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Looking Upstream: What Natasha’s Death Reveals About Workplace Safety Failures

CONTENT ALERT This article discusses workplace bullying and suicide. If you feel like you’re going to act on suicidal thoughts, call 000 if you live in Australia.

Since writing my article last week on Natasha Stojoski’s suicide death connected to workplace bullying, I keep returning to the same question: could this have been prevented?

A key point to acknowledge is that the Coroner stated she “cannot make a finding to the requisite standard, on the balance of probabilities, that Natasha Stojkoski’s death was preventable.”

However, to understand preventability, we need to change the lens through which we view what occurred. We need to swim upstream and examine the workplace systems that failed Natasha long before her death occurred.

It is only by looking upstream that we can identify the conditions that created the harm and learn how to prevent similar tragedies in the future.

A Short Summary of Natasha’s Road to Harm and Injury

To understand Natasha’s workplace bullying related suicide, it is important to first understand the sequence of events:

  • In October 2018, Natasha sustained a physical injury at work while operating a WAV, when her body was crushed after colliding with an overhanging bulkhead.
  • Over the following months, she experienced significant pain that made aspects of her work difficult to perform. The pain and reduced capacity reportedly continued into September 2019.
  • In June 2019, the bullying behaviour was said to have commenced. Natasha reported ongoing isolation, colleagues refusing to speak to her, a lack of assistance when needed, and sarcastic comments about her undertaking light duties following her injury.
  • In August 2019, Natasha met with the store manager and reported the bullying. She was visibly distressed, crying throughout the meeting, and spoke about anxiety and loss of sleep. The manager reportedly undertook to speak with the perpetrators individually.

Anything beyond this point becomes bullying management rather than bullying prevention.

To understand prevention, we must rewind further back to the critical “sliding doors” moments that set these events in motion.

Workplace Bullying and the Trigger Point

Workplace bullying theory has long identified a triggering point that precedes harmful and destructive workplace behaviour.

Leymann’s work in the 1990s outlined four stages of workplace bullying:

  1. a triggering event, often interpersonal conflict;
  2. escalation;
  3. formalisation of the issue within the workplace; and
  4. severe trauma.

This pattern strongly mirrors Natasha’s experience.

The interpersonal conflict appears to have arisen from her inability to complete normal work tasks following her injury. Colleagues reportedly singled her out because of her reduced capacity. Comments were allegedly made that she was “taking advantage of the situation” and “not helping out the team.” Some colleagues appear to have felt unsupported and frustrated by the increased workload.

But this raises a more important question: was there an even earlier opportunity to prevent what ultimately occurred?

Swimming Further Upstream

Now let’s swim further upstream and apply a preventative work health and safety lens to the events leading up to Natasha’s death.

Australian work health and safety laws require employers to take proactive steps to prevent harm to employees. This includes identifying hazards, assessing risks, implementing controls, and reviewing whether those controls are effective.

Before the bullying and interpersonal conflict emerged, Natasha had already sustained a workplace injury while operating the WAV after colliding with an overhanging bulkhead. According to the Coroner’s findings, Natasha reportedly received only a brief overview of how the WAV operated rather than formal training.

It is reasonable to conclude that had the injury not occurred, the resulting conflict may never have developed. That naturally leads to broader questions about the work health and safety systems in place at the time.

What training was required for safe operation of the WAV?
Was the risk of collision with overhead structures adequately identified?
Should a spotter have been used in that environment?

The Coroner’s findings do not provide enough detail to fully answer these questions.

However, even after the injury occurred, there were still opportunities to prevent the matter from escalating into bullying.

While steps were reportedly taken to manage Natasha’s injury, aspects of the process appear to have been delayed and potentially poorly managed. The findings also provide limited information about who was responsible for monitoring Natasha’s recovery and supporting an effective return to work process.

This is important because poorly managed injury and return to work processes can create workplace frustration, resentment and conflict — conditions that can become fertile ground for bullying behaviours.

Could a more effective and supportive injury management process have reduced the frustration felt by colleagues and prevented the bullying from developing in the first place?

That is the upstream question that should concern every employer.

Final Thoughts

Natasha’s death was not simply the result of interpersonal conflict between workers.

It reflected a broader failure of workplace systems — systems that should have prevented the original injury, better managed the aftermath of that injury, and reduced the conditions that allowed bullying to emerge.

If we genuinely want to prevent workplace bullying related harm and suicide, we must look beyond individual behaviours and focus on the organisational systems that create stress, conflict and psychological risk in the first place.

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