ThinkerTank has just released its 2026 Future of Work Outlook, and if you lead people or manage workplace risk, it deserves your attention. Drawing on a nationally representative YouGov survey of over 1,000 Australians alongside global research, the report maps eight trends that are reshaping work right now. As the report puts it, this year is not the destination, it is the preparation window. The regulatory deadlines are set, the workforce expectations have shifted, and the window to prepare is closing.
We strongly recommend you read the full report (available at www.thinkertank.co/insights). In the meantime, here are the findings we think matter most for our clients, along with what you should be doing about them.
The Compliance Era Is Here
The report confirms what we have been advising for some time: what were once discretionary workplace practices are rapidly being codified into legislation. Criminal wage theft provisions took effect in January 2025. The Right to Disconnect extends to small business from August 2025. A tort of serious invasion of privacy landed in June 2025, and transparency obligations around automated decision-making commence in December 2026. Food gig workers now have a minimum rate of $31.30 per hour with accident cover and representation rights, and Victoria is consulting on a two-day minimum for working from home.
ThinkerTank frames this as the beginning of an enforcement era, and we agree. History tells us that early test cases and high-profile penalties are likely as regulators set precedent. The Fair Work Commission and similar bodies will be looking to demonstrate that these reforms carry real consequences.
Our view:
This is not a future risk. It is a current compliance obligation. If your flexibility arrangements exist at managerial discretion rather than through documented policy, you are exposed. If you use algorithmic tools for hiring, performance monitoring, or workforce management, you need to be able to defend each one under the incoming transparency requirements. We are seeing a growing number of workplace investigations that touch on psychosocial hazards, surveillance practices, and wage compliance. If you have not audited your employment practices against these reforms, 2026 is the year to do it.
Burnout Is a Design Problem, Not a Wellness Problem
The report finds that 56% of Australian workers have experienced burnout in the last three years. For Gen-Z, it reaches 69%. Stress-related absences have surged from 42% to 57% in a single year. What makes this particularly confronting is the paradox: Gen-Z workers are simultaneously the most engaged generation and the most exhausted. 90% say they like their organisation, yet 69% report burnout. In other words, people can be happy at work and still be burning out and most organisations are not set up to detect the difference.
Safe Work Australia’s psychosocial hazard code is now enforceable, which means unreasonable workloads, poor support, and inadequate role clarity are safety risks, not just management shortcomings. WorkCover claims are already citing AI-driven monitoring and workplace anxiety alongside traditional physical injuries.
Our view:
We are already seeing psychosocial hazards feature prominently in workplace complaints and investigations. Organisations that respond to burnout by pointing at individual resilience rather than examining how work itself is structured will find themselves on the wrong side of both regulation and retention. The report’s insight that your highest-performing employees may also be your most at risk is one that every leadership team needs to sit with. Engagement surveys will not surface this. You need to examine workloads, recovery time, role clarity, and the cumulative effects of always-on tools.
AI Anxiety Is the Hidden Workforce Risk
While 42% of workers use AI tools daily, only 55% feel confident doing so. The generational divide is stark: 81% confidence among Gen-Z versus 33% for Baby Boomers. Perhaps most striking, 29% of Australians believe AI will cost them their job within five years, and this fear is highest among those who report being most confident with the technology. Gen-Z leads both confidence and anxiety. Meanwhile, 32% of workers actively avoid discussing their AI knowledge at work.
Our view:
From an investigation and compliance perspective, unmanaged AI anxiety creates real risk. Workers who feel threatened are more likely to disengage, withhold information, or resist change in ways that generate interpersonal conflict. We are also seeing early signs of grievances related to AI implementation, particularly when employees feel they were not consulted or when monitoring tools were introduced without adequate transparency. If you are rolling out AI, treat it as a change management exercise. Build psychological safety. Be transparent about what it means for roles, and implement a policy to manage AI in practice in your workplace. And do not assume that adoption metrics tell you anything about how people actually feel.
What Workers Want Has Shifted...And Your Employee Value Proposition Needs to Keep Up
The report shows pay dropping to 27% as the single top priority for workers, down six points in a year. Flexibility, good leadership, and wellbeing now collectively outweigh compensation. 71% of workers prefer flexibility over higher pay. Only 22% of CEOs still expect full-time office returns, down from 82% in 2024.
Our view:
This data reinforces what we see in practice. The disputes and grievances we investigate are increasingly connected to leadership quality, flexibility, and perceived fairness rather than pay alone. If your employment offer has not been reviewed against what your workforce actually values, you are likely drifting out of alignment. That drift does not announce itself. It shows up when your best people leave and you are not sure why.
What You Should Do Next
We recommend the following actions for the first half of 2026:
- Conduct a compliance health check. Map your current employment practices against the regulatory changes now in effect and those arriving this year. Pay particular attention to wage compliance, Right to Disconnect obligations, surveillance and monitoring practices, and any algorithmic decision-making tools in use.
- Audit your psychosocial risk profile. The psychosocial hazard code is enforceable. Review workloads, role clarity, management capability, and the cumulative demands being placed on your people. Do not rely solely on engagement data.
- Review your AI governance. Establish clear policies on AI use in the workplace, particularly for tools that monitor, evaluate, or make decisions about employees. Ensure transparency and create channels for employees to raise concerns.
- Revisit your employee value proposition. Test whether what you are offering matches what your people actually value. The data suggests that flexibility, leadership quality, and wellbeing are now as important as pay in determining whether people stay.
- Document your flexibility arrangements. If flexibility is currently offered at discretion, formalise it. The regulatory trajectory is clear. What is discretionary today may be an entitlement tomorrow.
A Final Word
We do not see 2026 as a year of prediction. We see it as a year of accountability. The legislative framework is tightening, employees are more informed, and regulators are signalling enforcement. In this environment, “we didn’t realise” will not be a defence.
The organisations that will move through this period confidently are those who invest now in governance, documentation and manager capability, treating people risk with the same rigour as financial risk. That preparation work (practical, structured and commercially grounded) is exactly where we are partnering with clients this year.
Want to learn more? Book a discovery call here.
Disclaimer: This article is general in nature and provides a summary only of the subject matter without the assumption of a duty of care by Effective Workplace Solutions. No person should rely on the contents as a substitute for legal or other professional advice.