What We Miss When We Only Ask 'Are You Okay?'
Once upon a time I was obsessed with The Sims 2 —a world in which understanding people was easy. The characters walked around with thought bubbles showing what was happening inside them. Food for hunger, a broken heart for relationship trouble and the Grim Reaper for a dramatic event.
Unfortunately, workers don’t come with thought bubbles which means they’ll never walk into a meeting with an ‘excessive workload’ symbol floating above their head. Instead, what becomes visible is behaviour. We might see our colleague shaking, teary, making mistakes, being grumpy, or taking more unplanned leave.
In several of the cases I examined, signs like these appeared to become a catalyst for organisational attention. But I knew other signs would’ve been visible looonnng before anybody needed to ask: “Are you okay?”
What I’m examining
I care deeply about creating workplaces where people thrive. This includes protecting workers from harm. This is why I’ve been examining Australian coronial reports and legal decisions involving workers whose experiences culminated in suicide, serious psychological injury or an ongoing inability to work.
Ten cases in, I identified a possible recurring trajectory:
Psychosocial hazard exposure
The worker compensates
Distress becomes visible
The organisation becomes aware
The organisation responds
The worker’s capacity collapses
A triggering event or cumulative tipping point
A critical outcome
My previous article explored Stage 2: when psychosocial hazards are not adequately addressed, workers may fill the gap with more of their own time, energy, attention and emotional resources. They work longer, skip breaks, take work home, suppress their reactions, or keep dealing with conduct they find harmful. This compensation keeps the work moving and in doing so it can obscure the gap between what the work requires and the resources needed.
Stage 3 begins when the personal cost of filling that gap becomes observable.
What became visible
In each of the ten cases, there came a point when the effects of exposure could be seen. Sometimes the signs were dramatic:
A senior lawyer was found at work shaking, incoherent and unable to communicate.¹
Errors and oversights appeared in the work of an experienced payroll supervisor.²
A sales assistant became visibly emotional and reported crying, anxiety, lost sleep and dread about returning to work.³
A pet welfare officer worked long consecutive shifts and sometimes remained overnight at work.⁴
But … these were not the first available signs (even if the workplace acted like they were).
Before the breakdown
Before the senior lawyer was found shaking and unable to communicate, she was carrying her substantive work while performing an additional senior role.
Before errors became the defining feature of the payroll supervisor’s situation, his team had reduced from nine people to five. He’d accumulated eight rostered days off that he’d been unable to take and HR records described payroll as “crazy crazy.”
Before the sales assistant dreaded coming into work they had repeatedly reported bullying by five team members, had a 45-minute conversation with HR about it and requested a formal investigation—which never eventuated.
Before the pet welfare officer’s overnight stays became part of the story, his workplace had rosters showing prolonged and consecutive shifts during severe understaffing. At one point, his timesheet recorded 17 consecutive working days. He'd also taken no annual leave for a year.
You don’t need to be a fortune teller to understand that these are signs worth taking a closer look at.
Recognition is a skill
To me the cases highlight the importance of workplaces proactively looking for signs beyond the worker and before anyone starts breaking down. As you can see in the image below signs can often be found everywhere. In the work system, across the team and in the worker’s experience.
Once upon a time I was obsessed with The Sims 2 — a world in which understanding people was easy. The characters walked around with thought bubbles showing what was happening inside them. Food for hunger, a broken heart for relationship trouble and the Grim Reaper for a dramatic event.
Unfortunately, workers don’t come with thought bubbles which means they’ll never walk into a meeting with an ‘excessive workload’ symbol floating above their head. If they did I think it'd look like this 🫠 Instead, what becomes visible is behaviour. We might see our colleague shaking, teary, making mistakes, being grumpy, or taking more unplanned leave.
In several of the cases I examined, signs like these appeared to become the catalyst for workplace attention. But I'd have bet money there were signs visible looonnng before anybody needed to ask: "Are you okay?"
What I’m examining
I care deeply about creating workplaces where people thrive — which includes protecting workers from harm. So I’ve been examining Australian coronial reports and legal decisions involving workers whose experiences culminated in suicide, serious psychological injury or an ongoing inability to work.
Ten cases in, I identified a possible recurring trajectory:
Psychosocial hazard exposure
The worker compensates
Distress becomes visible
The organisation becomes aware
The organisation responds
The worker’s capacity collapses
A triggering event or cumulative tipping point
A critical outcome
My previous article explored Stage 2: when psychosocial hazards are not adequately addressed, workers may fill the gap with more of their own time, energy, attention and emotional resources. They work longer, skip breaks, take work home, suppress their reactions, or keep dealing with conduct they find harmful. This compensation keeps the work moving and in doing so it can obscure the gap between what the work requires and the resources needed.
Stage 3 begins when the personal cost of filling that gap can be seen.
What Became Visible
In each of the ten cases, there came a point when the effects of exposure could be observed. Sometimes the signs were dramatic:
A senior lawyer was found at work shaking, incoherent and unable to communicate.¹
Errors and oversights appeared in the work of an experienced payroll supervisor.²
A sales assistant became visibly emotional and reported crying, anxiety, lost sleep and dread about returning to work.
A pet welfare officer worked long consecutive shifts and sometimes slept overnight at work.⁴
But … these were not the first available signs (even if the workplace acted like they were).
Before the Breakdown
Before the senior lawyer was found shaking and unable to communicate, she was carrying her substantive work while performing an additional senior role.
Before errors became the defining feature of the payroll supervisor’s situation, his team had reduced from nine people to five. He’d accumulated eight rostered days off that he’d been unable to take and HR records described payroll as “crazy crazy.”
Before the sales assistant showed signs of distress, a physical injury had restricted the duties she could perform Other team members complained that she wasn't carrying her weight. The changed distribution of work and deteriorating relationships were 'brewing.'
Before the pet welfare officer’s overnight stays became part of the story, his workplace had rosters showing prolonged and consecutive shifts during severe understaffing. At one point, his timesheet recorded 17 consecutive working days. He'd also taken no annual leave in a year.
Hiding In Plain Sight
You don’t need to be able to read tea leaves to understand that these are signs worth looking into. To me they highlight the importance of workplaces proactively looking for signs beyond the worker and before anyone starts breaking down. Signs can sit in three places: the work system, the team and the worker’s own experience.
When we look across all three, the questions we ask changes what becomes visible:
What’s wrong with this person? (Me) becomes What’s changed in the work? (Us)
Why can’t they handle the workload? (Me) becomes Are teams showing signs of pressure? (Team)
What are they lacking? (Me) becomes What resources are missing from the work? (Us)
How long have they been like this? (Me) becomes How long has this problem been costing them and the team? (Me + We)
What happens to the work if they stop? (Me) becomes What happens to the work, the team and the worker when they can’t keep compensating? (Me, We, Us)
And “Are you okay?” (Me) gets followed up with “Is there something about the work — or what’s happening around you at work — that’s making this harder?” (We + Us) These aren't hard questions to ask right? They're just not ones we're trained to reach for — and the person doing the asking is often a manager with no support, carrying their own overload.
Visible Does Not Necessarily Mean Seen
Across the cases, visibility didn’t guarantee workplace awareness. Signals existed without being recognised, information was held without being collated and a worker could speak without being heard. Someone with a full inbox, six calls to return and no training still has to notice the signs, connect the fragments, listen to what the worker is saying and decide what the evidence means.
That’s Stage 4. More on that soon.
If this raises anything for you, support is available. 13YARN: 13 92 76 (24 hours/7 days) Lifeline: 13 11 14. Suicide Call Back Service: 1300 659 467
The fine print: this is a work-in-progress based on my initial interpretation of a small group of severe-outcome cases. I expect my thinking to change as I examine more cases. If you see something differently from me, have been a worker in one of these shituations, or the manager who missed it, I’d genuinely like to hear from you. I’m more interested in understanding what is happening than being right.
Cases cited
Coroners Court of Victoria. (2020, November 6). Finding into death without inquest: Jessica Wilby (COR 2018 4528).
Ackers v Cairns Regional Council [2021] QSC 342.
Coroners Court of Victoria. (2026, April 22). Finding into death of Natasha Stojkoski (COR 2021 2298).
Coroners Court of Victoria. (2023, June 30). Finding into death with inquest: Marcus William Caldwell (COR 2018 790; amended December 27, 2023).