By Andrew Amos, Vice President, APAC at Diligent Corporation
Workplace bullying, unreasonable job demands and aggression do not always leave a visible mark, but they can have a profound effect on psychological safety. Safe Work Australia’s 2024 snapshot found that, of approximately 10,000 serious mental stress claims, 25% were attributed to work pressure, 16% to exposure to workplace or occupational violence, and 7.5% to work-related harassment and/or workplace bullying.
Unfortunately, many instances of misconduct go unreported due to a lack of confidence in recourse after speaking up often stems from fear of the consequences. People worry about being labelled a troublemaker, the impact on their reputation or career or being treated differently by colleagues and management. If people don’t trust the process to be unbiased and reliable, they will not feel safe to come forward.
This is exacerbated when the reported misconduct involves someone in a position of power or authority, with influence over performance reviews, promotions, project allocation or other career opportunities. A strong workplace culture can encourage people to speak up, but that trust erodes fast the moment employees think hierarchy or personal relationships are shaping how concerns get handled.
It is therefore unsurprising that the 2025 Australian Public Service Employee Census found that 55% of respondents who had experienced bullying or harassment at work did not report it. Among those who did not report it, 53% feared retaliation or reprisals and 52% did not think action would be taken.
These findings suggest that policy and training are no longer enough to foster a safe, respectful workplace culture.
The role of technology in improving psychosocial safety at work
People want the assurance that when a harassment concern is reported, the process that follows is reliable and credible. This includes protecting confidentiality, preventing adverse actions against the discloser, conducting investigations fairly, taking appropriate steps to resolve cases and identifying ways to avoid future occurrences. Clarity and accountability in the process are key to making people feel safe about raising issues.
This is where technology comes in to help elevate psychosocial safety at work, providing capabilities to support a robust speak up model that can be trusted.
- Safe, accessible reporting channels. The Australia Human Rights Commission (AHRC) found that the complaint process being perceived to be embarrassing or difficult was cited as one of the top five reasons for not reporting a misconduct. The industry best practice is to provide multiple channels through a single ethics management platform for people to safely and easily report concerns.
- Confidentiality and discloser protection beyond the point of disclosure. Employees often choose to stay silent out of fear of retaliation.Anonymous reporting is a critical first step in helping people feel safe, but protecting the discloser requires more than offering an anonymous whistleblowing hotline. Secure, role-based access can help ensure sensitive information is only available to those who genuinely need it. Best-in-class systems offer secure two-way anonymous messaging, allowing investigators to communicate with the discloser without exposing the person’s identity.
Power of the collective voice. One of the biggest hurdles to speaking up is the fear of being singled out as the only person willing to raise a concern. The right speak up technology helps alleviate this fear by providing capabilities for related concerns to be jointly surfaced as a group. Technology can materially improve psychosocial safety in the workplace by extending peer support and the reassurance of a collective voice.
Accountability and independence in the whistleblowing process. Many legacy speak up models rely on manual judgement to determine who sees a case, how quickly it is processed and when escalation is required. AI-enabled case management triages reports more intelligently and routes cases more consistently, reducing the risk of cases falling through the cracks due to human error or bias.
Centralised, audit-ready case management systems document every step, conversation, action and outcome with clear ownership to drive rigour and accountability in the process.
- Early pattern recognition and risk detection. A disclosure about inappropriate behaviour might look like a one-off occurrence, but connections between several disclosures can easily be missed when cases sit across different inboxes, spreadsheets, hotlines or teams. An effective whistleblowing system powered by AI uses case data, category tagging and trend analysis to identify behavioural issues and detect risks earlier.
Technology is not a substitute for empathy, fairness or integrity. But the right systems can help organisations manage the whistleblowing processes consistently at scale, providing stronger accountability from disclosure through to resolution. For organisations committed to improving psychosocial safety, this is an important step towards creating healthy speak up cultures in which employees feel confident to report harassment.
Andrew Amos is the Vice President of Asia Pacific at Diligent, a leading provider of governance, risk, and compliance (GRC) solutions, overseeing commercial operations across the APAC region. With a career spanning over two decades in enterprise software and SaaS leadership roles, Andrew is passionate about empowering boards and GRC leaders with the technology and insights they need to lead with confidence.
In his role, Andrew leads the APAC Commercial team where he is responsible for developing and executing Diligent’s go-to-market strategy, driving strategic growth initiatives and developing strong client relationships region-wide. Andrew is actively engaged in industry events and forums, regularly moderating discussions on key topics such as cyber resilience, AI governance, showcasing his leadership in the field.
