Building Capacity: The Next Shift in HSE Strategy
Page Published Date:
September 21, 2026
Mental health conditions now account for 12 per cent of all serious workers' compensation claims in Australia, up 14.7 per cent in a single year and 161 per cent over the past decade, according to Safe Work Australia's Key WHS Statistics Report. The median time lost for a mental health claim sits at 35.7 working weeks, roughly five times longer than the average across all serious claims.
I see the pattern behind those numbers across the organisations we work with. Psychosocial risk management has become urgent, and most of it is still reactive. Teams respond to complaints, investigate incidents, and manage claims after the fact. Very little time goes into the work that would prevent those claims in the first place, often because businesses don’t know where to start to tackle the problem.
I think the next shift in HSE has less to do with adding people to safety teams and more to do with building capacity within the teams already there.
Most safety teams are already stretched, and the usual response is to ask for more people. But headcount takes time to secure and doesn't solve the underlying problem. Teams often spend their days on the work that's easiest to measure or most visible, while the work that measurably reduces psychosocial risk gets pushed down the list. Building capacity starts with a different question: what matters most, and what can be stopped, automated or redesigned to make room for it?
In practice, this means shifting focus from tactical injury and incident management toward strategic wellbeing work: reviewing how roles are designed, how workloads are distributed, and where psychosocial risk sits inside the operating model.
Day-to-day injury and operational risk numbers continue falling across most sectors (fatalities are down 24 per cent since 2014). The next gains come from redesigning roles themselves, building strategic wellbeing into how work happens from the start.
This work sits across HR, operations and safety, and progress is only made by breaking down the walls between those functions, so psychosocial risk is considered at the point where work is designed, well before it turns into an incident or a claim.
Skills are the other half of this. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 found that employers expect 39 per cent of workers' core skills to change by 2030, and that 59 per cent of the global workforce will need reskilling or upskilling in that time. Safety and HSE teams face the same pressure as everyone else. Compliance checklists and incident response will keep mattering, but they won't be enough on their own as AI, automation and new operating models reshape how work gets done.
Building capacity means identifying the skills the organisation will need in three to five years. For HSE teams, that increasingly means capability in data analysis, change management and organisational design, alongside the technical expertise that's always underpinned the role. It's a different hiring and development conversation to the one most safety functions are used to having.
None of this works if it's framed as a cost centre. Capacity building is a commercial decision. Fewer claims, less time lost, better retention and a workforce that can adapt to change all show up on the balance sheet eventually. Safe Work Australia's data shows the median compensation for a mental health claim already runs at more than three times the cost of a physical injury claim. Prevention is cheaper than response, and it scales better as the organisation grows.
Building capacity in HSE teams means designing risk out of work before it starts. That's the strategic shift I think the function needs to make.
Join us in Sydney
We're discussing this and more at Workforce of the Future, our Sydney event on 4 November.
Come along to hear how leading organisations are building HSE and HR capacity for what's next.
