Domestic and family violence (DFV) safety outcomes are the measurable effects of workplace actions on a worker’s immediate safety, privacy, income, wellbeing, and ability to remain employed. Duty modifications—such as changing hours, location, reporting lines, contact arrangements, or workload—usually offer a faster and less disruptive response than a full role change, while transfers, redeployment, or relocation may provide stronger protection when the perpetrator can identify or access the worker through the existing job. Evidence does not establish that one option is universally safer: Safe Work Australia and the International Labour Organization emphasise risk assessment, worker consultation, confidentiality, and tailored controls. This comparison explains the relevant forms of each intervention, the evidence and limitations surrounding safety outcomes, and how employers can select proportionate measures without transferring the burden of DFV to the victim-survivor.

DFV Safety Outcomes and Workplace Response

DFV refers to violent, threatening, coercive, controlling, or abusive behaviour occurring within family, domestic, or intimate relationships. It can include physical and sexual violence, emotional or psychological abuse, stalking, financial abuse, technology-facilitated abuse, and threats involving children, relatives, or pets. The Australian Bureau of Statistics reported in its Personal Safety Survey 2021–22 that 27% of Australian women and 12% of Australian men had experienced intimate-partner violence since age 15. These figures show why employment protections must address both direct workplace incidents and violence that reaches the workplace through phones, rosters, payroll systems, colleagues, or predictable travel patterns.

For this article, DFV safety outcomes means the extent to which a workplace response reduces exposure to foreseeable harm while preserving the worker’s autonomy, income, career prospects, and access to support. Safe Work Australia describes psychosocial hazards as hazards arising from the design or management of work, the work environment, or workplace interactions that may cause psychological harm. DFV is not itself a workplace performance problem, but its effects can create psychosocial and physical risks that employers must identify and control when they enter the work system.

The distinction between the two intervention families is practical. A duty modification changes aspects of the existing job without necessarily changing the worker’s occupation or substantive position. A full role change alters the worker’s placement, duties, reporting structure, worksite, or employment pathway more substantially. The most appropriate response depends on the source of risk, the perpetrator’s access to information, the worker’s preferences, the feasibility of controls, and whether the risk is temporary or continuing.

Immediate safety, privacy, and continuity

Immediate safety concerns whether the intervention prevents contact, surveillance, intimidation, or predictable exposure. Privacy concerns whether the organisation protects addresses, rosters, contact details, payroll information, personnel records, and the worker’s disclosure. Continuity concerns whether the worker can retain wages, leave, benefits, professional accreditation, seniority, and career progression.

A duty modification often performs well on continuity because it can preserve the worker’s position while altering the conditions that create risk. However, it may perform poorly on safety if the perpetrator knows the worker’s regular hours, worksite, vehicle, colleagues, or customer-facing duties. A full role change can reduce those predictable connections, but it may also impose disruption, stigma, loss of status, or an unwanted career change. A safe outcome therefore cannot be judged only by whether the worker remains employed; it must also account for whether the worker freely chose the arrangement and whether the organisation—not the victim-survivor—absorbed the operational cost.

Evidence strength and measurement limits

There is limited high-quality research directly comparing duty modifications with full role changes for DFV safety outcomes. Most available guidance is practice-based, legal, or derived from broader occupational health and violence-prevention research. Consequently, claims that one intervention is categorically safer should be treated cautiously. Employers should record outcomes such as reported incidents, attempted contact, breaches of confidentiality, absenteeism, financial stability, worker-reported safety, and whether the arrangement remains effective after several weeks or months.

The Australian Government’s National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032 identifies prevention, early intervention, response, and recovery as interconnected priorities. That framework supports a broader evaluation than incident counts alone. A response can reduce visible incidents while failing if it causes financial dependence, career loss, isolation, or an unsafe return to the original arrangement.

Duty Modifications for DFV Safety Outcomes

Duty modifications are targeted changes to how, when, where, or with whom an existing job is performed. They are a hyponym of workplace adjustment: the employment role generally remains recognisable, but its risk-producing features are altered. The Fair Work Act 2009 provides eligible Australian employees with up to 10 days of paid family and domestic violence leave each year, and it also contains provisions relevant to flexible work requests and protection from adverse action. These rights do not replace an individual risk assessment, but they provide an important foundation for temporary or recurring adjustments.

Schedule, attendance, and leave modifications

Schedule modifications change start times, finish times, shifts, breaks, or attendance patterns. They may prevent the worker and perpetrator from travelling together, reduce exposure at school or childcare handovers, or avoid a predictable time when harassment occurs. Paid family and domestic violence leave can provide time for medical care, legal proceedings, housing changes, safety planning, or counselling without requiring the worker to disclose details repeatedly.

The safety benefit is strongest when the altered schedule is confidential and does not create a new predictable pattern that can be discovered through public rosters or social media. Employers should also consider transport, parking, building access, and the risk that a perpetrator may wait outside the workplace. A schedule change is less suitable when the perpetrator already knows the worker’s location or when the job requires fixed public-facing attendance.

Location, communication, and contact modifications

Location modifications include temporary remote work, a different office entrance, a different site, secure parking, controlled visitor access, or changes to customer-facing duties. Communication modifications can include screening calls, removing the worker’s details from public directories, blocking messages, changing email or phone extensions, and ensuring that colleagues do not disclose the worker’s location.

These measures can be highly effective where the risk is linked to workplace access or technology-facilitated abuse. They become weaker if remote work exposes the worker’s home address, if digital accounts remain shared, or if supervisors casually reveal roster information. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner’s privacy principles are relevant because unnecessary disclosure of personal information can increase rather than reduce risk.

Workload, reporting-line, and task modifications

Workload and reporting-line changes may temporarily remove travel, isolated work, cash handling, home visits, or direct contact with a person connected to the violence. A different supervisor or buddy arrangement can reduce unwanted contact and create a safer channel for support. Task changes should not be framed as punishment or as evidence that the worker is unreliable; they are controls applied to a foreseeable risk.

The main limitation is sustainability. If the worker loses overtime, promotion opportunities, commissions, or professional visibility, the adjustment may create economic harm. A review date, written agreement, and worker-led consent process are therefore essential. Adjustments should be reversible where possible and reviewed after changes in court orders, housing, contact arrangements, or threat level.

Full Role Changes for DFV Safety Outcomes

A full role change is a substantial alteration to the worker’s employment placement or core duties. Its hyponyms include permanent or temporary transfer, redeployment, relocation to another worksite, change of reporting structure, reassignment to non-public work, job redesign, or movement to another team or business unit. Unlike a limited duty modification, a full role change may break several links between the perpetrator and the worker at once: location, schedule, colleagues, systems access, public visibility, and routine travel.

Transfer and redeployment

Transfer moves the worker to another site, team, or manager while maintaining a broadly comparable employment relationship. Redeployment places the worker in different duties, sometimes requiring training or a temporary reduction in familiar responsibilities. These options are most defensible when the existing role is inherently exposed—for example, when the perpetrator is a customer, co-worker, contractor, service user, or person with knowledge of the worker’s regular location.

A transfer can reduce risk more comprehensively than changing a shift because it removes the worker from an established routine. Its risks include inadvertent disclosure of the new location, increased travel, loss of support networks, reduced earnings, or the perception that the worker was moved because of misconduct. Employers should preserve pay and status wherever reasonably possible and should not require the worker to negotiate repeatedly with managers who lack appropriate training.

Role redesign and separation from the perpetrator

Role redesign changes the core interaction pattern of a job. It may remove direct supervision by a perpetrator, separate two employees, change customer allocation, or eliminate duties involving unsupervised contact. This can be a strong control when the perpetrator is within the organisation, but it requires procedural fairness, confidentiality, and careful consideration of power dynamics.

The perpetrator should not be allowed to use grievance, performance, rostering, or disciplinary processes to continue coercive control. At the same time, an employer must avoid assuming that the victim-survivor should be the person moved. The preferred allocation of inconvenience should be determined through risk assessment, legal advice where necessary, and consultation with the affected worker.

Permanent changes and career consequences

Permanent role changes may provide stability when the risk is chronic, escalating, or connected to the original workplace. They can also create long-term consequences that are not visible in short-term safety metrics, including reduced promotion prospects, loss of professional identity, relocation costs, and financial stress. A permanent change should therefore be offered as a genuine choice rather than presented as the only responsible option.

The National Domestic Violence and the Workplace Safety Framework developed by Our Watch, the Australian Domestic and Family Violence Clearinghouse, and ANROWS supports an approach that recognises both workplace safety and economic security. Employment can be a protective factor, and a role change that unintentionally undermines financial independence may weaken longer-term safety even if it reduces immediate contact.

Comparing Duty Modifications and Full Role Changes

Figure 1 can be represented as a decision matrix with risk reduction, continuity, privacy, worker choice, and implementation burden on the horizontal dimensions. Duty modifications generally score higher for speed, reversibility, and continuity. Full role changes generally score higher when the existing role exposes the worker through a known site, routine, perpetrator relationship, or public profile. Neither option should be selected solely because it is cheaper or easier for the organisation.

• Duty modifications are usually preferable when the risk is specific and controllable, the worker wants to remain in the role, the perpetrator does not have continuing access to the worksite, and confidentiality can be maintained.
• Full role changes are more appropriate when the perpetrator is embedded in the workplace, has access to systems or premises, can predict the worker’s routine, has breached previous controls, or presents an escalating threat.
• A combined response may be strongest: immediate leave and contact restrictions followed by a temporary transfer, with a later review of whether the original role can safely resume.
• Neither intervention is sufficient without security controls, confidential record handling, trained managers, a clear escalation pathway, and access to specialist DFV services.

A proportionate decision process

First, ask what the worker wants and what would make the workplace safer, without demanding unnecessary evidence. Second, identify the perpetrator’s access to the workplace, technology, transport routes, payroll information, colleagues, customers, and physical premises. Third, assess whether the risk is immediate, recurring, escalating, or connected to a particular task. Fourth, select the least disruptive control that adequately reduces risk, while recognising that a more substantial change is justified where limited controls are unreliable.

1. Provide a private contact point and explain confidentiality limits before collecting information.
2. Develop a written safety and communication plan with the worker and, where appropriate, a specialist DFV service.
3. Apply immediate controls, such as leave, secure access, roster changes, call screening, or separation from the perpetrator.
4. Check pay, benefits, workload, travel, professional status, and career effects before implementing a transfer or redeployment.
5. Set a review date and measure worker-reported safety, attempted contact, privacy breaches, attendance, financial effects, and sustainability.
6. Change or escalate the response when circumstances change, rather than waiting for a new incident.

Case example: choosing between modification and transfer

Consider a worker whose former partner repeatedly waits near a predictable workplace exit. A later finishing time, secure parking, escorted departure, and removal of public contact details may be proportionate if the former partner lacks access to the building and the worker wants to remain in the role. If the former partner is a co-worker with access to internal rosters and the building, these measures may be insufficient. A transfer to another site, separation from the co-worker, restricted systems access, and a protected reporting line may provide a stronger control, provided the victim-survivor does not lose pay or career progression.

This example demonstrates why the question is not “Which option is best in general?” but “Which control interrupts the actual pathway to harm?” Employers should document the reasoning without storing unnecessary sensitive details and should avoid placing the worker in the role of investigator, security planner, or messenger between the organisation and the perpetrator.

Conclusion: Matching the Intervention to the DFV Safety Outcome

DFV safety outcomes depend on whether an intervention reduces foreseeable exposure while protecting privacy, income, autonomy, and long-term employment. Duty modifications are often the fastest and least disruptive response, particularly when schedule, contact, location, or task risks can be isolated. Full role changes provide a stronger barrier when the existing role is fundamentally connected to the perpetrator or when earlier controls have failed, but they can create serious economic and career consequences.

The available evidence does not support a universal ranking of duty modifications over role changes, or vice versa. Safe Work Australia’s psychosocial-risk approach, the Fair Work Act’s family and domestic violence leave provisions, and national DFV policy all point toward tailored, confidential, worker-centred controls. Organisations should train managers, establish specialist referral pathways, audit privacy and security practices, and evaluate outcomes beyond incident counts. Further reading should include the Australian Bureau of Statistics Personal Safety Survey, Safe Work Australia guidance on psychosocial hazards, the Fair Work Ombudsman’s family and domestic violence resources, and the National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032.

Sources: Australian Bureau of Statistics, Personal Safety Survey, Australia, 2021–22, https://www.abs.gov.au/statistics/people/crime-and-justice/personal-safety-australia/latest-release; Safe Work Australia, Managing psychosocial hazards at work, https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/safety-topic/hazards/psychosocial-hazards; Fair Work Ombudsman, Family and domestic violence leave, https://www.fairwork.gov.au/leave/family-and-domestic-violence-leave; Australian Government Department of Social Services, National Plan to End Violence against Women and Children 2022–2032, https://www.dss.gov.au/ending-violence; International Labour Organization, Violence and harassment convention, 2019 (No. 190), https://www.ilo.org/global/topics/violence-harassment/lang–en/index.htm; Office of the Australian Information Commissioner, Australian Privacy Principles, https://www.oaic.gov.au/privacy/australian-privacy-principles; Our Watch, Workplace support for employees experiencing domestic and family violence, https://www.ourwatch.org.au/workplace/.