90percent Consulting

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90percent Consulting

We help leaders create healthier workplaces through coaching, strategy, and practical tools that support people, not just policies. Why 90% and not 100%?

NT-based and trauma-informed, we focus on reducing burnout, building trust, and helping teams stay and thrive. Because perfection doesn't leave room for continuous improvement.

24/06/2026

Your biggest psychosocial hazard this year might not be workload, conflict, or bullying.

It might be the way your organisation handles change.

Poor organisational change management is a psychosocial hazard.

Not change itself.

The way change is handled.

Most workplaces today are navigating some combination of:

* Restructures
* AI disruption
* Budget cuts
* Workforce shortages
* Changing priorities
* Cost of living pressures

Change has become normal.

What isn’t normal is expecting people to absorb constant uncertainty without support.

Workers don’t burn out because change exists.

They burn out when change feels endless, unpredictable, and poorly communicated.

That can look like:

-> Hearing rumours before receiving information
-> Multiple restructures in a short period
-> Constantly shifting priorities and reporting lines
-> Increased workloads during transitions
-> Little consultation or support

Over time, that uncertainty creates psychological strain.

With almost half (49%) of Australian workers experiencing a major organisational change in the past 12 months, organisations can no longer afford to treat change management as a project management exercise.

It’s a psychosocial safety issue.

The question isn’t whether your organisation is changing.

The question is whether your people feel supported while navigating it.

21/06/2026

I've worked with organisations across the NT for 18 years.

And I've noticed something that doesn't show up in exit interviews.

Dry season is when people quietly decide whether to stay.

Not loudly. Just a private reckoning that sounds something like:

"Is this actually the life I wanted? Am I living it - or just working through it?"

If the answer is no, most of them will be gone before the Wet arrives.

This is a retention problem.

But it's not a pay problem, or a management problem, or a 'wrong person for the role' problem.

It's a design problem.

Research on population retention in the NT is clear: social connection and embeddedness are the most powerful factors in whether people stay in sparsely populated regions.

Not salary.

Whether people feel like they belong somewhere, and whether their work allows them to actually live there.

So the question worth sitting with is this:

Are we designing work that allows people to live here, or just work here?

In practice, that means asking:

→ Do rosters and workloads allow people to actually use their time off?

→ Do your managers have the flexibility to give people a long weekend when the conditions are perfect?

→ Is 'making the most of the dry' a real cultural norm, or just something people say?

→ Are you tracking turnover by season? The patterns are often telling.

The Wet season is extraordinary.

The leaders who keep their people long enough to experience it aren't just the ones who pay well.

They're the ones who designed work that let people have a life.

Perhaps it’s time to audit your roster and workload patterns before the wet arrives?

17/06/2026

We're at the Australian Institute of Health & Safety Conference in Adelaide this week, connecting with industry peers and exploring the latest thinking in health, safety and wellbeing.

Monday's program included The Bend Offsite Experience, where delegates explored safety, performance and operational excellence through a range of immersive activities at one of Australia's premier motorsport venues.

Digby, in his role as Health, Safety, Environment and Quality Specialist, enjoyed a hot lap in a Mustang - a definite highlight of the experience so far!

16/06/2026

As an organisational psychologist, people often assume I spend most of my time studying individuals.

The reality is, I’m usually looking at systems.

After more than 20 years working and studying in this field, here’s what I actually look for first:

1. Quantitative data

What are the numbers telling us?

Things like:

--> Leave requests
--> Workers’ compensation claims
--> EAP utilisation
--> Absenteeism
--> Incident reports
--> Grievances and complaints

Patterns often emerge long before organisations realise there’s a problem.

2. Qualitative data

What are people saying?

I look at:

--> Exit interviews
--> Staff feedback
--> Performance conversations
--> Complaints and compliments
--> Communication effectiveness

The stories behind the numbers matter.

3. Diversity and inclusion data

Who is thriving?

Who isn’t?

And why?

Understanding different employee experiences often reveals opportunities to strengthen culture, engagement, and performance across the organisation.

Workplace issues rarely appear overnight.

The clues are usually there long before the symptoms become impossible to ignore.

14/06/2026

The longer I work with leaders and organisations, the more I’m reminded that healthy, high-performing workplaces are built on a few simple principles.

Here are 8 that I keep coming back to.

12/06/2026

A person can be affected by trauma without ever experiencing what most people would call a ‘traumatic event’.

Think about someone who has spent years feeling like they’re never quite doing enough.

The workload keeps growing. Expectations keep changing.
Feedback only comes when something negative happens.

Every time they catch up, another problem lands on their desk.

Individually, none of those experiences seem traumatic.

But over time, living in a constant state of pressure and uncertainty can affect how a person thinks, feels, and responds to the world around them.

One of the biggest misconceptions about trauma is that it always involves a single, significant event.

Sometimes it does.

But sometimes it’s years of carrying too much responsibility.

Sometimes it’s exposure to other people’s distress, day after day.

Sometimes it’s staying through constant restructures and uncertainty.

Sometimes it’s working in environments where you’re constantly on alert, unsupported, unheard, or expected to keep going no matter what.

Trauma can be cumulative.

It can be subtle.

It isn’t always about what happened.

Sometimes it’s about what happened repeatedly.

And often, the behaviours we see in workplaces make much more sense when we stop asking:

“What’s wrong with this person?”

and start asking:

“What has this person experienced, adapted to, or been carrying for a long time?”

11/06/2026

As the rest of Australia braces for the cold weather, the Northern Territory comes to life.

Cooler mornings, markets, music, outdoor everything. It's the reason many people choose to live and work here.

But I want to ask leaders something directly:

Are your people actually getting to experience it?

Because here's what I see in organisations across the Territory every dry season: workloads that quietly peak, flexibility that shrinks, and a culture where "take some time off" gets said, but never modelled.

And there's now a legal dimension to this too.

Since August 2024, most Australian employees have a legislated right to disconnect - to refuse contact outside working hours unless that refusal is unreasonable.

But legislation alone doesn't change culture.

The real question is whether your team actually believes they're allowed to switch off.

If you're sending emails at 9pm, taking calls on weekends, and arriving visibly exhausted - the message your team receives isn't "we support work-life balance." It's "this is what commitment looks like here."

That gap between what leaders say and what they model is a psychosocial hazard.

It creates an unspoken rule that rest is theoretical.

So what does it actually look like to model it?

-> Leave at a reasonable time (yes even at busy times)
-> Talk openly about how you spent your weekend
-> Protect your own leave and make it visible
-> Resist the urge to send that message tonight (it can wait)

The dry season is short.

If your people can't access the lifestyle that makes the Territory worth living in, they'll notice.

And that decision has consequences that follow you well into the wet.

What's one thing you could do differently this week to show your team that disconnecting is genuinely okay?

21/05/2026

Only 22% of Australian employees believe their managers are equipped to effectively support mental health in the workplace.*

Supporting people well isn’t something leaders should have to guess their way through.

And yet, many still are.

Here are 6 simple, evidence-informed ways leaders can better support employee mental health:

1. Hold regular 1:1 meetings - genuinely get to know your team members. What are they interested in? How connected do they feel to their community?

2. Honest and supportive feedback: What has the leader seen them do well? What have their colleagues appreciated? What learning opportunities might the company be able to offer?

3. Seeking team members' perspectives: What ideas do they have to improve company operations? What's going well? What risks need to be addressed?

4. Start the day with 10 min team check-ins to align priorities, celebrate progress, and offer support. What's on each person's plate today?

5. Set aside 15 min drop-in times so employees feel welcome to seek clarification, guidance, or support.

6. Encourage solutions-focused thinking by asking team members to bring possible solutions alongside challenges.

Psychologically safe workplaces are shaped through consistent leadership behaviours - not just policies.

*SuperFriend Indicators of a Thriving Workplace Report, 2023

19/05/2026

My understanding of trauma didn’t start in a classroom.

It started on 9/11 in NYC, resulting in PTSD that took over 20 years to recover.

Part of that journey led me to understand how people carry trauma.

During my MProfPsych studies, a classmate mentioned The Body Keeps the Score by Bessel van der Kolk.

In 2023, I finally read it and was struck by the use of EMDR, particularly in supporting Vietnam veterans where other treatments had been ineffective.

This led me to complete EMDR Level One training in Darwin with Dr Sarah Domingues.

At the time, I was working with clients managing PTSD symptoms and, while we were making steady progress, traditional approaches were only getting us so far.

When I asked if they were willing to try EMDR, they all agreed, and reported significant improvements very quickly.

Through that work, I realised there were still residual symptoms from my own experience, so I sought EMDR treatment with Annette Trikilis.

Within 3 sessions, I experienced a profound level of relief as the trauma was finally reprocessed.

When I first encountered PTSD, my research told me only 1/3 of people could be expected to recover. I resolved at the time to be amongst that third, but EMDR changed what I believed was possible.

I now use EMDR alongside other evidence-informed approaches.

In my work across organisations I continue to see how often trauma has a workplace context - particularly where people are exposed to psychologically unsafe environments.

And whilst we’ve come a long way in supporting recovery, I’ve come to believe just as strongly that we should be creating workplaces people don’t need to recover from in the first place.

PTSD robs people of their quality of life.

There are many things workplaces can do to reduce risk for trauma-exposed staff.

That’s where 90percent Consulting can help.

17/05/2026

Fortune 500 companies consider executive coaching their 'best-kept secret' with an average ROI of 7:1 for leadership and executive coaching programmes.

As International Coaching Week comes to a close, one thing remains true: investing in people changes workplaces.

By focusing on strategic self-awareness, curiosity, and intentional growth, I make sure every coaching interaction is a targeted investment in your organisation's most valuable resource - its people.

Learn more here: https://www.90percent.com.au/leadership-coaching

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Darwin, NT
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Website

http://www.90percent.com.au/

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