Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal: Edition 9

Welcome to the 9th edition of Paradigm Makers Moonlit Minds Journal.

Table of Contents

• Jess’ Monthly Reflection

• Is mental health a new phenomenon?

  • 1800s: Nervous Exhaustion first identified

  • 1900 - 1930: The Stress of Modern Times

  • 1930 - 1960: Psychological needs matter

  • 1980 - 2000: Stress is a you problem

  • 2000 - 2020: Mental health might be important

  • 2020 - Present: Should individuals adapt?

• Language evolves, but systems persist.

• Work that works for humans

Jess’ Monthly Reflection

I’ve been thinking about sustainability, comedy and mental health at work this month.

Sustainability is not a topic I thought I’d ever discuss, yet I had the opportunity to speak at the Bendigo Sustainability Festival. The theme was "Many Hands: Let’s Build a Sustainable Future Together!” In my talk, I was curious to explore how sustainability has evolved throughout history and how a sustainable world future starts with us as individuals. Thanks to my mum; you can watch my talk on LinkedIn.

Once my speech was done, I dived right into my favourite time of the year, the Melbourne International Comedy Festival. I love the festival because it always leaves me inspired, and every year, I find missing pieces for the various ‘idea puzzles’ I’m working on. There are still 6 days left, so if you're in Melbourne, go and see someone new. I've got a list of recommendations on my Instagram MICF 2025 Recommendations highlight.

And then there's mental health at work. Last month, I was a panellist on Comcare’s Return to Work Webinar. My role was to share my lived experience with navigating mental health challenges at work. If you’re interested in learning more about our conversation, it’s now available on YouTube. The feedback I received during this session reignited my passion for creating workplaces with mental health at the core through systemic change. To do this, I've been experimenting with ChatGPT to create new frameworks to address systemic change. My goal is to identify frameworks and tools we can all use and apply in our circumstances to make work safer. So this month, I want to share some of the frameworks I’ve been working on in the context of workplace mental health and psychosocial hazards.

I hope you enjoyed last night’s Pink Moon,

Jess Price

Founder & Chief Vision Officer

EXPLORING THE HISTORICAL CONTEXT

Is mental health a new phenomenon?

One of my new frameworks is designed to identify the root cause of systemic challenges - like psychosocial hazards. Psychosocial hazards refer to risks in how work is designed, managed, or experienced that can cause psychological or physical harm. Typically, as was my experience, these risks impact mental health. The root cause of psychosocial hazards is how work is designed, managed, and experienced within systems that prioritise control, performance, and self-protection over people. Interestingly, this concept began in the 1800s, with the Industrial Revolution, and has continued to evolve.

1800s: Nervous Exhaustion first identified

In the context of history, this makes sense. Our way of working began with the first Industrial Revolution in the 1800s. We worked long hours in factories on the production line. At the time, key beliefs included workers are replaceable parts, time equals money, and human limits were ignored. Consequently, overwork (80-100 hours per week) was normalised. In 1869, Neurologist George Miller Beard identified the condition neurasthenia to describe the exhaustion of the central nervous symptom. The condition was attributed to modern life, yet was widely dismissed at the time.

1900 - 1930: The Stress of Modern Times

The start of a new century led to work structured for efficiency optimisation and task specialisation. Known as Taylorism, this approach equated maximum output with success, a belief that emotion and individuality interfere with productivity and the importance of standardisation over autonomy. The impact of Taylorism was repetitive, dehumanising jobs that excluded psychological needs from the design of work. This period also saw early research on fatigue, rest breaks and morale. In 1914, British physician Thomas Oliver issued the following warning in the Journal of State Medicine:

1930 - 1960: Psychological needs matter

A new era of work emerged in the 1930s with the rise of mass production, stable employment and early welfare programs. Known as the Fordism Era, Henry Ford realised morale could be engineered. There was a rise in the belief that happy workers are productive workers and an acknowledgement that psychological and social needs mattered. The 40-hour week became standard, and by the 1950s, there was a rise in job satisfaction studies, and worker support systems began to emerge, setting the groundwork for psychological models of work.

1960 - 1980: Burnout emerges

By the 1960s, occupational health and burnout awareness increased. There was an expansion in bureaucracy, union influence increased, and job enrichment experiments began. Research identified the real harm of chronic stress, and by the 1970s there was recognition that the workplace could be redesigned for human needs. The term burnout was coined in 1974, and the World Health Organisation (WHO) first recognised the importance of psychosocial factors in health and human development. The Demand/Control model, developed by Robert Karasek, also validated psychosocial stress as systemic, explaining the link between work organisation, psychosocial factors, and worker health.

1980 - 2000: Stress is a you problem

By the 1980s, management consultants began to influence the concept of work, taking advantage of neoliberalism and globalisation. Organisations embraced lean models, downsizing was common, and with the rise of computers and the internet, work became 24/7. Productivity was deemed a personal responsibility, flexibility was a sign of insecurity, and boundaries were a weakness. Consequently, overwork was glorified, job insecurity was on the rise and wellness initiatives emerged, yet often individualised stress.

2000 - 2020: Mental health might be important

Between 2000 and 2020, we saw unprecedented awareness of mental health at work, yet the challenges continued. Work became hyper-connected while hybrid work and the gig economy emerged. We started to believe work should be fulfilling but never-ending. Productivity became linked to hustle culture, burnout was normalised, and Amy Edmondson’s research on psychological safety gained traction. The WHO formally recognised burnout in 2019 in the International Classification of Diseases (ICD-11), right-to-disconnect laws emerged in Europe, and work-related stress entered public discourse.

2020 - Present: Should individuals adapt?

The pandemic saw the structure evolve again with blended work models, rising worker voice and criticisms of the systems of work. Tensions arose about the purpose of work (eg work should serve people vs people should serve performance), and conversations about changing the systems of work entered the public discourse. We normalised conversations about mental health and are increasingly doing the same for neurodiveristy. In 2021, ISO 450003 was published, creating international standards for mental health in the workplace. Psychosocial hazards were embedded in legislation, yet legacy beliefs, including Taylorism and Neoliberalism, still shape success.

IDENTIFYING OPPORTUNITIES FOR WORK TODAY

Language evolves, but systems persist.

The possible detrimental impact of work on our mental health has been known since 1869, indicating that psychosocial hazards are symptoms of deeper system values. While the terminology may have changed from neurasthenia to burnout to psychosocial risk, the structure remains the same. When a system is built to maximise output and protect itself from disruption, it will, often unconsciously, create conditions that harm the people inside it. Challenging the unconscious requires us to make the invisible, visible. If you follow me on LinkedIn, you may have seen the Iceberg Model I shared highlighting how psychosocial risk is a systems problem. This model helps to make the invisible, visible.

Yet I wanted to take it a step further, so I used the above historical evolution to track our progress on Paradigm Makers 5 Elements. As you can see, even though it feels like we’ve made significant progress, in reality, we’re still struggling with the same challenges we’ve faced since the 1930s. While we can’t change everything today, we can start to identify small actions we can take in our work to try and move us closer to a way of working that prioritises people.

CREATING A NEW WORK PARADIGM FOR TOMORROW

Work that works for humans

Psychosocial hazards are the output of systems designed without human limits in mind. These systems embedded harm into job design, incentives, culture, and power structures, and most modern 'fixes' still operate within this paradigm. Using Paradigm Makers’ 5 Elements, here are 5 ways we can shift our mindset to the system of work:

People move from interchangeable units of labour to complex, contextual beings with limits, values, and needs.

Traditional work treats people as predictable inputs. We’re expected to perform, produce, and comply, regardless of emotional, cognitive, or social limits. Instead, let’s redesign work around the diversity of human capacity, thinking about how we can:

• integrate biological and psychological limits into workload design (eg attention span, fatigue, emotion);

• design for variation, not standardisation, by accommodating neurodiversity, energy rhythms, and life stages; and

• recognise people as active participants in shaping safe systems, instead of passive recipients of rules.

We can embed these human limits through shared autonomy, making recovery the standard instead of the exception and permitting individuals to be fully human at work.

Innovation moves from disruption for profit to design for collective growth.

Innovation has historically meant faster, leaner and more extractive systems, which may amplify risk. Instead, let’s use innovation to repair and reimagine what human work looks like by:

• identifying ways of working that centre trust, clarity, and psychological safety;

• creating tiny experiments that reveal what supports or stresses people to proactively eliminate risk (like this experiment); and

• redesigning the structures around work including performance systems, feedback loops and success metrics.

Reframing innovation as a tool for more human work means innovation can remove friction, normalise learning from failure, and create systems that adapt to feedback from employees and customers.

Technology moves from enforcer of availability to boundary builder and amplifier of wellbeing.

Technology has enabled infinite availability, creating information overload, cognitive fatigue, and boundary erosion. We’ve always heard the promise of technology to make our lives easier, so let’s design tech that respects time, attention, and mental load by:

• using tech to enforce limits (eg delay sending outside hours, having set organisational-wide meeting rules);

• reducing noise, automating low-value tasks, and focusing on meaningful interactions with people; and

• treating digital ecosystems as part of the mental health infrastructure to eliminate psychosocial hazards.

Using technology, we can restore agency, allowing individuals to work in the way that works for them, using tools that visualise stress and integrate defaults that support rest, focus, and clarity (eg do not disturb mode).

Economics moves from labour as cost to control to value as wellbeing + contribution.

Work has been financially structured to prioritise short-term output over long-term sustainability. This has externalised harm, leaving the human cost invisible. Financial viability is possible when humans are at the forefront, so let’s design incentive systems that reward safety, care, and contribution to:

• redefine value creation to include psychological safety, retention and learning;

• quantify the cost of psychological harm through metrics including turnover, absenteeism and burnout; and

• make sustainable work economically beneficial for everyone.

Moving to this model will create shared values, recognise emotional labour and invisible work, and result in pay and performance systems that don’t reward burnout.

Norms move from performance at any cost to shared expectations of safety, care, and truth.

Unspoken rules drive silence, shame and overwork, often more than policy or hierarchy. By making invisible expectations visible and replacing them with norms that restore human-centric work, we can:

• normalise setting boundaries, asking for help, and discussing tension;

• design rituals that reinforce reflection, recovery, and reciprocity; and

• build cultures where it’s safe to say “I’m struggling” without fear of repercussion.

Normalising these concepts creates workplaces where everyone truly belongs, psychological safety is prioritised, and leadership norms are based on listening instead of dominance.

If you’ve made it this far, thank you. I’d love to hear your thoughts. Do you think this model could work?