Psychosocial Risk Leadership Programme

A 8-week programme for H&S, HR and people leaders accountable for psychosocial risk.

An eight-week founding cohort for H&S, HR and people leaders who want to read their signals before they're incidents.

End of August 2026 - 8 weeks duration - online and 1 full day live in person.

"The signals were there.

All of them.

For months."

The wellbeing platform is running. The engagement survey is going out. The policy is on paper. ISO 45003 is sitting on your desk.

And the data still won't tell you what's actually happening underneath.

Most leaders carry this quietly.

The numbers look fine, until they don't.

The first real signal arrives as an incident, a grievance, a resignation, a fine.

Between the ordinary morning and the avoidable outcome, there is a window.

This programme is for the leaders who want to see it earlier.

What it is

An eight-week programme.

Mostly online.

One full day in the room together.

Where the language settles, the signals get named, and the case for the work starts to build itself.

"Nobody had the language -
or the psychological safety -
to make them stop."

That's what this programme begins to fix.

What you'll learn to do.

→ Read the signals.

Build a working signals map for your own organisation - fines, turnover, engagement, near-misses, sick leave. The signals hiding in plain sight, named, costed, on one page.

→ Speak the language.

The vocabulary to talk about psychosocial risk in your own workforce, in your own meetings - to see the gap, and to start making the case for closing it. Stress as a system state. Unique brain wiring. The signals you've been seeing for months, finally with names.

→ Take it back.

The start of the capability to recognise psychosocial hazards and what they're costing - by reading the signals already in front of you. Engagement, productivity, fines, sick leave, turnover. The data your organisation has been generating all along, finally with a frame that makes it legible.

"Looks like culture.
It's capacity."

That's what the cohort begins to fix.

By the end of the cohort, you will be able to start to:

→ See yourself, and others, on the nQuadrant model.

Unique brain wiring. Stress as a system state. The four emotional brain states -green, early orange, high orange, red. Why one workplace can energise one person and exhaust another.

→ Recognise psychosocial hazards in your own workplace.

Above and below the waterline. Why ordinary signals stay buried. The start of the capability ISO 45003 and the HSW Act now expect of you.

→ Read your own signals - and start to put numbers against them.

Engagement, sick leave, turnover, productivity, fines. Using a signals calculator built for NZ workplaces. Your own numbers if you have them. NZ benchmark data if you don't.

How the eight weeks work.

Week 1 - Welcome session · 60 min online

Live Introduction to Neurodiversity webinar plus welcome from the facilitators. The frame for the eight weeks. Confidentiality charter built together and Introductions in the cohort space.

Week 2 - Getting SELF e-learning, on the nQ Platform

Self-paced. You start by reading your own wiring.

Week 3 - Getting SELF cohort call · 45 min lunchtime

Process the language together with peers from other sectors.

Week 4 - Getting OTHERS e-learning, on the nQ Platform

Self-paced. What energises one brain wiring can exhaust another.

Week 5 - Getting OTHERS cohort call · 45 min lunchtime

Same shape, different content.

Week 6 - The in-person day · full day

12–20 leaders. Two facilitators. The nQ card sort, in your hands. Your organisation's signals, mapped on the table. The slide pack you'll take back home, built in the room.

Week 8 - Two-week follow-up · 90 min online

You've been back. You've started the conversation. The cohort reconvenes. What worked, what didn't, what's next - coaching-style debrief.

What you take home.

→ Your signals map.

Built in the room. Yours to use.

→ Your slide pack.

To present back to leadership, built in the room.

→ Examples of what the full programme builds.

A walk-through of how the H&S risk register, the policy frame, and the return-to-work-by-quadrant model can work in practice - so you see what's possible inside your own organisation.

→ Cross-sector peers.

Doing the same work. On first-name terms by week two.

"When people have the language, they can understand each other faster, creating safety to act before the issue becomes a crisis"

Christina Johnson, Clutha District Council

Who this is for.

H&S, HR and people leaders accountable for psychosocial risk in NZ organisations of fifty or more.

→ Health and safety leaders, managers and senior advisors

→ HR senior leaders and people directors

→ Organisational performance and improvement managers

→ HSW representatives and committee chairs

One seat per organisation.

Cross-sector by design.

We work best with leaders whose engagement data has stalled, whose policy looks stronger on paper than it feels in practice, and who already know one-size-fits-all wellbeing platforms aren't enough.

What's shared in the room stays in the room.

This is a confidential working cohort.

You're walking in with your organisation's real signals - fines, engagement, near-misses, conflicts.

That requires a room you can be honest in.

One seat per organisation. A confidentiality charter will be build together in the welcome session.