Targets, pressure and psychosocial safety: can sales culture and the new obligations coexist?

Sales has always been a contact sport. Targets reset every quarter. Rejection is routine. Leaderboards are public, commission is variable, customers can be difficult, and the last week of the quarter is rarely anyone's idea of balance.

Meanwhile, the legal landscape has moved. The model Work Health and Safety Regulations were amended in 2022 to deal explicitly with psychosocial risks, with NSW commencing its amendment on 1 October 2022 and Queensland on 1 April 2023, according to SafetySure's review of the regulatory picture. Victoria, which sits outside the harmonised scheme, brought in its own Occupational Health and Safety (Psychological Health) Regulations on 1 December 2025.

The core duty is now explicit. As Safe Work Australia puts it, a business must eliminate psychosocial risks or, if that isn't reasonably practicable, minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable.

So the question many commercial leaders are quietly asking is a fair one: can a high-performance sales culture survive this?

It can. But only if the pressure is designed rather than accidental.

Why this belongs on the CRO's agenda, not just HR's

The commercial case is stronger than the compliance case. Safe Work Australia's Key Work Health and Safety Statistics record 17,600 serious workers' compensation claims for mental health conditions in 2023–24, 12% of all serious claims. In 2022–23, those claims involved a median of 35.7 working weeks off and median compensation of $67,400, compared with 7.4 weeks and $16,300 across all serious claims.

Two causes stand out for sales leaders. Work pressure accounted for 24.2% of serious mental stress claims, and harassment or workplace bullying for 33.2%.

Those figures only capture formal claims. The bigger cost in a sales team usually shows up somewhere else first: in attrition, failed ramp-ups, lost pipeline when a top performer leaves, and managers spending their time on replacement hiring instead of coaching.

What the obligations do not require

It helps to be clear about what the rules don't say.

They don't ban targets or pressure. Safe Work Australia is explicit that stress itself is not an injury. Harm becomes likely when stress is frequent, prolonged or severe.

They don't stop managers managing performance. NSW's code of practice recognises that reasonable management action, carried out lawfully and in a reasonable way, is a legitimate way to manage workplace behaviour, even when it's stressful, as Ashurst's analysis of a withdrawn NSW prosecution explains.

But they do care about how pressure is applied. In December 2025, the Department of Defence was convicted and fined $188,000 after the death of a RAAF technician who had been subject to performance management. The breach Comcare described wasn't having a performance process. It was failing to train the supervisors using it to recognise it as a potential psychosocial hazard, identify the risks, and know when to refer a worker for medical assessment and pause the process.

That's the lesson for sales. A target, a performance plan or a leaderboard is not automatically a hazard. The way it's designed, communicated and managed can make it one.

Where sales culture meets psychosocial hazards

Safe Work Australia lists the common psychosocial hazards, and WorkSafe Victoria's compliance code gives practical examples of each. Mapped onto everyday sales practice, the overlaps are clear:

• Quotas and targets. High job demands, especially unrealistic workloads and significant time pressure, and low job control when people have no say in how their targets are set.
• Performance improvement plans. The Defence case shows how a performance process managed without training or care can become a serious hazard.
• Commission plan changes, territory splits and lead allocation. Poor organisational justice, inadequate reward and recognition, and poor change management when changes arrive without explanation or consultation.
• Leaderboards and public call-outs. Recognition is healthy. Public humiliation of the bottom of the board can become bullying or poor workplace relationships.
• Activity tracking and monitoring. WorkSafe Victoria's examples of low job control include micromanagement, excessive monitoring and intrusive surveillance.
• Field sales, travel and working alone. Remote or isolated work.
• Difficult customers and aggressive negotiations. Violence and aggression, which includes behaviour from clients and customers, not just colleagues.
• Client entertainment, conferences and after-hours events. A familiar setting for sexual harassment risk. Since December 2022, the positive duty in the Sex Discrimination Act requires organisations to take reasonable and proportionate measures to eliminate sexual harassment and related conduct as far as possible.
• End-of-quarter culture. Long hours and insufficient recovery time, both listed as examples of high job demands.

Hazards also combine. A demanding target is one thing. A demanding target, a public leaderboard, a manager who has never been trained to run a performance conversation, and a territory change announced by email is something else.

What compatibility looks like in practice

None of this calls for a softer sales team. It calls for a better-designed one. The controls that reduce psychosocial risk are, in most cases, the same ones that make sales teams more productive.

1. Set targets with evidence and consultation

Base quotas on territory potential, pipeline coverage and realistic conversion rates, not just the board's growth number divided by headcount. Explain the logic, give reps a genuine voice in the process, and avoid moving targets mid-period. WHS laws already require consultation with workers on matters that affect their health and safety, and target-setting increasingly falls into that category.

2. Train every manager who runs performance conversations

This is the clearest lesson from the Defence case. Anyone running a performance improvement plan needs training to recognise distress, separate coaching from formal process, document fairly, and know when to pause the process and refer someone for support. Most sales managers were promoted for selling, not for this.

3. Make commission, territory and lead allocation transparent

Write down the rules for lead routing, territory assignment, splits and clawbacks. Explain plan changes early, show the reasoning, and give people time to adjust. Perceived unfairness is a hazard in its own right, and it's also one of the fastest ways to lose good salespeople.

4. Recognise without humiliating

Celebrate wins publicly. Have performance conversations privately. A leaderboard should motivate the team, not rank people for embarrassment.

5. Monitor outcomes, not keystrokes

Track the leading indicators that actually predict revenue: qualified pipeline, stage progression, win rates. Minute-by-minute activity surveillance rarely improves results and can count as low job control.

6. Look after people in the field

Give field and travelling staff clear check-in arrangements, practical travel policies, a defined way to escalate abusive customer behaviour, and explicit permission to walk away from a meeting that turns aggressive.

7. Plan client events properly

Set expectations on conduct and alcohol, make sure someone senior is responsible on the night, and make it easy and safe to raise concerns about anyone, including clients.

8. Build recovery into the rhythm

If the last week of every quarter is intense, plan the first week of the next one accordingly. Set clear norms on after-hours messages and response expectations.

Add a people check to the pipeline review

Most sales teams already run a weekly or fortnightly operating rhythm around pipeline and forecast. That's the natural place to look at people risk too, using signals the business already has:

• Voluntary attrition and early-tenure exits
• Reps failing to ramp within the expected time
• Sick leave clustering around quarter-end
• Complaints, grievances and exit-interview themes
• Engagement or pulse survey results by team

A team missing its number with rising attrition and sick leave has a different problem from a team missing its number with stable people metrics. The fix for each is different, and leaders who look at both will diagnose the right one sooner.

The upside

The rough and tumble of sales and the new psychosocial obligations are more compatible than they first appear. The obligations don't ask sales teams to stop competing, stop chasing targets or stop managing performance. They ask leaders to design that pressure deliberately, manage it competently, and notice when it stops being productive.

The teams that get this right won't just reduce legal risk. They'll keep their best people longer, ramp new hires faster and build pipeline that doesn't walk out the door with the next resignation.

This article is general information, not legal advice. Obligations differ between jurisdictions, including Victoria's separate OHS framework, so organisations should take advice specific to their circumstances. Rev-IQ's founder, Joel Smith, is also fractional Chief Revenue Officer at SafeMinds, a specialist in psychosocial risk.