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Workplace Microaggressions and Facilitated Workplace Discussions
This presentation explores workplace microaggressions as an emerging systemic risk and their critical role in driving psychological injury, workforce disengagement, and rising compensation costs. Drawing on a comprehensive Griffith University systematic review and national datasets, it positions microaggressions such as incivility, verbal abuse, and subtle exclusionary behaviours; as early, often under-recognised precursors to more serious harm, including bullying, burnout, and workforce attrition.
The session connects evidence with practice through EML’s Facilitated Workplace Discussion model used across our Frontline Services program in NSW. Demonstrating how organisations can move beyond reactive claims management toward early intervention, structured conflict resolution, and psychologically informed return-to-work strategies. Real-world case studies illustrate how coordinated support between worker, employer, and specialists can rebuild trust, reduce symptoms, and enable sustainable recovery. Crucially, the presentation reframes mental health not as an individual resilience issue alone, but as a system design challenge, where leadership behaviours, workplace culture, and reporting systems shape outcomes. It highlights the limitations of resilience when exposed to sustained microaggression, reinforcing the need for system-level protective factors, including social support, supervisor capability, and practical skill-building interventions.
By integrating research, prevention strategies, and recovery frameworks, this session supports a more sustainable Frontline Services workforces by reducing psychosocial harm at its source, improving return-to-work outcomes, and strengthening organisational cultures of psychological safety and respect.
Three Key Learnings
- This session will provide an overview and link between seemingly low-level behaviours that accumulate to erode psychological safety, contributing significantly to psychological injury, turnover, and reduced workforce sustainability.
- Attendees will gain actionable strategies for embedding psychological safety, leverage research to inform policy and designing programs that deliver measurable outcomes.
- The Insurance for NSW (IfNSW) team will present real life workplace case studies to explore how well-designed, targeted interventions are delivering measurable improvements in recovery outcomes.
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