How South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) strengthened leadership capability, psychological safety, and staff wellbeing through the Empowering Leaders program.

The Client

South Western Sydney Local Health District (SWSLHD) is one of NSW’s largest health services comprising more than 1,300 leaders and 19,000 healthcare staff supporting a diverse community of over 1 million people.\

The Challenge

Healthcare leaders operate in complex environments - balancing patient care, workforce pressures, psychosocial risks, and increasing expectations around staff wellbeing and psychological safety.

Recognising these challenges, SWSLHD partnered with Thrive Ability to implement the Empowering Leaders program with leaders across hospital and community health settings.

SWSLHD sought to further equip leaders to:

• Strengthen capability around psychosocial safety and risk prevention

• Build psychologically safe teams and relationships

• Recognise and respond to psychosocial hazards earlier

• Lead healthier and more sustainable work practices

• Move from reactive responses toward prevention and early intervention

• Ability to navigate and hold difficult conversations

The Solution

SWSLHD partnered with Thrive Ability to deliver Empowering Leaders - an evidence-based leadership program designed to help leaders strengthen psychosocial safety capability, support compliance obligations, and create safer, healthier, and higher-performing workplaces.

The program equips leaders with practical tools to identify psychosocial risks, improve work design, support wellbeing, and build psychologically safe team environments.

Leaders built capability across the six Empowered Leadership functions:

READY – Self-awareness and emotional readiness

RELATE – Building trust and psychological safety

REINFORCE – Embedding healthy team behaviours

RECOGNISE – Identifying risks early

RESPOND – Leading supportive conversations

REDESIGN – Improving work systems and environments

The Impact

The Empowering Leaders program created positive shifts across leadership capability, psychosocial safety capability, psychological safety practices, and wellbeing.

Leaders reported feeling more empowered, more confident supporting staff wellbeing, and better equipped to create psychologically safe teams.

Importantly, the learning translated into practice, with leaders actively applying tools and approaches within their day-to-day work and workplaces.

Participants also reported improvements in personal wellbeing, including greater hopefulness, life satisfaction, feeling more supported at work, and stronger self-care during busy periods.

Results

Greater Leadership Confidence & Empowerment

The strongest shift observed was leaders feeling more empowered, capable, and proactive in their role.

Empowerment scores increased from +2.7 to +5.9.

Participants also reported improvements in hopefulness, life satisfaction, feeling supported at work, and self-care during busy periods.

Improved Psychosocial Safety Capability

Leaders reported greater confidence in their ability to:

Identify psychosocial risks earlier
Lead healthier and more sustainable work practices
Take preventative action
Improve psychosocial safety within teams and workplaces

Practical Application in Leadership

One of the strongest results was leaders applying the tools and learning directly in their day-to-day leadership practice, demonstrating strong transfer from learning into action.

Stronger Psychological Safety Practices

Leaders reported increased confidence building trust, having difficult conversations, and supporting psychologically safe team environments.

Workplace Improvements Through Redesign

Leaders completed workplace Redesign Projects, applying the learning to real opportunities and challenges within their work environments.

Conclusion

SWSLHD’s partnership with Thrive Ability demonstrates how investing in leaders can strengthen both workforce wellbeing and leadership capability.

By equipping leaders with practical tools and a shared framework for psychosocial safety, the Empowering Leaders program helped leaders build safer teams, healthier workplaces, and stronger cultures.

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“The Empowering Leaders course was very beneficial in helping me identify areas I needed to improve in my own well-being and gave practical strategies and ways to implement those strategies into my life to reduce burnout and fatigue as a manager. The course also helped identify “hazards” within our team that were impacting the well-being and culture of our team and provided me with a process of how to help my team identify and reduce those hazards. I feel the course has made me more resilient as a manager and provided practical ways I can help my team thrive. I wish this course was offered earlier in my manager journey to reduce the burn out and impact on my wellbeing I experienced. I would definitely recommend this course to other managers especially those just starting out in manager career."