When the Truth Becomes a Risk: The Unspoken Crisis in Our Workplaces 

“You shouldn’t have to wear a mask to come to work — not the kind for your face, but the kind that hides your truth.”

In 2023, the Productivity Commission released figures estimating that mental ill-health costs the Australian economy up to $70 billion each year, with hidden costs adding an estimated $150 billion more due to lost participation, lower productivity, and health system pressures.  

What’s even more scary is what lies behind those numbers.   There’s a culture that punishes honesty and discourages vulnerability. 

Why is Workplace Wellbeing in Trouble? What is Broken?  

• Many workplaces do not encourage open discussion of health. Mental health discussions are sometimes ‘tokenistic’, creating a culture of fear and silence. 
• HR departments are often caught in conflict, tasked with both protecting employees and enforcing corporate risk protocols. 
• Managers frequently feel ill-equipped to respond to vulnerable disclosures from staff, leading to avoidance. 
• Team members form a belief that asking for help is a career risk. 
• The adopted system prioritises compliance over compassion, metrics over meaning. 
• This creates a feedback loop where problems go underground and fester until they become unmanageable and lead to some form of eruption. 
• The underlying problem isn’t people,  it’s how we’ve structured our systems, incentives, and cultural norms.

The Culture of Silence: How We Got Here 

One of the most significant workplace challenges isn’t what’s being said, it’s what’s being suppressed. 

While Australian organisations are increasingly required to report on psychological safety as part of Work Health and Safety legislation, not many are equipped to go beyond compliance into cultural change. 

Psychological health is often treated as an HR problem or a tick-box exercise, not as a systemic issue that cuts across every level of leadership. 

This isn’t to say workplaces are malicious. In fact, most are well-intentioned. We’ve unwittingly created systems that are influenced and shaped by risk aversion, legal liability, and efficiency. This just makes for messy human problems that seem like threats. They should be realities to be embraced and managed. 

What’s driving the culture of fear instead of a culture of wellbeing? 

• Stigma still exists. Despite years of mental health campaigns, the workplace remains one of the hardest places to talk openly about stress, burnout, anxiety or trauma. 
• Policies are punitive. Well-meaning performance management systems can appear threatening when someone admits they’re struggling. 
• Managers are undertrained. They’re promoted for technical ability, not necessarily people leadership or emotional intelligence. 
• Fear of exposure. When an team member shares a vulnerability, the perceived risk is that they’ll be seen as ‘less capable’, ‘less committed’ or ‘not leadership material’. 

Key Signs the Culture Is Broken: 

• Staff wait until crisis point before disclosing health issues. 
• “Wellbeing” initiatives are seen as superficial or tokenistic. 
• HR is perceived as the company’s lawyer, not the team member’s ally. 
• Managers avoid conversations that might reveal too much. 

The Workplace Wellbeing Burden on HR and Leadership 

HR departments often bear the brunt of a broken system. They shoulder the responsibility of navigating legal frameworks, maintaining compliance, supporting staff wellbeing, and advising leadership, all while being under-resourced. It’s no wonder that even HR professionals themselves report high levels of burnout and moral injury. 

According to the Australian HR Institute’s 2023 report, 43% of HR professionals feel their roles have become reactive rather than strategic. That means they’re responding to crises rather than preventing them. 

At the same time, managers, the front-line defenders of workplace culture, are often paralysed by fear. What if they say the wrong thing? What if they make a situation worse? What if they open a Pandora’s box they can’t close? 

The Catch-22 of Leadership: 

• Managers are told to support wellbeing, but discouraged from getting “too involved.” 
• HR is told to protect staff — but also to protect the organisation’s legal interests. 
• Team Members are told to “speak up”, but see no safety net when they do. 

This is not about bad people. It’s about bad architecture. 

When Asking for Help Becomes a Risk 

One of the most heartbreaking trends I see in my coaching and mediation work is how often people say, “I didn’t want to cause trouble.” There’s a common belief that being vulnerable, unwell or even just confused about expectations is a kind of failure, that putting up your hand for help is somehow unprofessional.  Instead, people find themselves believing, it’s something to hide and not seek support for. 

This belief isn’t irrational. It’s been learned through experience. 

• Workers have watched colleagues punished, not protected, for speaking up. 
• Disclosures of anxiety or burnout are met with suspicion. 
• Time off for mental health is seen as a luxury, not a necessity. 
• Flexibility is a reward, not a right. 

The Cycle of Silence: 

• A person struggles quietly, unsure whether to say something. 
• Their performance suffers. Subtly at first, then noticeably. 
• The response from leadership is performance management, not support. 
• Trust erodes. The individual isolates. 
• Eventually, they burn out or leave,  often without ever sharing the real reason. 

What this leads to: 

• Higher staff turnover 
• Loss of institutional knowledge 
• Erosion of trust in leadership 
• Deep cultural disengagement 
• A growing mental health liability for organisations 

We talk about “the future of work” but that future cannot exist without emotional honesty. 

The real problem isn’t that team members are too sensitive, or managers too inexperienced, or HR too cautious. 
The real problem is that we’ve built workplace systems that are structurally allergic to vulnerability. 

We expect people to “bring their whole selves to work,” but only if that self is confident, high-functioning, and stress-free. We’ve taught people that truth is dangerous, not because anyone said it out loud, but because every system, policy, and action has whispered it over time. 

And yet, the truth is also the path forward. The first step in healing broken systems is to name what’s broken. Until we can do that, without fear, we’ll keep managing symptoms while the real damage festers beneath the surface. 

If you’re a leader, coach, or business owner reading this: it’s time to ask not what’s wrong with our people, but what are our systems telling them about being human at work?