The policy domain index score continued to rise (up 1.3 points to 62.8), following strong gains in 2020. More workers reported that workplace bullying and harassment is being handled effectively (up 1.0 percentage points (pp) to 22.0%) and they have easy access to confidential support services (up 1.5pp to 21.0%). The Wholesale Trade and Retail Trade industries improved dramatically from relatively low scores last year, while the Public Administration and Safety industry fulfilled its potential in this domain. In previous years this industry’s policy score was fairly average, although far better than the other domains. However, this year the policy index score improved by 2.6 points to 64.6, taking the industry from 9th to 3rd place in the policy domain. This is the first time the Public Administration and Safety industry has ranked in the top three for any domain, and a particularly impressive achievement during a pandemic!

Australia’s casual workforce reported strong improvements in policy (up 3.7 points to 60.5). It’s a positive sign for this important and growing workforce, who have historically been well behind their part-time and full-time colleagues. In the last year, casual workers have closed the gap with full-time workers from 6.2 points to 2.6 points, but more commitment is needed to make sure workplace policies are mentally healthy for all workers regardless of their employment basis.

Recent efforts by Comcare, Safe Work Australia and the workplace regulators in every state and territory not only provided more clarity and guidance relating to health and safety during the pandemic, but drove further discussions about bullying, sexual harassment and other unlawful workplace practices. While we still have a long way to go before this domain is thriving (80 or above out of 100), the regulatory focus is potentially contributing to the positive change in the policy domain over the last year.