When someone’s home is also someone’s workplace.
I recently read Good Work by Dr Kathryn Page, and I’ve kept coming back to the sections on designing work for wellbeing.
What stayed with me was how practical they were. They prompted me to think about what we ask people to carry during their working day, what support we give them, and whether the way we organise the work actually makes sense.
Reading it, I kept thinking about support work. About the responsibility we carry, the relationships we navigate and how much can be expected in a single shift. It made me reflect on my own experiences, both doing the work and leading others, and ask whether we give enough attention to how that work is organised.
When a support worker tells us they are stressed, how quickly do we ask what they could do differently?
Could they set better boundaries? Manage their time? Speak up earlier? Take a break?
Sometimes those conversations help. But I think we also need to pause and ask:
What can we change in the work?
Looking at the shift itself
Picture a worker arriving for a three-hour shift.
The participant wants to go shopping. A family member expects the cleaning and meal preparation to be finished. There are notes to complete, travel to allow for and a conversation about something difficult that happened yesterday.
The worker wants to do a good job. They rush, finish late or leave something undone. Whichever option they choose, they feel they have disappointed someone.
We could talk to that worker about time management. We could also examine how those expectations ended up inside one shift.
Who agreed on the priorities? What was realistically achievable? Could the worker make decisions when plans changed? Who was available to help?
Those questions give us something concrete to work with.
A home, a workplace and several relationships
Support work often happens behind closed doors, away from colleagues and managers.
The participant may direct their day-to-day support while a service employs the worker. A family member might also give instructions. In other arrangements, the participant directly engages their workers.
The person setting the roster may not see what happens during the shift. The person requesting a task may not know what else the worker has been asked to do. The worker may be trying to maintain several important relationships while working out whose expectations take priority.
Someone’s home remains their home. Their privacy, preferences and autonomy matter. When paid support happens there, it is also a workplace.
We need arrangements that respect both realities.
That means agreeing on responsibilities, realistic expectations and what happens when something changes. It also means making sure the worker has access to support beyond the room they are standing in.
This is already a workplace safety responsibility
Australian workplace safety laws already require action to protect psychological health.
The details differ between states and territories. Most jurisdictions use versions of the model work health and safety laws, while Victoria has its own occupational health and safety framework. Specific psychosocial risk requirements are now operating across Australia.
These requirements concern aspects of work that can cause harm: excessive demands, unclear roles, poor support, isolation and exposure to aggression or traumatic events, among others. Safe Work Australia explains that psychological health was already covered by broader duties; specific provisions make the expectations clearer.
For support services, this makes the organisation of everyday work a safety issue.
A wellbeing conversation is valuable. It also needs to lead somewhere when the problem is an unmanageable workload, conflicting instructions or nobody answering the phone when help is needed.
Seven steps that made me stop and think
Kathryn’s approach to designing work for wellbeing gave me a practical way to think about this. These are my reflections on applying the seven steps to support work.
1. Get specific about what is creating the pressure.
“Everyone is stressed” tells us there is a problem, but gives us little direction.
“We regularly roster back-to-back shifts without enough travel time” gives us something we can examine and change.
So does: “Workers are receiving conflicting instructions from the participant, family and service.”
We need enough detail to understand what is happening.
2. Check how the work is organised.
Alongside asking how someone is feeling, ask about clarity, control, capacity, support and consequences.
Do they understand their role? Which decisions can they make? Does the work fit into the available time? Who can help? What happens when they raise a concern or say a request cannot safely be met?
A worker may be coping today while describing an arrangement that needs attention.
3. Look at demands alongside resources.
Support work can involve emotional intensity, complex decisions and changing needs. We need to look at what is available to meet those demands.
That includes time, training, information, staffing, reliable systems, access to advice and opportunities to recover after demanding work.
When demands increase, do we adjust the resources - or simply hope the worker manages?
4. Change the conditions creating the risk.
If conflicting instructions are the problem, we may need an agreed decision-making process.
If the shift cannot accommodate the expected tasks, we need to revisit the tasks, priorities or arrangement.
The safety principle is to eliminate risks where reasonably practicable and otherwise reduce them through effective controls. NSW expressly requires the hierarchy of controls, while Victoria uses a tailored approach that prioritises changes to work and restricts reliance on training alone.
For me, the practical question is: are we changing what causes the pressure?
5. Make raising concerns lead to something.
Workers need a predictable way to raise an issue, a respectful response and information about what happens next.
If someone repeatedly reports an unrealistic shift and nothing changes, the reporting process has not solved the problem.
Sometimes a concern cannot be resolved immediately. Acknowledging it, explaining the next step and following through still matter.
6. Arrange support before someone reaches their limit.
Access to advice during a difficult shift, temporary adjustments and follow-up after demanding work should be considered when organising the service.
We can ask what support would help early, while there is still room to act.
For workers who spend much of their time alone, that support needs to be genuinely available when the work is happening.
7. Review what is happening - and act.
Support needs change. Teams change. An arrangement that worked six months ago may no longer work.
Regular review gives us a chance to ask what has become harder, what support has disappeared and where we are relying on people continually stretching themselves.
Choose a practical improvement, assign responsibility and check whether it helped. Where a serious risk needs prompt action, that cannot wait for the next scheduled review.
Shared responsibility needs clear responsibilities
Workers have a role in working safely, participating in consultation and communicating concerns. Employers have responsibilities for how work is organised and risks are managed. Workers’ duties do not replace employers’ duties.
Participants and families also need to be part of conversations about how support works in their home.
The legal arrangements can be more complex than they appear. SafeWork NSW’s NDIS guidance explains that participants may themselves have duties as a person conducting a business or undertaking, depending on how they engage, direct or control work. It also explains that participants and providers can share duties and need to coordinate their actions. This is not determined simply by whether funding is self-managed.
For me, shared responsibility means making it clear who can act on a problem, who needs to be consulted and who will follow through.
An employed worker should not be left to negotiate every unresolved issue alone during a shift. An independent worker also needs workable agreements and ways to revisit arrangements that have become unsafe or unsustainable.
Why this matters for the business, too
Protecting people is reason enough to take this seriously. There is also a practical business case.
Staff turnover disrupts services. Absence creates pressure on rosters. Unclear responsibilities take time to untangle. Repeatedly introducing new workers can affect the continuity participants rely on.
SafeWork SA identifies reduced disruption from staff turnover as a benefit of managing psychosocial risks, and notes that psychological injuries typically involve longer recovery and more time away from work than physical injuries.
In a support business, I would expect clearer roles and more realistic work arrangements to help with consistency, communication and the time spent resolving preventable problems. Those are outcomes worth checking, rather than assuming.
Are shifts regularly running over? Are the same concerns recurring? Are workers staying? Are participants experiencing more consistent support? Have the changes actually reduced pressure?
The seven steps give us a practical starting point for improvement. They need to sit alongside the risk management and consultation required in our jurisdiction.
One change to begin with
We will not remove every difficult moment from support work. It is human work, and some days will be demanding.
But we can examine whether the way we organise it adds avoidable pressure.
The question I keep coming back to is this:
When someone says they are stressed, do we ask only what they can do differently - or do we also ask what we can change in the work?
Start with one recurring pressure. Talk with the people involved. Make a concrete change, then return to see whether it helped.
You don’t have to work through these questions alone. SWAA membership offers mentoring, practical resources and opportunities to learn alongside other support workers. If this has raised questions about your own work or the team you lead, explore SWAA membership and the support available to you.
Inspired by Dr Kathryn Page’s Good Work: Transform Your Work from the Inside Out. The support-work examples and reflections are my own.
Legal context checked October 2026. This article provides general information; check your state or territory regulator’s requirements for your circumstances.