In the Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association’s most recent industry survey, managers reported the highest rates of severe anxiety and psychological distress of any job-role group. Across the surveyed workforce, high to very high distress rose to 22.2% in 2023, up from 11.8% two years earlier. New research (Nicolau et al., 2026) highlights the role of coaching as a job resource to buffer the stress of high job demands. We apply this lens to the resources industry.

Key findings: Coaching as a job resource

Nicolou et al. (2026)  looked at data from 123 coachees across 13 organisations and 36 professional external coaches. They concluded that coaching can be positioned to support people to manage high job demands and build up the resources they have to meet them.

Trust and motivational support outperform goal setting
The researchers found that trust and motivational support, that is, recognising strengths and reinforcing autonomy, predicted coaching effectiveness more strongly than help with goal-setting. This runs counter to common assumptions that coaching is mainly about action plans.

Manager support decides whether coaching lands
The study found that direct manager support significantly predicted how much coachees trusted their coach and felt motivated by them, which in turn shaped how effective the coaching was rated. This reinforces what most of you know, manager support for coaching matters.

Coaching compensates for low (coaching) engagement
Results also indicated that when a coachee showed low reflective engagement in a session, strong motivational support from the coach compensated for this and produced better goal outcomes. This insight matters for a workforce where fatigue, rotational shifts, and high physical job demands can leave little energy to engage in coaching.

What this means on site

• Frame coaching within your psychosocial risk obligations. Coaching as a genuine resource-based control measure paired with structural repairs strengthens both your compliance position and wellbeing outcomes. Remember that coaching alone doesn’t remove psychosocial risk. Work redesign sits above coaching in the hierarchy of controls for psychosocial risk.
• Target managers, supervisors and new leaders moving into their first supervisory role or periods of elevated demand where a job-resource intervention like coaching has the clearest logic.
• For coaching success, it needs to be voluntary. Mandates or pressure to participate measurably limits coaching impact.
• Brief the line manager before the coachee starts. Helping managers understand what support looks like on their end, will do more for coaching effectiveness than adding more sessions.

Contact us to implement coaching as a resource against job demands for yourself and your leaders in resources and other industries

References

Australian Resources and Energy Employer Association (AREEA). (2024). Resources and energy industry: Workforce & leaders mental health research — Phase 2 summary report. https://www.areea.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2024/01/AREEA-Resources-and-Energy-Industry-Workforce-Leaders-Mental-Health-Research-Phase-2-Summary-Report-Final.pdf

Bakker, A. B., Demerouti, E., & Sanz-Vergel, A. (2023). Job demands–resources theory: Ten years later. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 25–53. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-orgpsych-120920-053933

Nicolau, A. G., Demerouti, E., Van Gool, P. J. R., Kleingeld, A., & de Haan, E. (2026). Conceptualising executive coaching as a job resource for stress management: Using job demands-resources theory in an intervention field study. Coaching: An International Journal of Theory, Research and Practice. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/17521882.2026.2649594

Safe Work Australia. (2022). Model code of practice: Managing psychosocial hazards at work. https://www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/doc/model-code-practice-managing-psychosocial-hazards-work