Skodel Newsletter · October 2026
When "Tough Culture" Becomes a WHS Problem
In this newsletter
Every organisation wants high performance. That's not the issue. The real question is where the line sits between pushing for high standards and running a system of work that's unsafe, and whether you can point to evidence that you're managing that line deliberately rather than just hoping it holds. The case below is a live, current example of a regulator asking exactly that question of a real business.
Examples
High performance: Direct, specific feedback on what went wrong, given privately and tied to the work.
Tips into a hazard: The same feedback delivered publicly, repeated often, or aimed at the person rather than the behaviour.
High performance: Clear, consistent standards applied the same way across the team.
Tips into a hazard: Performance or termination decisions that move quickly for some people and drag on, or get applied differently, for others.
High performance: Ambitious targets paired with the training and resourcing to actually meet them.
Tips into a hazard: The same targets handed down with no support, so the pressure lands on workers with nowhere to go.
Key Figures
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2 Former senior Cheil Australia leaders now suing the agency under the Fair Work Act's general protections provisions. |
84 Total Cheil Australia headcount, per LinkedIn. That's the scale this is playing out within. |
01 · A common question
"We just run a high-performance culture. Direct feedback isn't bullying, is it?"
Not on its own, no. Reasonable management action, carried out reasonably, is specifically excluded from the definition of workplace bullying. But "reasonable" is doing a lot of work in that sentence, and it's judged by how feedback was delivered and whether it was consistent and proportionate, not by how a business describes its own culture. Since 1 July 2026, the Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice has been an enforceable minimum standard in NSW. That means a pattern of harsh feedback and high senior-role turnover is exactly the kind of thing a regulator can now ask you to account for, regardless of what you call it internally.
Quick Reference
Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (NSW), sections 47 to 49 is the duty to consult. A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) must consult workers on health and safety matters that affect them. In plain English, that covers decisions about workload, management style and how feedback and performance processes are run, not just plant and equipment. A policy that was never actually discussed with workers doesn't meet this duty.
Primary source: legislation.nsw.gov.au, WHS Act 2011 (NSW).
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02 · Case Analysis Skodel Case Analysis |
SafeWork NSW and Cheil Australia |
A note before we get into it: this is drawn entirely from public reporting. We're not weighing in on whether the allegations against Cheil are true. We're using a real, current example to work through how a regulator now reads a "tough culture" story, because that's useful for any workplace to understand, not to single anyone out.
On 15 October 2026, SafeWork NSW wrote to Cheil Australia, the Samsung-owned advertising agency, formally raising concerns about psychosocial hazards at its Sydney Olympic Park office. It followed a July 2026 Mumbrella investigation describing the agency's culture under local CEO Marvin Park as a "pressure cooker," with the reporting attributing some of the intensity to management norms imported from its South Korean parent.
That reporting didn't land in isolation. Two former senior leaders, group director Trent Ellis and head of digital Peter Bojanac, both let go in 2025, have lodged general protections claims against Cheil in the Federal Court. Both allege their dismissals were connected to exercising a workplace right. Park says Cheil disputes the allegations and will defend them. Those claims sit under the Fair Work Act, not the WHS Act, but the two are now colliding in the same case.
The angle worth noticing: the easy reading is "agency has a bullying problem, regulator shows up." What's actually changed is what counts as evidence. A letter like this is, in effect, a prompt for a business to show two things: that it identified the risk, and that it consulted workers on how it's being controlled, not just that a bullying policy exists on paper.
Source: Mumbrella, "SafeWork NSW queries psychosocial risk at Cheil Australia". Full write-up on our blog: skodel.com/blog/safework-nsw-cheil-australia-psychosocial-risk.
Practical controls for a hazard like this
Bullying
- Give workers a documented, confidential channel to raise conduct concerns outside their direct manager.
- Track themes over time rather than relying on individual complaints to surface a pattern.
- Train managers on how to deliver critical feedback, focused on the behaviour rather than the person, and spot-check a sample of performance conversations for consistency.
Poor organisational justice
- Use a consistent, written process for performance management and termination decisions.
- Keep a record of what workers were told and when, so decisions can be explained and defended.
03 · Risk Profile
Hazards At Play
| Bullying Repeated, unreasonable conduct described in the reporting as a "pressure cooker" culture, directed at workers in a way that risks their health and safety. |
High |
| Poor organisational justice Terminations now the subject of general protections claims, raising questions about whether the process was fair, consistent and transparent. |
High |
| Poor support Management norms reportedly imported without local adaptation or training, leaving managers under-equipped to deliver feedback without it tipping into pressure. |
Mod-High |
04 · Take Action
How To Use This In Your Workplace
- Don't wait for a complaint to test whether your "high performance culture" would read as a hazard from the outside. Ask workers directly, and keep a record that you asked.
- Check whether your consultation obligations under sections 47 to 49 of the WHS Act are actually being met for psychosocial risks, not just physical ones.
- Treat senior-role turnover and exit feedback as a psychosocial risk data source, not just an HR metric.
See what this looks like in practice
Here's how you could ask about these hazards yourself, to understand their exposure and impact inside your own workplace. Reporting like this tends to pick issues up earlier than a complaint or a media story would, and it also gives you something concrete to point to when demonstrating how you're actively assessing these risks.
Here's a sample of what that reporting looks like:
View the sample executive report →Skodel · Psychosocial risk assessment for Australian workplaces · skodel.com
