Identifying Psychosocial Hazards In The Workplace

Psychosocial hazards in the workplace originate from work design, the work environment, and workplace interactions and relationships. Such hazards can induce stress, which if prolonged, can cause both psychological and physical harm.

The implications are twofold, being expensive for businesses and significantly affecting individuals and their families. Business are now required under the Code of Practice to take 4 steps to manage these hazard; identify, assess, control and review.

As part of identifying hazards, a multi-pronged approach can be taken to identify concerns in the business and take steps to proactively manage these hazards.

Understanding hazards your workplace

The safe work code of practice identifies 14 domains of hazards that impact on the physical and mental health of employees. These hazards can be considered at an individual, team and global level.

At individual level risks could be related to interpersonal difficulties, specific incidents or the design of work.

• Bullying and harassment
• Work-related stress
• Job demands and control

On a team level risks could be limited control over work, poor organizational change culture, or insufficient support from managers and colleagues.

• Lack of reward and recognition
• Organisational change management

At an organizational level risks could be include physical hazards such as dangerous machinery, substances, or other environmental conditions. It could also include the psychosocial safety culture across the organisation.

• Organisational justice
• Hazardous Work Environments

Psychosocial hazards will vary between workplaces and between groups of workers, depending on the work environment, organisational context and the nature of work.

It is important to consider how these domains impact workers both on an individual level, and at at an organisational level.

Talk To Us About Psychosocial Risk Assessments

Effective psychosocial risk assessment is essential not only for compliance with WHS legislation and code of practice but also safeguarding the mental wellbeing of your team.

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Strategies for Hazard Identification

The process of identifying the psychosocial hazards specific to your workplace involves working collaboratively, gathering data and using evidence based tools, and getting staff feedback through reporting.

1. Working collaboratively

Identification of hazards requires a collaborative approach from Human Resources teams and Work Health and Safety. Employee relations is traditionally the responsibility of the Human Resources function.

It covers a broad spectrum of personnel management, ranging from employee investigations and complaint management to performance evaluation, leadership, and training.

Challenging issues with interpersonal behaviours, such as burnout and stress, bullying, harassment, rewards and recognition, now extend into the Work Health and Safety (WHS) domain. While HR possesses the necessary data, information, policies, and procedures, WH&S tends to lead in managing these psychosocial hazards systematically. For effective changes, these two functions need to work collaboratively to be able to review and identify data and then consider systems of safety and management.

2. Making data-driven decisions

The first place to start is to gather data from both quantitative and qualitative sources. Qualitative data that can be benchmarked against other businesses in your sector can be a great place to start. Information such as absenteeism rates or EAP usage and trends can provide themes that point towards key hazards in the business.

Analysing recent complaints or investigations can provide data that helps identify areas to begin improving within the business. Work health and Safety can provide information about environmental hazards, as well as further information about workers compensation claims and psychological injuries and physical injuries.

3. Evidence-based Tools for Identifying Psychosocial Hazards

Workplaces can use evidence-based tools to survey their workforce and get further quantitative data. The benefit of this method is you have significant data to help you identify hazards within your workforce. The down-side is that this data may not provide you the individual insights you need to effectively identify specific interpersonal hazards.

There are some well known tools such as PAW and COPSOQ which can provide empirical data, however it is important to assess their suitability for your business particularly small to medium business and non-standard work environments.

4. Consulting your workers

An effective way to gather quantitative data, while also meeting your compliance obligations is to to observe behaviours in your workplace, allowing for reporting and provide opportunities for your workers to provide feedback. Worker observation could be as simple as joining onsite operations and being a part of day-to-day activities, or it may be more in-depth such as a completing a in-depth job analysis with individuals or teams.

For staff to have opportunities to provide feedback a number of methods may be used. Firstly, establish a clear process for reporting and managing psychosocial hazards and incidents.

This process must have identified escalation pathways and a transparent system of information sharing to encourage workers to be able to share their concerns safely. Best practice also includes running focus groups for staff and leaders to provide first-hand experience of what could cause stress or adversely affect their health and safety at work.

Their inputs can be invaluable in not only identifying the hazards but also in formulating measures to mitigate them.

Barriers to identifying hazards

The challenges for Human resources teams successfully engaging with the workforce are dependant on the safety culture of the business The inherent Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) of your organisation is a key marker of if staff will engage with the process of identification authentically. PSC is “the shared belief held by workers that their psychological safety and well-being is protected and supported by senior management”, the healthier the PSC, the more likely it is that workers will feel safe to speak up without the fear of punishment, and have a belief that things will improve and be taken seriously if they are reported.

Assessing hazards

Once business have gathered data to effectively identify trends within the workplace, the next step is to assess them. The assessment stage requires the use of risk-matrices and safety benchmarking measures, and is best done in collaboration with Work health and safety and within a worker safety system.

Talk To Us About How To Manage Invisible Hazards At Work

Identification of psychosocial hazards in the workplace are a first step for a business to meet their compliance requirements. This process involves collaboration between different teams, data-driven decision-making, the use of evidence-based tools, and most importantly, worker participation.

By openly addressing these issues and taking proactive measures, businesses can develop a safety culture that encourages the early identification and reporting of hazards, allowing businesses to then take preventative action to protect the psychological health and safety of their staff.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Louise is the Clinical Director at Foremind, with over a decade of experience in the mental health sector, contributing to well-known Australian organizations like Beyond Blue, Lifeline, Headspace, and LivingWorks.

       Louise Thompson               Clinical Director      

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