53% of working parents are ending the workday mentally and physically exhausted
There’s a growing strain undermining morale, culture and productivity in Australian workplaces, and it’s hitting working parents particularly hard. Recent research from TELUS Health reveals a high proportion of working parents (53%) are ending the workday mentally and physically exhausted, with 37% reporting declining motivation at work.
For employers, these findings reinforce a broader shift already underway as organisations move from reactive wellbeing initiatives to structured psychosocial risk management. TELUS Health is seeing increasing demand for integrated approaches that combine data, leader capability, early intervention and targeted workforce programs into a single strategy. This ensures support for working parents is embedded into a measurable, organisation-wide framework that strengthens performance, retention and compliance outcomes.
The Win Win Parenting Program
Dr Rosina McAlpine has been working in the work and family wellbeing field for over a decade. Her evidence-based Win Win Parenting Program, delivered in partnership with TELUS Health, continues to gain traction among organisations seeking practical ways to support working parents.
Delivered through TELUS Health as part of its broader workplace wellbeing offering, the program sits within a continuum of support that includes employee assistance, digital mental health, manager enablement and organisational insights. This integrated model allows employers to identify pressure points through workforce data and deploy targeted interventions where they will have the greatest impact.
Speaking to HRD, Dr Rosina McAlpine emphasised that organisations must take a more deliberate look at the psychosocial risks affecting working parents and implement structured, measurable strategies to reduce those pressures and protect both wellbeing and performance.
“Working parents are not failing to cope, they are navigating systems that were never designed for dual roles. When expectations at work and at home collide without structural support, the strain is predictable. This is not an individual weakness; it is a systems issue that requires organisational solutions. We can’t expect employees with caring responsibilities to work like they don’t have a family and to manage family life like they don’t have a job,” she told HRD.
The psychosocial hazards behind the pressure
The most common psychosocial hazards arise from everyday pressures such as;
• Role conflict: competing work and parenting demands
• Chronic stress exposure: ongoing pressure without adequate recovery time
• Emotional and physical exhaustion: sleep disruption and sustained caregiving load
• Flexibility and psychological safety strain: needing adjustments while fearing career impact
• Guilt and identity tension: feeling underperforming at work and at home
• Care disruption risk: unpredictable illness or changing care needs
• Mental load overload: the invisible coordination and planning burden
• Burnout risk: prolonged overload leading to disengagement and attrition
“These are not isolated pressures, they are predictable psychosocial risks that directly affect wellbeing and performance,” added Dr Rosina. “When role conflict, chronic stress, mental load and exhaustion go unaddressed, they show up as burnout, reduced engagement, mental health strain and tension between work and family responsibilities.
“People leaders cannot mitigate risks they do not fully understand. That is why I always recommend starting with meaningful data and genuine listening. When organisations take the time to understand the lived experience of working parents, they uncover everyday pressure points that can and should be addressed early, before they escalate into attrition or serious wellbeing concerns.”
As Dr Rosina explained, the first step is a targeted risk assessment, beginning with identifying employees with caring responsibilities and integrating relevant questions into confidential wellbeing surveys, followed by voluntary focus groups or interviews to explore daily stress points.
“Ask about access to flexible work, confidence in requesting support, and barriers to using existing wellbeing programs,” she said. “Map those stressors to WHS psychosocial hazards such as workload, role conflict or lack of support, and track patterns in absenteeism, early departures or mental health leave among parents.”
Offering structured work and family initiatives helps reduce these risks. Sessions such as Getting Organised: Managing Work and Family equip parents with practical tools to streamline routines, transition between roles and proactively reduce stress.
“The aim is preventative - to reduce overwhelm at the source, not just after burnout hits,” added Dr Rosina.
A family-friendly leadership model
For these initiatives to succeed, organisations need family-friendly leadership that understands the real context working parents operate in.
“When leaders understand the physical and mental load working parents carry, they become better at identifying stress early, before it turns into burnout or disengagement,” she told HRD. “It’s not about having all the answers, it’s about proactively offering support and being the kind of leader people trust enough to ask for help.”
In practical terms, managers need to be trained and resourced to:
• Ensure workloads are fair and flexible
• Ask open, supportive questions
• Spot signs of stress linked to family responsibilities
• Proactively offer tailored training and resources
• Know how to refer or escalate when psychosocial hazards emerge
• Avoid assumptions about capacity and continue to offer development opportunities
“Manager training through a work and family lens is essential,” added Dr Rosina. “Leader briefings equip managers to understand the daily impact of parenting on mental health, productivity and engagement, and how to respond consistently. Leaders learn how to foster safe disclosure, model balance and build a culture of trust.”
Engagement, not weakness
For many parents, asking for help still feels risky because flexibility can be perceived as a lack of commitment. Building a genuinely family-friendly workplace requires shared commitment, driven from leadership and shaped by employees. This includes role-modelling, normalising participation in work and family programs and promoting flexibility as a business strategy rather than a personal concession.
“The challenge facing working parents isn’t personal resilience, it’s system design,” Dr Rosina said. “Support must be embedded into workplace culture and leadership practices, not left to individual negotiation so no one feels forced to choose between career success and family life.
“When parents see leaders attend sessions or when webinars are promoted organisation-wide, they feel permission to engage, reducing shame or fear. Over time, this builds a family-friendly workplace culture where asking for flexibility or attending a wellbeing session is a sign of engagement, not weakness.”
Providing targeted support for working parents can raise questions about fairness, but equity is about responding to different needs to achieve fair outcomes. Recognising the distinct psychosocial risks parents face ensures all employees have the conditions they need to perform at their best.
From participation to performance
Early results from work and family initiatives tend to appear in how employees describe their day-to-day experience, with participants reporting greater control over competing demands and lower stress. For employers, the more relevant shift is the flow-on effect to performance consistency and earlier, more constructive manager conversations about workload and flexibility.
Rather than relying on sentiment alone, organisations are assessing these programs through operational indicators such as utilisation patterns, unplanned leave, retention of experienced employees with caring responsibilities and manager confidence in supporting complex situations. This moves the discussion from individual benefit to workforce capability.
Because these programs sit within an existing TELUS Health client environment, their impact can be viewed alongside measures including engagement, psychological safety and absenteeism. Over time, this provides a clearer picture of how targeted work and family support contributes to stability in key talent segments and reduces the downstream costs associated with burnout and turnover.
As Dr Rosina notes, the return is often visible in day-to-day functioning before it appears in lag indicators. “The ROI of supporting working parents is measured in confidence managing challenges at home, sharper focus and productivity at work, and lower stress across the board.”
For many organisations, the most immediate signal of value is cultural: when participation becomes normalised and leaders actively reference these supports, flexibility shifts from a private negotiation to an accepted way of working.
As Dr Rosina notes, “The ROI of supporting working parents is measured in confidence managing challenges at home, sharper focus and productivity at work, and lower stress across the board. A truly family-friendly workplace means working parents and their families thrive and workplaces win.”
A business and compliance priority
For employers seeking to support working parents in 2026 and beyond, addressing these pressures is no longer optional. It is fundamental to psychosocial compliance, workforce wellbeing and sustained organisational performance.
“Managing the many stressful demands of navigating work and family life is challenging, but with the right support, it doesn’t have to get in the way of thriving at work either,” added Dr Rosina. “The power of practical, evidence-informed programs is that it’s good for working parents and their families and good for workplaces.”
This article was created in partnership with TELUS Health.
