Everyone knows the person we're talking about. They hit every target, close the biggest deals, and lead the team that delivers quarter after quarter. They're also the reason three people have quietly resigned in the past year, two others are on stress leave, and HR has a growing file of complaints that somehow never quite result in action. Harassment doesn't always come from the person you'd expect. Often, it comes from the person you can least afford to lose.

This is one of the hardest problems in psychosocial risk management, and it's far more common than most organisations want to admit.

Why Organisations Protect High Performers Who Cause Harm

Let's be honest about what happens in practice. When a high performer is the source of bullying, harassment, or other psychosocial harm, the organisation's response is often shaped by a calculation that has nothing to do with worker safety.

The internal logic usually sounds something like this: "They're under a lot of pressure." "That's just their style." "We can't afford to lose them right now." "The people complaining are probably not the right cultural fit."

These rationalisations don't just delay action. They actively create a two-tier system where some workers are protected and others are exposed, depending on how much revenue the perpetrator generates. That is a textbook failure of your duty of care for psychosocial hazards.

The real risk isn't losing a high performer. The real risk is what happens while you protect one.

What the Law Actually Requires

Under Australian WHS legislation, a person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) must eliminate psychosocial risks so far as is reasonably practicable, or if elimination isn't reasonably practicable, minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable. That obligation applies regardless of who is creating the hazard.

The Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work Code of Practice does not include an exception for people who are good at their jobs. SafeWork Australia's list of psychosocial hazards explicitly includes workplace conflict, bullying, harassment, and poor organisational justice. When you know a person is causing harm and you fail to act because of their commercial value, you aren't managing risk. You're choosing to accept it for financial reasons.

That choice now carries real consequences. The Department of Defence's $188,000 fine made it clear that regulators will prosecute organisations that fail to manage psychosocial hazards, and recent case law shows a clear trend toward enforcement. Directors and officers also carry personal liability for due diligence failures.

The Hidden Cost of Inaction

Organisations that tolerate harmful behaviour from high performers rarely do the maths on what that tolerance actually costs.

Consider a realistic scenario. A senior project manager consistently delivers complex projects on time and under budget. They also berate team members in meetings, send aggressive messages outside of work hours, and take credit for junior staff's work. Over 18 months, the team experiences:

• Four resignations, each costing roughly 50 to 200 percent of the departing worker's salary to replace

• One psychological injury claim, which will increase workers compensation premiums for years

• Two formal complaints that consume dozens of HR hours to investigate

• A broader team culture where people stop speaking up, sharing ideas, or flagging problems early

That one "indispensable" person has likely cost the organisation more than they've generated. And that's before you factor in the legal exposure if a worker resigns citing psychological harm or a regulator gets involved.

What to Do When the Problem Is Your Best Performer

Managing this situation requires courage, but it doesn't require a dramatic confrontation on day one. Here's a practical path forward.

1. Take the Complaint Seriously from the Start

When a bullying complaint or psychosocial hazard report involves a high performer, apply the same process you would for anyone else. Follow your complaints procedure. Document everything. Assess the risk. The moment you treat this complaint differently because of who it's about, you've created an organisational justice problem, which is itself a psychosocial hazard.

2. Separate the Person's Value from Their Behaviour

A person can be exceptional at their technical role and simultaneously harmful to the people around them. These two things are not in conflict, and acknowledging one does not diminish the other. Your job is to address the behaviour, not evaluate whether the person "means well" or is "worth it."

3. Name the Behaviour Clearly

Vague feedback like "some people find your style a bit much" gives the person nothing to work with and signals to everyone else that you're not serious. Be specific: "In the last month, three members of your team have separately reported that you raised your voice in meetings and made comments that undermined their professional competence. That behaviour creates psychosocial risk, and we need to address it."

4. Set Measurable Expectations with Consequences

Put behavioural expectations in writing. Define what acceptable conduct looks like in specific terms. Agree on a review timeline. Make clear what happens if the behaviour continues. This isn't punitive. It's the same approach you'd take with any performance issue, because that's exactly what this is.

5. Record It in Your Risk Register

If a person's behaviour has been identified as a source of psychosocial harm, it belongs in your psychosocial risk register. Document the hazard, the controls you've put in place, and your review schedule. This is what regulators look for: evidence that you identified the risk and took reasonably practicable steps to control it.

6. Support the People Affected

While you're working with the perpetrator, don't forget the people who've been harmed. Check in with them. Ask what they need. If someone has raised a complaint, keep them informed about progress (within the bounds of confidentiality). If someone needs support returning to work or recovering from the experience, follow a structured return-to-work process.

The Conversation Leaders Need to Have

If you're a senior leader reading this, the question to sit with is simple: do you have someone in your organisation right now whose behaviour you're tolerating because of their output?

Most leaders, if they're honest, know the answer. The harder part is deciding to act, especially when the commercial pressure is real and the person hasn't done anything that feels dramatic enough to warrant intervention.

But psychosocial harm rarely looks dramatic. It looks like a team that stops contributing in meetings. It looks like sick leave patterns that nobody connects. It looks like exit interviews that all mention the same person but never trigger a systemic response.

You don't need to wait for a formal complaint or a regulator's notice. Run your psychosocial compliance checklist. Review your risk assessment. Ask the question, and act on the answer.

Start Building the System That Catches This Early

The organisations that handle this well aren't the ones with braver HR teams (though that helps). They're the ones with systems that surface psychosocial risk before it becomes a crisis, track complaints and patterns over time, and make it structurally difficult to sweep problems under the rug because someone hits their numbers.

That's what ReFresh is built to do. If you want to see how it works, book a 30-minute demo and we'll walk you through it.