Safe Work Australia outlines 2025 WHS research priorities and focus areas

Safe Work Australia has released a new strategy to guide national research efforts in WHS and workers’ compensation, with a focus on collaboration and emerging challenges.

Building on the data collection and research coordination actions outlined in both the Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy and National Return to Work Strategy, the strategy sets out the goals, priority workstreams and focus areas guiding the agency’s collaboration with those in the WHS and workers’ compensation research ecosystem.

Safe Work Australia said a strong evidence base is critical to the delivery of practical policy outcomes, meeting future challenges and continuing to improve work health and safety and workers’ compensation arrangements across the country.

There are five primary focus areas in the strategy:

• Shifting mindsets around WHS fundamentals: Shifting behaviours and mindsets to increase understanding and capability around fundamental duties and obligations for risk management and injury recovery – across small businesses to large enterprises, from workers and supervisors, to middle management, senior leaders and boards.
• Psychosocial harm prevention and recovery: Expanding the evidence base around effective systemic controls/regulation to reduce psychosocial harm in workplaces and enable faster recovery when it does occur.
• Advances in technology: How technological advances (e.g. AI, automation, automated machines) might affect policy approaches, enable improved hazard identification, give rise to new WHS risks, and/or enhance health and safety outcomes.
• Changing nature of work: How the safety regulation and compensation frameworks might adapt to better accommodate the changing nature of work (e.g. gig work, compressed weeks, non-traditional employment, multiple jobs, working from home, complex supply chains, multi-regulated sites).
• Effectiveness of systems and frameworks: Better understanding of the effects and impacts of changes to the legislative frameworks (e.g. where harmonisation could be strengthened, gaps between expectations and reality, determining optimal models for injury management, bridging gaps in compensation policy evidence).
  
  

Each of these is underpinned by a focus on:

• Emerging or evolving issues and approaches: Better understanding of emerging and innovative developments in Australia and internationally (e.g. emerging exposure hazards, evolving silica-related risks and treatments, ability to regulate air quality beyond specific dust types, or optimising synergy between WHS/organisational development/HR, climate-related risks).
• Workers in vulnerable contexts: Ensuring that all research supports a greater understanding of the needs of specific worker cohorts or characteristics associated with higher risk of harm (e.g. people with a disability, older people, young people, migrants, shift workers, women and gender-diverse workers especially when in male-dominated industries) – reflecting greater plurality in workplace demographics.
  
  

In releasing the strategy, the agency said it is seeking to build stronger connections with those in the WHS and workers’ compensation research ecosystem – across academia, government, unions, industry and employer groups, and health and safety professionals – to enhance its evidence base, build consensus on emerging challenges, and co-design a robust research agenda to address them.

Safe Work Australia’s research summit, held from 9-10 September 2025 in Canberra, is also an opportunity to discuss current research in WHS and workers’ compensation and identify emerging trends and evidence gaps.