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Understaffing can have a profound impact on our health, both mental and physical, so it's important that workers escalate their workload concerns through the proper channels.

When it comes to your health and safety, the law is on your side.

Employers have an obligation and duty to identify workplace factors that could harm your health and safety, and must take reasonable steps to prevent or reduce those risks.

Your employer is obligated to remove or reduce workplace hazards that could affect your psychological health wherever reasonably possible.

If you have already raised your concern with your employer and they are not taking any steps or measures to address the problem, there are a few ways you can escalate this.

Health and Safety Reps

Many workplaces have Health and Safety Representatives (HSR). HSRs are workers who are elected to represent the health and safety interests of their colleagues.

They can notify the employer of hazards by bringing risks to the employer’s attention, and in very serious situations that pose a risk to your health and safety, an HSR can issue a provisional improvement notice (PIN), which will force the employer to address the hazard.

In essence, they provide workers with a direct, elected voice on health and safety matters in the workplace.

You can read more about the role and powers of HSRs here.

So if your workplace has an elected HSR, talk to them about your workload concerns and what can be done to address it.

Enterprise Agreement clauses

The FSU has also negotiated workload clauses in many enterprise agreements. These clauses require the employer to take certain measures to reduce and address workload issues.

If an employer has failed to meet their obligations then there is the potential to raise a formal dispute in the Fair Work Commission.

FSU members can check their individual enterprise agreement on the FSU website here.

Union support

Sometimes the best way to escalate a workload concern is to do so with your colleagues – and with the support of the FSU.

As FSU member Justine Sherwood said following a recent win at NAB:

"Collectively we have a stronger voice than one or two. There are 40,000 employees at NAB. If only a few speak up then management will think it's not a big deal, but if more than 50 per cent of the workforce say this is an issue, they're more likely to listen. We need to work collaboratively for our rights and having the backing of the FSU is paramount to us doing this."

If you have a persistent and ongoing workload concern, chances are your colleagues are also experiencing the same thing. There is power in numbers, and it is much harder for an employer to ignore the concerns of an entire group of employees.

In the first instance, speak to your FSU Workplace Representatives and your FSU Organiser about how you might escalate your concerns together. If in doubt, reach out to the FSU at [email protected] or call our Member Rights Centre on 1300 366 378.