Valerie Ling

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04/06/2026

A major Australian workplace study (Rahimi et al., 2025) examined psychosocial stress across thousands of workers — showing that not all work environments are the same for everyone.

Female workers reported significantly higher work pace and emotional demands. They also experienced higher rates of bullying than men — 24% vs 15%.

Full-time workers face greater cognitive demands and less job influence, though both groups reported almost identical rates of workplace threats (~13%).

Public sector employees carry heavier quantitative and emotional workloads, and report more bullying and threats of violence than their private sector counterparts.

White-collar workers report higher cognitive demands and more exposure to psychosocial adversities like bullying.

Professionals face the highest emotional demands (mean 58.3), while managers enjoy more influence and development opportunities. Technicians and professionals both show elevated stress and conflict levels

Where you work, what you do, and who you are all shape your psychological experience at work — in very different ways.

Source: Rahimi, I., et al. (2025). "Subgroup comparisons in psychosocial workplace factors." BMC Public Health, 25, 830.

I have been toying around with conceptualising the changes in ministry using a VUCA framework. Reading through some lea...
03/06/2026

I have been toying around with conceptualising the changes in ministry using a VUCA framework. Reading through some leadership literature, I came across thinking in the military space around how the world shifts in Volatility, Uncertainty, Complexity and Ambiguity leads to shifts in the way we organise teams/groups and adapt leadership. I am interested in what you think about how this parallels the growing load on clergy. I have been thinking about how role and job creep has really expanded and accelerated over the last few years, and how we need a more concerted effort to re-imagine how ministry is done, for more sustainability.

Because the ministry setting brings about traumatic material, I took the path of accreditation. I am pleased to be a ful...
02/06/2026

Because the ministry setting brings about traumatic material, I took the path of accreditation. I am pleased to be a full member of the EMDR Association of Australia.

In the latest season of the Clergy Wellbeing Down Under podcast, you’ll hear researchers underscore just how central con...
30/05/2026

In the latest season of the Clergy Wellbeing Down Under podcast, you’ll hear researchers underscore just how central congregational dynamics are to clergy health and sustainability. From my own epidemiological and occupational health perspective, I’m especially interested in how these everyday congregational patterns cluster, how they function as psychosocial risks or supports, and what can change at a structural level so that ministry becomes a healthier place to serve over time.

I've been researching clergy wellbeing, and what strikes me most is how the stressors don't sit side by side — they pres...
28/05/2026

I've been researching clergy wellbeing, and what strikes me most is how the stressors don't sit side by side — they press inward, one ring at a time, toward the most vulnerable part of a person.

Societal & spiritual crisis — ministers serve in a world of declining faith, political division, and deepening mistrust of the church. Their congregation, the community they are embeded in, and the mutuality of these contexts place significant impact on their ministry

Church & denomination — governance structures, livelihood dependent on free will giving, unclear policies, mobility and conflicting power dimensions in congregation-clergy relationships.

Ministry role — the job that never switches off. Clergy often live on church grounds, steps from their congregation. Work and home are not just blurred — they are the same place. Overload and role ambiguity press down on a life with no clear boundary. Impact on family life is inherent, as the entire family is embedded in the system.

Congregation & community — loneliness, conflict, vicarious trauma from pastoral care, and the weight of expectations that vary by age, theology, and what people think church is for.

Individual — identity fused with role. When the role struggles, the person struggles.

Spiritual — and beneath it all, the layer no other profession carries: fear of failing God. Spiritual dryness. The crisis of the very source a minister is meant to draw from.

26/05/2026

The Season 3 Finale is here! Earlier this year I attended The Common Table Gathering conference in Houston. About 150 researchers including from Harvard, Biola, Baylor, Duke, Boston, and practitioners offering innovative programmes and services gathered to share their latest insights. I was completely transformed by this experience. In this episode, I speak with Dr Thad Austin, the founder of the Common Table Network and Kashmiri Schmookler, the network's chaplain to hear the story of the network, and also to inspire us to think about how we too can connect and collaborate. News headline! In 2027, The Common Table Gathering will be in Boston, focusing on trauma and suffering in the church. I am pretty certain I will be attending! How about you?

Links to podcast episode in comments 👇

26/05/2026

The NSW Industrial Relations Commission has largely upheld psychosocial improvement notices issued by SafeWork NSW against the NSW Department of Education in Secretary, NSW Department of Education v SafeWork NSW (No 2) [2026] NSWIRComm 1014.

The case followed a prolonged misconduct investigation in which an employee was removed from her workplace of ~14 years, was not given meaningful particulars for months, and remained under investigation for around 10 months. SafeWork found the process exposed workers to psychosocial risk.

Two improvement notices were issued. The first targeted deficiencies in the investigation system, including lack of safeguards around timeliness, communication, and psychosocial risk management. The second focused on redeployment practices, including mismatched duties, unilateral decision-making, and insufficient safeguards around dignity and role clarity.

The Department challenged the notices on three grounds.

First, it argued the psychosocial hazard provisions in clauses 55A–55D of the WHS Regulations were too uncertain to enforce because concepts such as “psychosocial hazard” and “psychological harm” lacked sufficient precision. It also argued the Inspector had improperly relied on one employee’s subjective experience to infer a systemic workplace hazard.

The Commission rejected these arguments. It held that clauses 55A–55D do not create new duties but clarify existing obligations under section 19 of the WHS Act to ensure psychological health so far as reasonably practicable. The Commission confirmed that psychosocial risks are assessed objectively at the systems level and that variability in individual responses does not remove an employer’s obligations to identify and manage foreseeable psychosocial hazards.

Second, the Department challenged the Inspector’s “reasonable belief”. While the Inspector accepted the communication system was adequate in theory but inconsistently applied, the Commission upheld most of the notices due to broader systemic issues: excessive delays, weak timeframe controls, and inadequate safeguards in redeployment. One part of the notice was set aside where it lacked proper evidentiary foundation.

Third, the Department argued the measures were not reasonably practicable given organisational scale. This was rejected. The Commission noted many controls were already partially in place and confirmed that WHS consultation obligations do not require individual consultation across large workforces.

Overall, the decision reinforces a clear trajectory: disciplinary and investigation processes are now treated as systems of work subject to psychosocial risk regulation, not just internal HR governance.

https://hamiltonlocke.com.au/psychosocial-improvement-notices-upheld-against-employers-disciplinary-investigation-system/

One of my favorite formats for talks is to have an open unscripted conversation and then engage with questions form the ...
25/05/2026

One of my favorite formats for talks is to have an open unscripted conversation and then engage with questions form the “audience”. Thanks to Stephanie Leung and St Barnabas Anglican Church for having me along to their staycation. I was talking about maintaining and sharing hope in troubled times.

22/05/2026

Hello 👋 I have had a few people follow me this week and I wanted to introduce myself!

I am Valerie, and I am married to Joshua a Presbyterian minister. We currently serve in a local church where Josh is the pastor. I have two adult children and a senior dog!

I have worked as a clinical psychologist for about 25 years. The last 15 have been mainly in the treatment of trauma and burnout. Up until 2019 I had mainly focused on thinking and treating burnout in the service sector. You can still find my original content on YouTube and Podcast platforms - it is called Dr. Burnout. That was a chapter of lived experience, clinical experience and distilling the research I could access on personal resilience and self care practices.

However - once I started to expand my team, I noticed that it was the things in our work environment that also contributed to our team’s fatigue. I set off to complete a Masters of Leadership to help me assess and improve my leadership. It was during this phase I discovered the organizational design and processes that can impact a team’s welfare.

Then 💥 kaboom! A series of hard events took place in our personal lives. I set about to understand what was happening. In so doing, my research project as part of the Masters of leadership got super focused on ministry workers.

That led to three seasons of the Clergy Wellbeing Down Under podcast where I surveyed and sought the problems and the solutions.

As our psychology practice and children matured, I was able to enrol myself in a PhD programme where I am now researching the intersection of occupational, congregational and clergy health.

So many of the posts and things you see here will speak to this intersection as I make strides to engage with the issues.

I call this the biggest Rubik’s cube puzzle, and I suspect my next chapter before it’s time to retire!

Please! Say hello back!

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