In April 2024, the Commonwealth Director of Public Prosecutions filed three criminal charges against the Australian Department of Defence in the Brisbane Magistrates Court. The charges alleged that Defence had failed to comply with its primary duty of care under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) in relation to psychosocial risks at a Queensland Army base. It was alleged that Defence's failures exposed an Australian Defence Force member to a risk of death or serious injury -- including the risk of self-harm or suicide -- arising from stressors and mental health issues being experienced while the member was geographically isolated from their chain of command.

Comcare's investigation identified specific failures: not ensuring regular in-person health and welfare checks at the barracks; failing to refer the member for a formal mental health assessment; and failing to ensure a mental health intake assessment was not paused or delayed, and that it was conducted in-person or by video conference. The charges carry maximum penalties of $1.5 million for the Category 2 offence and $500,000 for each of the two Category 3 offences.

This prosecution, still before the Brisbane Magistrates Court, arrives alongside the Department's already-decided conviction for the RAAF Williamtown performance management failure. Taken together, they establish a pattern that goes beyond the specifics of Defence. They establish that geographic isolation from supervision and support is a psychosocial hazard that can expose an employer to criminal liability -- and that the failure to check on, assess, and support a worker who is geographically removed from their chain of command is a failure with potentially catastrophic legal and human consequences.

The question for Australia's broader corporate sector is whether it has drawn the right lesson from these Defence prosecutions. The answer, in most cases, is no. Because the lesson is not about military barracks in Queensland. It is about every hybrid and remote worker in every organisation -- the worker sitting alone in a home office who has not been seen by a manager in three weeks, the regional sales executive managing client relationships in isolation with no check-in structure, the night-shift worker who is the only person in a facility for eight hours. Remote or isolated work is explicitly identified as a psychosocial hazard under the Safe Work Australia model Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work and has been incorporated into every Australian jurisdiction's WHS framework. The WHS duty applies. The question is whether organisations have built systems adequate to discharge it.

The Regulatory Framework: Remote and Isolated Work as a Named Psychosocial Hazard

Remote or isolated work is defined in the Safe Work Australia framework as work that is isolated from the assistance of others because of the location, time, or nature of the work. It is both a physical and a psychosocial hazard. The psychosocial dimension relates to the experience of isolation itself -- the absence of social connection, practical support, and supervisory oversight -- rather than the physical risks of working in a remote location.

Safe Work Australia's guidance is explicit: remote and isolated work is more than not getting mobile reception in the lift at the office. The hazard is present wherever workers are physically separated from the normal social and supervisory infrastructure of work. It encompasses:

• working alone, such as cleaning an office after hours or opening a retail store before other staff arrive

• FIFO and DIDO work arrangements that involve extended periods away from family and community support networks

• hybrid and work-from-home arrangements where workers are regularly absent from the physical workplace and structurally separated from colleagues and supervisors

• regional and rural roles with limited access to support, emergency services, and professional assistance

• night-shift and out-of-hours work where few or no colleagues are present

• workers in roles that involve solitary contact with the public -- delivery drivers, security officers, field service technicians

The critical point that most organisations have not yet absorbed is that the hybrid work model -- which is now standard practice for a majority of Australian professional and knowledge workers -- creates structural remote and isolated work conditions that must be managed as psychosocial hazards. The Australian HR Institute reports that 97% of organisations are offering some form of flexible remote working. According to McCrindle research, 45% of Australian workers are in hybrid arrangements. The proportion working fully remotely has grown substantially since 2020 and, despite return-to-office pressures, is widely projected to remain elevated.

Every Australian jurisdiction now requires PCBUs to identify, assess, and control psychosocial hazards using the hierarchy of controls. Remote and isolated work is named. Hybrid work is not exempt. The WHS duty does not stop at the edge of the office.

The Scale of the Risk: What the Data Shows

The psychosocial risks of remote and hybrid work are well-documented and materially significant. Dismissing them as lesser concerns -- as quality-of-life issues rather than safety obligations -- is no longer a legally defensible position.

42%

of remote workers regularly experience loneliness and isolation, according to the Productivity Commission

81%

of remote and hybrid workers report burnout due to distorted workplace boundaries, per Travel Perk research (2025)

67%

of remote workers feel less connected to colleagues; 56% struggle to disconnect after hours

34%

of employees report having meaningful mental health support from their employer, per 2025 data

Global data from 2025 finds that remote workers report anxiety and depression at rates of 40% -- slightly higher than hybrid (38%) and in-person (35%) workers. A 2025 peer-reviewed study on remote work and psychological distress in Australia, published in the Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal, confirmed that the isolation and reduced social interaction associated with remote work can lead to burnout and poorer work outcomes including psychological distress.

Comcare's own data is equally direct: remote and isolated work can cause a stress response which, when frequent, prolonged, or severe, may cause physical or psychological injury to a worker. The regulator identifies the core psychosocial risks as feeling excluded and disconnected due to a lack of social, emotional and practical support from colleagues -- precisely the experience that hybrid work can create when it is not managed.

These are not edge-case outcomes. They are common experiences within Australia's now-standard hybrid workforce, experienced at scale, and in many organisations entirely untracked by the psychosocial risk management systems that WHS law requires to be in place.

What the Defence Prosecution Tells Organisations About Their Own Workforce

The Queensland Army base charges are instructive precisely because the alleged failures are so transferable. Comcare alleged that Defence failed to:

• ensure regular in-person health and welfare checks at the barracks

• refer the soldier for a formal mental health assessment when indicators were present

• ensure a mental health intake assessment was not paused or delayed

• ensure that support was conducted in-person or via video conference -- not simply that it was scheduled

Translate each of those failures to a corporate hybrid workforce and the parallel is immediate. An employee working from home who has been significantly absent from virtual team meetings, whose manager has not spoken to them one-on-one in several weeks, who has raised a concern with HR that was logged but not followed up -- that employee may be experiencing precisely the psychosocial risk profile that the Defence charges describe. The duty to act is the same. The question of whether the organisation has adequate systems to see the risk and respond to it is the same.

The two Defence cases together: a clear pattern

RAAF Williamtown (December 2025): Worker subjected to four Work Plans over six months while displaying escalating distress. Supervisors did not refer for support, place on leave, or pause the process. Conviction: $188,000 fine.

Queensland Army base (charges filed April 2024, pending): ADF member geographically isolated from chain of command, experiencing mental health stressors. Alleged failures: no regular welfare checks, no formal mental health referral, mental health assessment paused or delayed. Maximum exposure: $2.5 million across three charges.

The pattern: in both cases, a worker was experiencing known and observable psychosocial distress in a context that reduced their access to support and oversight. In both cases, the employer's existing policies were insufficient because they were not translated into active monitoring, active referral, and active intervention. Policy on paper; inaction in practice. That is the liability profile that most hybrid-work-era organisations are now carrying.

The Three Overlapping Risk Populations

Not all remote and isolated work creates the same risk profile. Understanding where the highest risk sits is necessary for proportionate, effective control. Three populations merit specific attention.

Population 1: The invisible hybrid worker

This is the most numerically significant population. In Australia's professional and knowledge economy, the typical hybrid worker spends two to three days per week at home. They have a permanent desk setup. They are productive and functionally engaged. They are largely invisible to the social monitoring mechanisms -- the informal check-ins, the visible signs of stress, the team dynamics -- that operate in physical workplaces.

The psychosocial risks for this population are not dramatic. They accumulate gradually: a slow erosion of connection to colleagues and organisational culture; boundary blurring that extends working hours without any mechanism for observation or intervention; the absence of the incidental social contact that physical co-presence provides; a growing sense of low job control because access to information, decision-making, and opportunity increasingly favours those with in-person visibility.

Research by Mooi-Reci and Wooden (2025) found weak evidence that hybrid arrangements are associated with a lower likelihood of promotion and fully remote work with a higher likelihood of dismissal -- particularly for men. This career penalty dynamic adds a layer of chronic low-level stress to the hybrid experience that is rarely captured in organisational risk assessments. Workers in hybrid arrangements may experience persistent job insecurity as a background psychosocial hazard that is invisible because it never surfaces as a discrete incident.

For this population, the critical risk control is regular, structured, genuine one-on-one check-in contact -- not the team meeting where the camera is on and the performance is professional, but the direct manager conversation that asks how the person is actually doing. The Commonwealth Code of Practice identifies poor support and low job control as psychosocial hazards. A hybrid worker whose manager conducts weekly team stand-ups but has not had a meaningful individual conversation with them in six weeks is being exposed to those hazards. That exposure must be managed.

Population 2: The geographically isolated field worker

This population includes FIFO and DIDO workers, regional representatives, field service technicians, agricultural workers, long-distance transport operators, and others whose work structurally separates them from their normal support networks. The psychosocial risk profile for this group is well-documented and substantially elevated.

The Safe Work Australia framework specifically identifies FIFO work -- with its lengthy periods of isolation from family and community -- as a remote and isolated work hazard. The combination of high job demands, low job control, social isolation, and reduced access to support creates a compound psychosocial hazard profile that the hierarchy of controls must address at source, not merely by providing access to an EAP.

For this population, WHS obligations are clear and operationally demanding. They require regular, structured welfare contact; accessible escalation mechanisms; clear protocols for mental health assessment when indicators are present; and supervision structures that function despite physical distance. These are not optional additions to a duty of care. The Queensland Army base prosecution alleges that Defence failed to meet exactly these standards. Private sector employers with geographically isolated workers are subject to the same obligations and the same potential for prosecution.

Population 3: The lone worker

Lone workers -- those who work physically alone for sustained periods, with no colleagues present and limited access to immediate assistance -- present a distinct risk profile that combines psychosocial and physical hazards. WorkSafe Victoria is explicit: an employee can be considered to be working alone or in isolation even if other people are close by, and even for a short amount of time.

This includes retail workers opening or closing stores, cleaners and maintenance workers operating out of hours, security personnel, home care workers, and others whose working conditions regularly involve periods without colleague or supervisory presence. The combination of vulnerability to violence, absence of social support, and limited access to emergency assistance requires targeted controls: monitored check-in systems, duress alert mechanisms, buddy protocols, and structured supervisory contact.

Lone worker obligations are among the most underserved in Australian WHS compliance. Organisations that have invested heavily in psychosocial risk frameworks for white-collar and hybrid workers frequently have little or no equivalent infrastructure for their lone worker populations. The WHS duty is the same across both groups.

The Intrusive Surveillance Counterweight

One response to the visibility gap created by remote work has been the deployment of monitoring and surveillance technology: keystroke loggers, screenshot capture tools, GPS tracking, productivity analytics, and activity monitoring systems. The instinct to replace physical oversight with digital oversight is understandable. It is also, in many implementations, legally problematic.

The Commonwealth Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work (2024) explicitly identifies intrusive surveillance as a psychosocial hazard -- one of three new hazards introduced in the Commonwealth Code beyond the model Code's standard list. The Code identifies examples of intrusive surveillance including unreasonable monitoring of when and how much a worker is working, keyboard activity trackers, remote computer access and screenshot tools, and GPS monitoring of workers' movements for the purpose of work performance monitoring.

The Work Health and Safety Amendment (Digital Work Systems) Bill 2025, which passed the NSW Parliament in February 2026, goes further by requiring PCBUs to ensure that digital systems used to allocate and monitor work do not generate psychosocial risks through, among other things, unreasonable surveillance and monitoring. This brings automated monitoring systems within the WHS framework as systems of work that must be designed and managed to prevent harm.

The practical implication is that an organisation cannot simultaneously breach its WHS obligations by failing to maintain adequate welfare contact with remote workers and then cure that breach by implementing surveillance systems that create a separate WHS liability for intrusive monitoring. The appropriate control for the visibility gap created by remote work is human-centred -- regular, genuine, structured contact by supervisors and managers who are trained to use those interactions to monitor psychosocial wellbeing, not merely to track productivity outputs.

Specific Control Obligations Under the Framework

Safe Work Australia's guidance on remote and isolated work is clear that managing the hazard requires a combination of procedural and engineering controls, with administrative controls (policies, training) constituting only the lower rungs of the hierarchy. The following controls are identified in regulatory guidance and codes of practice as appropriate for remote and isolated work:

Communication systems

Effective communication with workers engaged in remote or isolated work is specifically required under the WHS framework. Safe Work Australia's guidance states: you must also manage the risks associated with remote or isolated work, including providing effective communication with workers doing remote or isolated work. The communication obligation is not satisfied by email access. It requires systems that ensure supervisors are reliably and regularly in contact with remote workers, that contact is two-way, and that there is a mechanism for a worker to raise a concern or signal distress outside of regular check-in cycles.

Welfare check systems

For geographically isolated workers, the Queensland charges make the obligation concrete: regular in-person health and welfare checks are required where reasonably practicable; where in-person is not practicable, video conference is the appropriate alternative. Checks conducted entirely through asynchronous digital channels -- emails, messages, work platform activity -- do not constitute welfare checks in the sense the WHS framework requires. They may confirm that a worker is producing output. They do not confirm that the worker is psychologically safe.

Mental health referral protocols

Where indicators of psychological distress are present -- whether observed by a supervisor, reported by a colleague, or identified through a structured check-in process -- the WHS framework requires a referral pathway to be activated. The Queensland charges allege that Defence failed to refer the member for a formal mental health assessment when such indicators were present. This is the same class of failure as the Williamtown conviction, where supervisors observed distress but took no step to refer for support. In both cases, the visibility of the risk signal and the failure to act on it are precisely what constitute the breach.

Return-to-work and re-integration planning

Workers returning from extended remote periods -- whether from FIFO rotations, prolonged work-from-home arrangements, or recovery from physical injury -- may experience re-integration difficulties that constitute a psychosocial hazard. The transition back to structured in-person work, or the adjustment to a permanent hybrid arrangement following a period of full-time remote work, can involve significant low role clarity, low job control, and poor support if not managed. This is a class of risk that rarely appears in organisational risk registers.

The Right to Disconnect and the Boundary-Blurring Hazard

One specific legal development is directly relevant to the psychosocial risks of hybrid and remote work. The Right to Disconnect, which came into effect for small businesses from 26 August 2025, gives employees the right to refuse to monitor, read, or respond to contact from their employer or work-related contacts outside of working hours. The right applies to all national system employers.

The Right to Disconnect intersects with remote work psychosocial risk management in a significant way. The boundary blurring that the right is designed to address -- the expectation of contact outside hours, the colonisation of personal time by work demands -- is itself one of the primary psychosocial hazards associated with hybrid and remote work. The 81% of remote and hybrid workers who report burnout due to distorted workplace boundaries are describing an exposure to the psychosocial hazard of high job demands combined with low job control and poor support. An employer that creates or tolerates those conditions is failing its WHS obligations, regardless of whether the worker subsequently exercises their Right to Disconnect.

The practical implication is that setting clear, communicated, and enforced boundaries for remote workers -- including expectations about response times, after-hours contact, and the delineation between work and non-work time -- is not merely good management practice. It is a component of a control strategy for the psychosocial hazard of boundary blurring that WHS law now requires.

What Reasonably Practicable Control Requires for Remote and Hybrid Workers

Organisations that have substantial remote or hybrid workforces and have not yet conducted a formal psychosocial risk assessment of their remote and isolated work arrangements are already in a compliance gap. The following elements represent the minimum expected under the current regulatory framework:

• Risk assessment specifically addressing remote and isolated work -- a documented analysis of the psychosocial hazard profile of each remote or hybrid worker population, including frequency and duration of isolation, access to support, and existing controls

• Structured check-in systems -- regular, scheduled, individual contact between each remote worker and their direct supervisor, conducted by video or phone, not by digital platform activity monitoring

• Welfare check protocols for geographically isolated workers -- formalised in-person or video welfare checks with documented frequency and clear criteria for escalation

• Mental health referral pathways -- accessible, known, and activated when indicators are present -- not available in a policy document no supervisor has read

• Boundary and workload management -- clear communications norms and protections against after-hours contact that are enforced at the team level, not merely stated in a policy

• Surveillance policy aligned with WHS obligations -- any monitoring of remote worker activity audited against the intrusive surveillance hazard standard in the applicable Code of Practice

• Reporting infrastructure -- a mechanism through which remote workers can raise psychosocial risk concerns from outside the workplace, outside business hours, and without requiring in-person access to HR or a manager

The Visibility Gap as a Governance Problem

The deep structural problem with remote work psychosocial risk is a visibility problem. In a physical workplace, distress signals -- absenteeism, withdrawal, visible agitation, deteriorating interpersonal relationships -- are observable by supervisors, HR teams, and colleagues. In a hybrid or remote arrangement, many of those signals are invisible. A worker who has stopped contributing in team meetings over the past three weeks may have a camera issue. A worker who is taking longer to respond to messages may have a busy period. The signals that would be obvious in-person are ambiguous or absent remotely.

This is the mechanism through which the Defence prosecutions become instructive for private sector employers. In both cases, the worker's distress was eventually knowable -- in Williamtown, it was directly observable; in Queensland, geographic isolation was itself the condition that required active welfare monitoring. Neither case involved a hidden or unknowable risk. Both involved a known risk that was not actively managed because the supervisory and monitoring systems were not designed to surface it.

For boards and senior leaders exercising WHS due diligence obligations under section 27 of the WHS Act, the governance question is whether the organisation has the capability to see psychosocial risk signals in its remote workforce. Not whether it has a policy. Not whether it has an EAP. Whether it has systems that make remote worker distress visible to those with the authority and responsibility to act on it.

Officer duty in a remote-work context

An officer of a PCBU has a personal, non-delegable duty to exercise due diligence to ensure the organisation complies with its WHS obligations. For remote and hybrid work, due diligence requires:

• acquiring and keeping up-to-date knowledge of the psychosocial risks associated with remote and isolated work, including the regulatory framework and the organisation's current exposure

• understanding the nature of the organisation's remote and hybrid work arrangements and the hazards they create

• ensuring the organisation has adequate resources and processes -- not just policies -- to identify psychosocial risk signals in remote workers and respond to them

• ensuring there are processes for receiving, considering, and responding to information about psychosocial incidents and near-misses in remote work contexts

An officer who cannot answer basic questions about how the organisation monitors the psychosocial wellbeing of its hybrid and remote workforce is not discharging due diligence.

How Salus Addresses the Remote Work Visibility Gap

The core problem the Defence prosecutions identify is not a policy failure. It is an infrastructure failure: the absence of systems that make psychosocial risk in distributed, isolated, or remote workers visible to the people who need to act on it.

Salus was designed for exactly this problem. Remote and hybrid workers are, by definition, physically removed from the reporting channels and support infrastructure that exist in the central workplace. A worker who is at home, or three time zones away, or on a FIFO rotation, faces practical and psychological barriers to raising concerns that don't exist for workers in shared physical space. Those barriers -- inconvenience, perceived lack of access, concern about being seen as a problem -- mean that concerns often aren't raised until they have escalated.

By providing a confidential, 24-hour, location-independent reporting channel, Salus removes the access barrier that remote work creates. A hybrid worker can raise a concern about isolation, boundary blurring, inadequate supervisory contact, or any other psychosocial hazard from wherever they are, at whatever time works for them, without needing physical access to an HR team or a manager's office.

For organisations with geographically distributed workforces -- including those with FIFO arrangements, regional teams, or multiple sites -- Salus also generates the lead indicator data that makes systemic patterns visible. A cluster of concerns about inadequate welfare check-ins from a particular regional team, or about after-hours contact expectations in a specific business unit, will surface in the organisational risk view before it surfaces as a workers' compensation claim or a regulator investigation.

That data capability is the distinction between an organisation that has a remote work WHS policy and an organisation that has a remote work WHS system. The Queensland Army base prosecution will eventually resolve. The principle it establishes -- that geographic isolation from supervision and support is a psychosocial hazard that requires active management, not passive assumption -- will not.

Key takeaways for HR Directors and People Leaders

Remote or isolated work is a named psychosocial hazard under Australian WHS law. The WHS duty applies to hybrid and remote workers -- not just to workers in traditional remote locations like FIFO sites.

The two Defence prosecutions establish a directly applicable principle: geographically isolated workers who are not receiving adequate welfare monitoring and mental health support create criminal liability for their employer. The same principle applies to hybrid workers in corporate settings.

The intrusive surveillance response to remote work visibility gaps creates its own WHS liability. Active monitoring of productivity metrics is not a substitute for human welfare contact.

The Right to Disconnect, which now applies to all national system employers, codifies the boundary-blurring hazard. An employer that creates or tolerates after-hours contact expectations for remote workers is managing a psychosocial hazard poorly.

The governance gap is a visibility gap. Officers discharging WHS due diligence obligations must be able to demonstrate that the organisation has systems -- not just policies -- that make the psychosocial wellbeing of remote and hybrid workers visible and actionable.

Psychosocial risk management infrastructure for modern organisations.