Perth-based Workplace Culture Review

Culture has become infrastructure for performance, adaptation, AI adoption and employee safety and wellbeing.

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1. Employee engagement has fallen to its lowest level since 2020

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Only 20% of employees globally are engaged at work. Gallup reports that global engagement fell for the second consecutive year, from a peak of 23% in 2022–23 to 20% in 2025. The economic consequence is significant: Gallup estimates that low engagement cost the global economy approximately US$10 trillion in lost productivity, equivalent to around 9% of global GDP. 

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Why this matters for culture:

Engagement isn't created by an annual survey or a wellbeing initiative. It is shaped by the everyday experience of leadership, trust, purpose, recognition, accountability and how work actually gets done.

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If only 1 in 5 employees is genuinely engaged, culture is no longer a "nice to have". It's a performance issue.

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2. Organisations are changing faster than their people can comfortably absorb

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Deloitte's 2026 research found that 85% of respondents say it is critical for organisations and their workforces to adapt at the speed required today, but only 7% believe their organisation is leading in this area.

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Even more concerning, one-third of workers experienced 15 or more major changes in the previous year. Deloitte found that this continual change was associated with decreased wellbeing for 68% of workers, increased workload for 60%, and feeling less relevant or left behind for 58%. 

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Why this matters for culture:

Culture determines how people experience change. A culture characterised by trust, psychological safety, learning and open communication gives people somewhere to stand when everything else is moving.

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Your organisation may be changing faster than your culture can absorb.

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And importantly, Deloitte found that organisations that successfully cultivate an adaptive approach are 2.4 times more likely to report better financial results and more meaningful work. 

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3. AI is making culture a business-critical issue, not an HR issue

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Deloitte's 2026 Human Capital Trends research makes a particularly powerful point: competitive advantage is increasingly coming from the human edge, not technology alone.

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In research with 100 C-suite leaders, 59% of organisations were taking a technology-focused approach to AI, but those organisations were 1.6 times more likely to fail to achieve AI returns above expectations compared with organisations taking a human-centric approach. 

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Deloitte specifically identifies culture, trust, decision rights and human–AI interaction as issues organisations need to rethink. It warns that organisations can accumulate "cultural debt" when AI changes how people work without the organisation addressing the resulting shifts in trust, ownership, fairness and accountability. 

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Why this matters for culture:

You can't successfully implement AI simply by buying the technology. People need to trust it, understand how their roles are changing, feel safe experimenting and know where human judgement still matters.

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AI can change how work gets done. Culture determines whether people can change with it.

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4. Psychological safety is becoming a performance and safety system - not a wellbeing initiative

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For Australian organisations, psychological safety is no longer simply an employee wellbeing issue. It sits at the intersection of culture, leadership, performance and Work Health & Safety.

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Australian research from the Australian HR Institute found a significant gap between the support leaders believe they provide and the psychosocial hazards employees report experiencing. Importantly, employees who reported higher levels of psychological safety-feeling safe to raise problems and talk about mistakes were significantly less likely to report frequently experiencing psychosocial hazards. 

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This matters because psychological safety can act as an early-warning system.

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When people feel safe to speak up, they are more likely to say:

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• "The workload isn't sustainable." 

• "Something isn't safe here." 

• "We're not being consulted properly." 

• "I'm worried about this decision." 

• "This behaviour isn't okay." 

• "I made a mistake—here's what happened." 

• "The change process isn't working." 

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When they don't feel safe, these conversations can disappear underground. That's where culture becomes a WHS issue.

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Poor psychological safety can allow psychosocial hazards to take hold

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Safe Work Australia identifies poor support, lack of role clarity, poor organisational change management, high job demands, bullying, harassment, conflict and poor workplace relationships among the psychosocial hazards organisations must identify and manage. 

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In WA, WorkSafe specifically identifies poor leadership practices and workplace culture as organisational factors that can contribute to psychosocial risk. It also emphasises that workers need to feel confident to raise concerns, ask questions and report hazards without hesitation.