities. It’s influenced by leaders and the broader organisational system, for example, how roles and expectations are defined and the opportunities employees have to influence where, when and how their work is done.

In this article, we reflect on our experience at PwC Australia over the past year, where good work design is not only addressing psychosocial risk—but also uplifting culture, performance, productivity, innovation and retention. We describe the framework that informs our approach. And we share practical pointers for other business leaders who want to build on their psychosocial risk efforts and reap broader commercial rewards from these.

Psychosocial hazards are now a central part of work health and safety regulation, but the underlying factors they describe are rooted in extensive research on work design. Poorly designed work, excessive demands or insufficient resources can create risks to both wellbeing and performance.

For some time, we’ve collaborated with the Future of Work Institute at Curtin University, whose landmark 2017 study changed the way that many people think about work design. The Curtin team painstakingly reviewed more than 5,000 academic articles to examine the dramatic impact that work design can have. Among the striking conclusions, they found that good work design commonly delivers greater job satisfaction, skills development, and sustainable high performance. Whereas poor work design increases the prevalence of burnout and depression among workforces.

To help business leaders understand, reflect on and improve the way that work is designed, Curtin’s experts recommend a framework called SMART. The SMART framework asks whether work is stimulating, builds mastery, enables agency and positive relationships, (SMAR) while keeping demands at tolerable levels (T).

These five memorable principles—explained in everyday language—enable a two-way conversation about work design between leaders and their people. Rather than solely focusing on regulatory compliance, the SMART framework helps colleagues reflect on what is and isn’t working for them and gives them the language to articulate how to design each role. The SMART framework is also a valuable lens for evaluating AI-related change and when introducing new technologies.

Any proposed work design change should be tested against three criteria—does it work for the organisation, does it work for the team, and does it work for the individual? 

Importantly, this SMART framework isn’t just theoretical. In fact, we have used it as the foundation for our own work design program here at PwC Australia. 

Good work design in action: Work Well, Stay Well

Launched firmwide at PwC Australia in August 2025, Work Well, Stay Well is a change program anchored in sustainable high performance rather than regulatory compliance. We put the SMART principles into practice, building leadership and employee capability to have better conversations about work design. 

Work Well, Stay Well launched with a full stakeholder engagement plan, including tailored briefings and training for senior leaders and teams, as well as drop-in sessions across the country. We crafted experiential tools to embed the concepts in actual work—including practical activities to see how work demands could tip the balance on mental wellbeing and performance.

We worked with a creative design agency to ensure all our messaging and resources were easy for colleagues to relate to. The SMART principles were explained in language that reflected people’s actual working lives. (Rather than talking about ‘risk and regulatory compliance’, we talked in terms of ‘how do we keep you well and at your best at PwC?’).

Work Well, Stay Well is far from over, and the full strategic impact will be measured over years not weeks. While still in the education phase, the initiative is building awareness and creating a shared language for teams to discuss work design and its connection to wellbeing and performance.

Along the way, we’ve tightened up internal systems and increased our ability to detect (and address) psychosocial risks early. We’ve set ourselves up to meet regulatory requirements. And we’re now ready to adapt our work design further, as business conditions evolve.

But the best part of all? The momentum for better work design is now coming from all directions—from junior graduates to line managers to executives to partners.

Informed by our work alongside clients, as well as our work inside PwC Australia, we recommend 10 tactics to build work design capability and embed SMART principles into everyday practice:

1. Give yourself sufficient runway: Organisations that rush work design programs may find it more difficult to build understanding and sustained engagement. Work Well, Stay Well was designed and planned for almost a year before we launched.
2. Secure leadership buy-in: A sustainable work design program needs to enlist the whole organisation—and that only happens when executives prioritise it. Work Well, Stay Well became the third pillar of our people and culture strategy, giving it legitimacy and durability.
3. Take a change management approach: Work design programs are like any other major organisational change, so the same rules apply. For example: map your stakeholders, identify barriers to adoption, and tailor your communications accordingly.
4. Stagger education carefully: Brief leaders then roll the program out to their teams, so that leaders aren’t caught off guard and are positioned as advocates rather than bystanders. Encourage leaders to consider their own work design—not just their accountability for others – to secure their genuine support.
5. Develop bespoke resources and training: It’s hard for individuals to see themselves in ‘one-size-fits-all’ programs. For Work Well, Stay Well, we developed separate training modules for different job types, and designed case studies with specific cohorts in mind.
6. Treat this as a movement, not a mandate: Deliberately start small, creating a ‘pull not push’ momentum. There’s an unmistakable power in small groups acting as advocates. Grassroots engagement can multiply in ways that ‘top-down’ programs cannot.
7. Measure what matters: A dedicated work design survey informed by SMART principles can yield richer, more diagnostic insights than a standard staff engagement survey. Working with an academic or research partner to conduct driver analysis can help reduce guesswork and identify the work-design factors most strongly associated with retention, wellbeing and mental health.
8. Empower individuals and teams: Build the capability of individuals and teams to reflect on and articulate their work design needs. Give people the language and frameworks to speak confidently and solve problems, while ensuring that issues requiring broader changes to systems, structures or ways of working are addressed at the appropriate organisational level.
9. Bake work design into the business: When your work design program is included in HR initiatives that are already underway, it gets multiple ‘hooks’ into the organisation. Instead of being seen as a discrete, stand-alone program, work design becomes business as usual.
10. Think long term: Instead of treating work design as a project with a defined end date, make it a multi-year program. Early on, focus on awareness and language. Then work on systemic redesign. A long-term strategy allows your program to gather momentum (and impact) over time.

Leading organisations will treat psychosocial risk compliance as the starting point, not the destination. The bigger opportunity is designing work that enables people and performance to thrive together. As organisations navigate productivity pressures and rapid technological change, good work design is becoming a critical driver of sustainable high performance.

Our next and final article in this series will explore how AI is reshaping work design, the psychosocial risks and opportunities it creates, and how organisations can design work so that new technologies support both people and performance.

In collaboration with Future of Work Institute, Curtin University