COLLABORATE - Bridging research, practice and the Body of Knowledge
| Friday, November 20, 2026 |
| 3:25 PM - 4:45 PM |
Overview
How practitioners, regulators and industry shape the evidence,
including new research on redesigning systems for psychological
safety.
Details
EVIDENCE INTO PRACTICE
The profession's knowledge is not built in universities alone. It is built by
practitioners, regulators, industry and professional networks.
This closing session brings those perspectives together to identify emerging challenges, test current approaches and shape future directions and to look at how your own practice contributes to the OHS Body of Knowledge.
Elena Lennox presents the research behind the white paper Systems that cause harm in the workplace: how to redesign them for psychological safety, covering how the study was conducted across sixteen practitioner interviews, four case studies and a measured pilot study, and the six redesign principles it established for preventing harm rather than processing it.
Speaker
Marcus Cattani
Associate Professor Occupational Health and Safety
Edith Cowan University
COLLABORATE - Bridging research, practice and the Body of Knowledge
Biography
Marcus Cattani is a researcher focussing on the prevention of workplace injuries, disease and fatalities. He is a Professorial Research Fellow in the Sustainable Minerals Institute's, Minerals Industry Safety and Health Centre at the University of Queensland. His expertise concerns the management of organisational injury and incident risk, managing exposure to workplace hazards and modelling safety data and information to improve the communication of risk.
Marcus is an Australian Institute of Health and Safety Board member and Chair of the College of Fellows.
Elena Lennox
Principal Consultant
DevelopMental Safety and Wellbeing
COLLABORATE - Bridging research, practice and the Body of Knowledge
Biography
Elena Lennox is Principal Consultant of DevelopMental Safety & Wellbeing and Founder of Courageous Women. An educator with a Postgraduate Certificate in Human Resources, she works with boards, executive leaders, WHS and HR professionals to strengthen psychosocial safety, manage operational risk and build sustainable performance across complex organisations.
Her research examines how lawful, well-intended organisational systems can unintentionally create psychological harm, increasing both people risk and operational exposure. Her White Paper, Systems that Cause Harm in the Workplace: How to Redesign them for Psychological Safety, integrates practitioner insight, WHS obligations and contemporary research to bridge the gap between compliance, culture and performance.
Elena designs and leads implementation-focused programmes that translate psychosocial safety requirements into practical governance and leadership action. Using the Working with Resilience toolbox, she also builds capacity within teams, equipping people with evidence-based strategies to manage demands and sustain wellbeing at work. Her work supports organisations to move beyond policy statements and awareness initiatives, embedding system-level change that reduces harm, strengthens accountability and improves organisational resilience.