Australian Unity: Creative Safety Campaign
INDUSTRY: Wellbeing
Australian Unity is a national provider of independent and assisted living services, offering aged care, retirement living, home care, Aboriginal home care, and allied health services.
The Challenge
In preparation for the rollout of the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS), Australian Unity acquired Home Care NSW, a previously government-managed service. This transition increased the organisation’s workforce from 1,500 to over 7,500 employees across Victoria and metropolitan and regional New South Wales. Approximately 4,500 of these employees began working unassisted in the community.
Many of the newly integrated employees had come from public sector roles and were now operating within a more commercially structured and time-sensitive care model. As job and client complexity increased, so too did health and safety incidents.
This shift not only impacted care workers’ ability to maintain the important social aspects of care—like taking time for a cup of tea—but also increased the risk of injury, as workers were often placed in unsafe situations and pressured by clients to complete tasks outside of protocol.
Australian Unity approached Interchange to help uncover the underlying cultural drivers of these risks and to find a creative, human-centred way to improve safety outcomes—without compromising the dignity or quality of care.
The Solution
Interchange launched a Discovery phase to deeply understand the experiences of Australian Unity’s care workers.
A key element of this phase was immersive shadowing—team members accompanied care workers across VIC and NSW throughout their day-to-day roles. This hands-on approach was paired with five focus groups and 23 one-on-one interviews, providing a rich picture of the realities, pressures, and challenges faced on the ground.
Using insights gathered, Interchange developed a tailored safety campaign rooted in storytelling, behaviour design, and culture change. The core of the solution involved a creative campaign to raise awareness of common injuries, improve knowledge of boundaries and protocols, and boost confidence when navigating difficult or unsafe situations.
The campaign featured:
Real-world safety stories illustrated through posters
Simple language, visual storytelling, and culturally relevant messaging
Communication tools and scripts to help care workers say ‘no’ with confidence
Framing safety as a collective value—part of Australian Unity’s culture, not just compliance
Not only did the campaign inform, it empowered.
The Outcome
Australian Unity received a clear, culturally grounded strategy for improving safety.
This included a discovery report, creative campaign materials, and a roadmap for implementation.
The work sparked a shift in mindset at the executive level—from seeing safety as a process to understanding it as a cultural issue.
Importantly, the campaign gave care workers a voice. It equipped them with the language, permission, and confidence to advocate for their own wellbeing—while continuing to deliver care with compassion.
The work laid a foundation for long-term culture change, supporting Australian Unity’s goal of delivering high-quality care in a way that’s safe, sustainable, and human at its heart.