Proud to present a new research from the Psychosocial Safety Climate Global Observatory Adelaide University (PSC-GO)—led by Prof Maureen Dollard, Dr May Young Loh, and Dr Tessa Bailey—reveals compelling evidence that workplace mistreatment is shaped by what happens at the very top of an organisation.

Across two large multisource studies involving over 40,000 workers, the team found that:

1. Senior management values and priorities are the strong predictors of an organisation’s psychosocial safety climate (PSC).

2. When senior leaders hold pro‑human vs bottom-line mentality values, supervisors perceive a stronger PSC and workers in turn report less bullying and harassment.

3. At the work unit level supervisor support is most effective only when the organisational climate signals that psychological health truly matters; in low‑PSC environments, even supportive supervisors may feel unable to act, allowing mistreatment to persist.

The findings highlight a powerful systems insight: Senior management values and priorities cascade across organisational structures and functions. When senior leaders value people, PSC increases and mistreatment declines.

The PSC Global Observatory emphasises that shifting senior management values—through human‑needs, human rights, regulatory pressure, or economic arguments—is a scalable and effective lever for preventing workplace mistreatment.

This novel values-driven explanation of PSC and workplace mistreatment provides a fresh focus for organisations seeking to build safer, fairer and more psychologically healthy workplaces.

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