Practical advice for creating a respectful and legally sound workplace culture
Fay Calderone has spent years helping organisations navigate unfair dismissal cases, general protections claims, industrial disputes, and discrimination matters across State and Federal courts and tribunals.
In this session Fay blends the compliance and culture conversation—providing practical advice for leaders looking to foster inclusive, psychologically safe and compliant cultures that protect both the people and the business.
Why This Session / Why Now?
Psychosocial safety is increasingly approached as structural compliance (policies, reporting, controls). However, the “social” layer how people interact, communicate and escalate/resolve issues has been diluted or dropped. This creates preventable risk where processes inadvertently activate threat states, eroding trust, increasing conflict, and contributing to claims and capability gaps.
To build positive, psychologically safe workplaces, we must understand and design for the negative fear, threat response patterns and trust dynamics in the social brain at work.
The Model & Code of Practice (Fit‑for‑Purpose)
· Where are organisations over‑indexing on structural controls vs capability and interaction design?
· What are the “non‑negotiables” (standards, behaviours, language) that protect workers and organisations?
Applied Neuroscience as a Practical Risk Control
· How do we explain threat response, fear, and trust in non‑clinical, non‑blaming language?
· What minimum neuroscience concepts are necessary to shift behaviour (e.g., threat cues, certainty, fairness, belonging)?
· Where should neuroscience sit: Leadership development, HR practice, WHS risk controls or all three?
Hot Spots / Risk Patterns Observed in Practice
· Pattern: performance issues → concern → compliance → claim (noting demographic concentration in some contexts).
· Risk: tools/processes used as substitutes for skilled interaction; impact on integrity and trust.
· Weaponisation: adversarial, curt, abrupt tone and process that triggers threat states before content is addressed.
Shared Language, Norms & Skills
· What “shared skills and language” are essential for talking to people at work especially under stress - tone, timing, channels, escalation, accountability?
· How do we embed norms across HR, Safety, Leaders, and frontline?
Governance, Measurement & Certification
· What should be measured to demonstrate risk reduction (not just activity/compliance)?
· DEI sentiment and intersectional risks: how to address overlapping risks through a safety lens (not ideology).
About
Fay Calderone is a trailblazer in employment law, with over 25 years of experience advising top-tier employers, boards, and leaders across Australia. She has helped employers shape workplace policies and guided complex projects that champion safety, inclusivity, and respect. Fay is widely recognised not just for her legal expertise, but for her transformative approach that places humanity at the heart of workplace culture.
As a Partner at Hall & Wilcox, Fay leads initiatives that foster thriving, psychologically safe workplaces and is a trusted voice in the media and on stage at industry conferences. Her thought leadership has earned her accolades including recognition in The Best Lawyers and Doyle’s Guide for Labour & Employment Law – Sydney, a 5-Star Employment Lawyer by HRD Australia, and multiple honours from the Lawyers Weekly Partner of the Year Awards, including Wellness Advocate and Employment Partner of the Year. She is also a proud member of the prestigious Saxton Speakers Bureau.
Fay’s advocacy is deeply personal, rooted in lived experience and a relentless commitment to equity. Her work goes beyond managing legal risk to leading cultural change and empowering leaders to build workplaces where people feel safe, valued, and able to thrive.
Her debut book, Broken to Safe, was an Amazon bestseller and is a powerful call to action for leaders to confront toxic workplace cultures and burnout. Drawing on her extensive experience, Fay offers practical, compassionate strategies to create environments where employees flourish and organisations prosper. Her next book Rise Up – A Guide to Leading with Inclusionis scheduled to launch with Taylor & Francis Routledge Group in August 2026.