Most employers we meet are dealing with some version of the same three problems.
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First, psychosocial risk feels invisible until something goes very wrong. You know people are under strain, you might be worried about claims or complaints, but it's hard to see where the real pressure is or what to do that actually changes it.
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Second, managers are stuck in the middle. They are promoted for technical skill, then expected to handle mental health, conflict, performance, complaints and new WHS rules with very little training. They are tired, anxious about saying the wrong thing and often either avoid hard conversations or come in too hard.
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Third, workers don't use the support you're already paying for. Generic EAP hotlines and one off wellbeing sessions feel like they are for someone else. People either wait until crisis point or just leave. You are left with churn, more time on problems and a quiet worry that something big is coming.
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Unbound Work tackles those three pressure points together. You get serious clinical depth from one of Sydney’s largest psychology practices, clear visibility of where psychosocial risk is building up, managers who feel more capable and a support offer that your people actually recognise and trust.

Standard EAPs are built as call centres. A worker hits breaking point, calls a 1300 number, gets a few short term counselling sessions with someone who has never seen their workplace and may never speak to them again. Often, the person providing the support isn't a Registered Psychologist. The service is generic, light touch, in-personal and almost completely disconnected from how work is actually set up in your business. That's why employees don't use EAP's, with research showing EAP utilisation sits at 4%.

Unbound Work is built for something very different. You get psychologists from one of Sydney’s largest psychology practices with clinical depth from thousands of people seen in real rooms every year. We join existing meetings in your workplace, make ourselves visible and train your managers, so workers know who we are long before they ever need support. That presence means we can spot patterns early, give managers real time guidance and make mental health part of normal work life rather than a separate helpline. Our focus is prevention and work design, not just crisis response.

We help you understand where psychosocial hazards are sitting in your business, how leadership and culture are shaping risk and what practical changes will make work more sustainable. When someone does need individual support, the clinical work sits inside that bigger picture rather than off to the side.Finally, we give you meaningful visibility. You get de identified reporting that links what we are seeing to psychosocial risk, themes in the work and your obligations, so you can show you are actively managing your duties instead of guessing.  

Short answer is yes, because we design the service around what makes people actually show up and stay, not around a call centre script.
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In psychology the relationship between a person and their clinician is called the therapeutic alliance. Large meta analyses across hundreds of studies show it is one of the strongest predictors of whether therapy works at all, regardless of the specific technique or model.  

If people do not feel a connection, they do not keep turning up.
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Traditional EAPs make that hard. A worker calls a generic 1300 number, gets whoever is on the roster that day and might get a different person if they ever call back. There is little chance to build trust, no sense of a real team behind it and no visible presence in the workplace. It is cheap to run, but easy for your people to ignore.
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Unbound Work is built the opposite way.

Your team sees us first in the open. Workshops, briefings, toolbox style sessions and visits mean they recognise our faces and our style.

They are coming into one of Sydney’s largest psychology practices, not a loose network of contractors. That means a stable clinical team, supervision, shared standards and a consistent experience.

We match workers to clinicians who understand their type of work and talk like normal humans, which makes it much easier to build a strong alliance quickly and keep sessions going.
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For you as the employer, that translates to support your people will actually use, earlier in the curve, with a clinical backbone you can trust instead of a disconnected call centre that looks good on paper and sits idle in practice.

Right now WHS laws treat psychological health as seriously as physical safety. Across Australia, regulations and new Codes of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards spell out that employers must identify, assess and control risks like high job demands, bullying, harassment, poor support, job insecurity, fatigue and exposure to trauma, not just react when someone is badly hurt.
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Regulators are enforcing this. Psychosocial breaches are being prosecuted at the same level as major physical safety failures, including Category 1 offences in some states and, in extreme cases, industrial manslaughter when someone dies and risk was clearly ignored. Penalties for serious WHS offences can run into millions of dollars for companies and very significant fines and jail time for individuals.
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That means directors and officers can be personally exposed if they do not take reasonable steps to understand psychosocial risks and put controls in place.
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Unbound Work helps you turn that legal pressure into a practical plan.

We help you map where psychosocial hazards actually sit in your business, decide what controls are realistic in your context, build manager capability so controls are lived, not just written, give workers credible support that fits their jobs and produce de identified evidence that you are actively managing risk over time.
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No. In fact, a lot of our best work is with small and medium employers who do not have an internal psychology or organisational development team.
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You might be a 40 to 60 person business that has had a tough issue, complaint or claim and never wants to go through that again. Or a 100 to 300 person organisation where growth has made everything more complex and leaders are feeling the strain. Or a multi site or multi crew business where owners and senior leaders are spending too much time on drama, churn and fires to put out.
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Big corporates can throw internal teams, in house lawyers and large budgets at these problems. Smaller and mid sized employers are carrying similar risks with far fewer resources.
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We step in as your specialist partner so you do not have to build that capability from scratch.

Programs are shaped around your size, your budget and your level of risk. You still get the depth and clinical rigour of one of Sydney’s largest psychology practices, simply scaled and prioritised for where you are now.

In practice, working with Unbound Work feels less like a one off project and more like having a serious psychology and people partner in your corner. For owners and senior leaders it means there is someone you can call when you are worried about a situation, a claim or a person, and you get clear, calm advice that takes both people and business into account. You receive regular, plain language updates that show where psychosocial risk is building, what you are already doing well and what needs attention next, so you have a credible story for workers, regulators and insurers about how you are managing mental health at work.
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For managers it means practical help, not theory. They get short, sharp sessions with real scripts, questions and frameworks for hard conversations, so they know what to say when things are tense or someone is struggling. They understand where their role starts and ends, which stops them either trying to carry everything alone or avoiding issues altogether. Importantly, they can look a worker in the eye and say, “Here is someone I trust, I have met them, this is how they can help,” which makes it much easier for people to step into support.
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For your people it means seeing the same psychologists in rooms and on screens, not just on a poster. When they do reach out they are meeting a real clinical team, backed by one of Sydney’s largest psychology practices, rather than a stranger in a call centre. Over time they also feel that the way work is set up is becoming fairer and more sustainable, instead of just being told to be more resilient while nothing around them changes.
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Usually we start by understanding your business and agreeing on a small number of moves across risk, leaders and support that will make the biggest difference. From there the work is woven into how your business already runs. The result is fewer nasty surprises, more capable managers, clearer visibility of psychosocial risk and a support offer that actually feels real to your people.