The recently introduced Right to Disconnect has myriad benefits for employees, but also invites questions about how and why workers and their employers set boundaries with and for each other.

In this episode of The HR Leader Podcast, host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with shilo.people CEO and co-founder Ilona Charles about how and why boundaries can inadvertently impact flexible working arrangements, the nexus to the Right to Disconnect and whether the new legislation locks workers into certain arrangements, navigating different staff needs and generational attitudes, why boundaries are important in their own right, what employers need to be asking of themselves, practical steps to be taken, and why better management on this front is so imperative.

With the cost of workplace mental ill health projected to exceed $27 billion a year in Australia over the next 15 years, employers have a critical role to play in creating mentally healthy and safe workplaces – and the economic case for action is becoming increasingly difficult to ignore.

In this episode of The HR Leader Podcast, host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with Professor Margo Lydon, executive director and co-lead of Mentally Healthy Workplaces Australia, about the growing economic toll of workplace mental ill health, how absenteeism, presenteeism, staff turnover and reduced workforce participation are undermining productivity, why these costs are expected to escalate over the coming decades, the establishment of Australia's world-first national initiative to address the issue, how employers and other stakeholders can work together to drive meaningful change, and the significant economic and productivity benefits that could flow from investing in mentally healthy and safe workplaces.

Given Australia's ageing population, it is high time that employers think more seriously about how best to manage workers who have carer responsibilities for elderly family members – and move beyond thinking of such responsibilities as confined to caring for young children.

In this episode of The HR Leader Podcast, host Jerome Doraisamy speaks with health and ageing policy specialist Dr Abby Bloom about the need for Australia to "step up to the plate" in responding to our ageing population and its impact upon our workforce, how and why demographics will be so consequential for workers, the more common ailments being faced, why workers are increasingly being required to look after their parents, how employers have traditionally treated such carer responsibilities, the slow pace at which employers are shifting attitudes, the business case for such change, duties of team leaders and executives, and pathways that should be explored.