Imagine a workplace where everyone feels safe, where the lines of communication are wide open and the structure is crystal clear. It's when psychosocial safety is prioritized. In this discussion, we break down the complexities of psychosocial safety, a fundamental concept in Australian workplace law, pivotal to every business. Unveiling the potential hazards such as high job demands, lack of support and unclear roles, we reveal how these can lead to physical or psychological harm if not addressed effectively.
How do you manage psychosocial hazards once they've been identified? You might be surprised to discover how these hazards can interact and amplify risks.
Would you like to submit a question to the show? Let us know on our website or via LinkedIn.
Brought to you by Aster HR, the Work Wonders Podcast is hosted by Angela Gauci & Susan Rochester and is recorded at Launch Pad at Western Sydney University.
All information or advice included in this podcast is general, has been developed as a starting point for your business, and should be tailored to your specific requirements. It should not be considered legal advice. We have made every attempt to ensure the accuracy and currency of this information at the time of recording. However, references to things like employment laws are subject to change. For specific advice relating to your business, please get in touch with us.
Imagine a workplace where everyone feels safe, where the lines of communication are wide open and the structure is crystal clear. It's when psychosocial safety is prioritized. In this discussion, we break down the complexities of psychosocial safety, a fundamental concept in Australian workplace law, pivotal to every business. Unveiling the potential hazards such as high job demands, lack of support and unclear roles, we reveal how these can lead to physical or psychological harm if not addressed effectively.
How do you manage psychosocial hazards once they've been identified? You might be surprised to discover how these hazards can interact and amplify risks.
Would you like to submit a question to the show? Let us know on our website or via LinkedIn.
Brought to you by Aster HR, the Work Wonders Podcast is hosted by Angela Gauci & Susan Rochester and is recorded at Launch Pad at Western Sydney University.
All information or advice included in this podcast is general, has been developed as a starting point for your business, and should be tailored to your specific requirements. It should not be considered legal advice. We have made every attempt to ensure the accuracy and currency of this information at the time of recording. However, references to things like employment laws are subject to change. For specific advice relating to your business, please get in touch with us.
Angela Gauci:
Welcome to the Work Wonders podcast brought to you by AsterHR, where we simplify the human side of business.
Susan Rochester:
I'm Angela and I'm Susan, let's dive into today's episode and find out what you've been wondering about.
Angela Gauci:
In today's episode, we're going to dig into an issue that's important for all of us psychosocial safety in the workplace. Did you know that if you have a business in Australia, you have legal responsibilities related to psychosocial safety? So listen in to find out what that's all about, what it means for you and your business. This is the Work Wonders podcast. Hi Angela, Hi Susan. So today's episode, we're going to dive into three main topics around psychosocial safety. Firstly, we'll talk about what it is it's a big term and second, we'll think about what it means for you as our listener and your business. And three, what should we do about it? So, Susan, start us off by telling us what is a psychosocial hazard.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, a psychosocial hazard. I'm lucky I've managed to say it without tripping over that word.
Angela Gauci:
It's a bit of a mouthful.
Susan Rochester:
So, according to Safe Work Australia, psychosocial hazard is anything that could cause psychological harm, so that's a harm to a person's mental health, or it could also cause physical harm. So, if you think about it, psychosocial hazards can create stress. Stress in itself is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can cause psychological, physical harm, especially if it's over a long period of time and the level of stress is high. So psychological harm that may be caused would include anxiety, depression, ptsd, post-traumatic stress disorder, sleep disorders anything along those mental health lines where we're affected. And then, of course, physical harm created by stress might be, such as a heart attack, I guess, or musculoskeletal injuries, chronic disease or even fatigue.
Angela Gauci:
Yeah, that sort of long-term fatigue. And like you're saying, yeah, it's either gone on for a long time or something has to be a bit unusual or extreme about it to cause that harm. Is that what you're saying?
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, but when we're looking at hazards in the workplace, there's a lot of different things that can be causing psychosocial harm.
Angela Gauci:
Okay, so tell us in the work context then stress is unfortunately something that people feel. But if we think about psychosocial hazards just in the workplace, what? Are we looking out for.
Susan Rochester:
Well, you know, it's interesting. When I started reading through this list, I thought, oh well, this is basically what we HR types have been telling people for a long time might be dangerous, but now we've got safe work behind us yeah.
Angela Gauci:
There you go.
Susan Rochester:
Basically saying yes, these are hazards that need to be managed. Big bad legislation that bosses you around to do the right things Exactly yeah. So if you look at things like job demands, okay, so there have been cases where people have been required to work long hours. It's interesting. Actually, I could go on a whole rant about startups, for example. Yeah, but people are coming to startups to work within them who weren't the founders, but are expected to put in the same amount of hours that a founder would as the founder?
Angela Gauci:
yeah.
Susan Rochester:
And we both know our experience as founders. That's a lot.
Angela Gauci:
Yes, I'm often thinking to myself. I would not treat an employee the way I'm treating myself. Yeah, exactly. So I can't imagine doing that to someone. That'd be awful.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, so if you're expecting someone to work the same hours that you work, maybe, or working 60 hours a week or whatever, that's a high job demand. That could be a psychosocial hazard. Conversely to that, or related to that, is job control, so people feeling like they don't have any control over either the amount of work that they're doing or the content.
Angela Gauci:
So that's your traditional micro management. Everybody probably knows that term that they feel like they're stuck, always waiting for the next thing to be told to do, or always being watched. That's right.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, that's right. And being told well, we want this done and we want it done this way, and we don't care if you've got a master's degree or whatever and you've got your own ideas, you'll do it this way. Wow. So that low job control Quite degrading, yeah can be a psychosocial hazard. Likewise, if people are feeling like they're not supported in the workplace.
Angela Gauci:
That's the obvious one. Yeah, you want to feel like it's a nice place to go, that you it's a soft landing. If there's something that goes wrong or you need help with, yeah, exactly.
Susan Rochester:
Even that there's someone that you can talk to. I mean, one of the highest predictors of well being at work is whether we've got a work friend. Okay, so someone that we can have those conversations with, yeah, nice. The next one which I think probably makes the HR people's heart sing is well, not really the opposite of this, but is lack of role clarity.
Angela Gauci:
Okay, so yeah, as opposed to the other one where it was quite demanded and specific to fight with. The person may know and contribute, but actually not giving much direction at all.
Susan Rochester:
Exactly, or being in a position. I'm just trying to think of an example where you've been brought in under a particular position description. You think this is, this is your job, but then, when you do that part of your job or a part of your job, finding that someone else thinks that's their baby oh, so it's awkward.
Susan Rochester:
That would be awkward from there. That could be as like a sexual hazard. But I think also that that clarity about you know this is how the organisation is arranged. This is how work is designed. That's something that people like us are always begging on about.
Angela Gauci:
It comes from a very clear structure Very easily yeah.
Susan Rochester:
And very easily prevented.
Angela Gauci:
Yes, yes, yes.
Susan Rochester:
As are a lot of the things that are going to come up as we go through this list.
Angela Gauci:
That's good news because, I mean, nobody wants people to be having heart attacks or car accidents or I don't know, feeling depressed or anything like that, so it's good that we can do something about it preventatively. We would actually like people to be happy at work. Yeah, absolutely. Spend too much time at work not to be.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, exactly. So next on my list was poor organisational change management.
Angela Gauci:
Change management is a big one, isn't it? So, that's you know, when you've got big things happening, usually so change of CEO or, you know, restructure completely, those big disruptive things. And we know not everybody responds to change positively. It's not always an easy thing. Well, this is correct.
Susan Rochester:
Most of us feel a bit uncomfortable when there's change. But what's happened over the last few years, of course, is that we've got these layers of change. You know, I remember back in the long time ago. You know, working in the 80s, 90s, you know there'd be a change at work and then that it you'd have time for that to settle in until the next big change and we sort of run out to the other. But now we're. Things are moving so fast that there's all these multi layers of change. That's true. So if that's not properly managed and communicated, that can have an effect on people's mental health. It can be overwhelming. Yeah, exactly. Another example of a psychosexual hazard at work is inadequate reward and recognition. So we've all heard about Maslow and the. You know the hygiene factors. We need to be paid what we're worth. Sure, yeah, but this is more than that, I guess. I mean obviously, underpaying and wage theft and all that being a psychosocial hazard. But it can also be simple things like people not feeling like they're adequately recognised for their contribution.
Angela Gauci:
Yeah, as you're saying that I'm thinking people come to work for a lot of different reasons, but nobody goes there to do a bad job. No, no, somebody would want to come to work to feel like they contribute, share their knowledge I don't know have some creative freedom whatever it may be.
Angela Gauci:
Like you're saying there, they want to feel like that's recognised at a very basic level. Not necessarily, you know, does everybody need financial incentive, but you know, having some sort of recognition, whether it's a thank you or I notice you, or having those opportunities, yeah, and actually that leads well.
Susan Rochester:
It leads well into the next one, which was about organisational justice or fairness or transparency, I guess, where you know you would like to think that people are treated equally within an organisation and things like you know what we call procedural justice or natural justice are applied. So again that can lead be a psychosocial hazard if it doesn't exist yeah.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, and probably a more obvious one in terms of people's mental health and psychosocial safety is when there's a traumatic event or they're exposed to material that might cause some trauma, and making sure that that's managed in the workplace.
Angela Gauci:
Yeah, that would be awful. So not necessarily a trauma. Well, it could be a trauma outside the workplace, it might impact the workplace, but it could be something like I don't know.
Susan Rochester:
Potentially someone has an emergency or quite injured or something in the workplace that's traumatic or I don't know something with a child, or yeah, depending on the workplace, Accidents happen at work and on the way to and from work as well what a source of psychosocial hazard could be remote or isolated work.
Angela Gauci:
Oh, okay.
Susan Rochester:
So when you have workers who are working on their own on a particular job site or who work different hours to the rest of your workforce or any sort of shift work, that needs to be considered.
Angela Gauci:
I guess the hazard there might be because they're alone, they could be missing that social interaction that bouncing off ideas, the collaboration. Is that right yeah?
Susan Rochester:
exactly, and not just that. You know. I know there are some jobs where people have to travel a lot on their own and that sort of loneliness, basically, yeah, so a poor physical environment.
Susan Rochester:
That's probably a more obvious one from a WHS perspective. It's more like other WHS hazards that we're familiar with. So it could be, you know, not having the right equipment, not having a comfortable chair. If you use a chair, the next few on my list are actually more obvious. Okay, I would say that all of the things that we've talked about so far are things that you wouldn't immediately go oh.
Susan Rochester:
Psycho-social hazard you know, it's not really a flashing red light at you, yeah, but it's important for us to be aware of how we might be contributing to affecting someone's mental health. So these others are things like violence and aggression, sure, so the other thing that we're going to focus on is the safety of our employees, be that from other employees or from members of the public or our clients.
Susan Rochester:
Okay, so they're, as I said, more familiar to us in terms of work, health and safety hazards. But also, it's not just the physical harm that we're looking at here, it's the psychological harm as well Bullying. Mm yep, okay, Arrestment, including sexual harassment and also any sort of conflict or poor workplace relationship, so you might have those interactions that don't count as bullying, yeah, but may Some tension.
Angela Gauci:
Yeah, exactly Something's happening. Yeah.
Susan Rochester:
Or you know people feel that they're being treated unfairly or they have some sort of grievance, and if there's not a process in place for them to have that addressed, then that could lead to psychosocial harm, as well yeah, anxiety or depression. Yeah, yeah, I can understand that link. Yeah, the other thing that we need to be aware of as well is that the psychosocial hazards Start again. Something we need to be aware of is that psychosocial hazards may interact or combine to create you a change and higher risks.
Susan Rochester:
A nasty cocktail yes, and it might also be combined with other types of hazards in the workplace that we you know safety issues.
Angela Gauci:
I think I've got an example for you there. I know of a story of an employee who was working not normally during the night. She worked day you know, Monday to Friday.
Angela Gauci:
but, like you're saying, there there was an expectation of extended work. There was some large project and she was working in the evenings. She travelled from I'm not exactly sure I can't recall somewhere to somewhere, but she travelled in the car late in the evening and she was already tired and she had a car accident and very injured herself quite badly, so that there she had to have a lot of time off work. But she was not only exhausted from all of that and then those demands placed on her, but she actually had a physical injury as well. Exactly, sorry.
Susan Rochester:
Sorry, so you're right, I think I need to drink too.
Angela Gauci:
I just came at right the wrong time.
Susan Rochester:
So that was a good example, angela, of the sort of hazards that might not create psychosocial risks on their own, but may do so if they're combined with other risks, other hazards. So sorry about that. Another example would be when workloads are really high and workers can't take breaks and there's no one else around to help them. So while a high workload on its own might not be a psychosocial hazard, when that's combined with them being isolated and not having someone else to jump in so they can have a break. Then the risk is higher.
Angela Gauci:
And if that goes on for a long period, a person can very quickly start to feel not just isolated, but feel let down by their employer, and all sorts of other things would creep in. That would be an awful situation.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, so that was a long list and I'm sure it wasn't exhaustive. There's probably more, but in summary, let's pull that all together. So we're talking that psychosocial hazards can come from the design or the management of the work, they can come from the environment, they can come from the equipment at the workplace or it can come from workplace interactions or behaviors, either with your colleagues or with clients, so they're the sort of things that you need to consider.
Angela Gauci:
Okay, so that's a bit of a list of things to think about, and then you've got all the work health and safety ones as well. There's a lot there.
Susan Rochester:
So actually sorry to interrupt, but speaking about that, we'll be linking to a lot of resources on this. Don't feel that you have to immediately jump in and try and you remember what all those hazards are and check for them in your workplace, but there are some things that you can do.
Angela Gauci:
All right, Susan, so we've got our list and things we need to look for. What should we be doing about it as a business owner or a manager?
Susan Rochester:
Yes, well, sorry, it's okay. Do you want me to take a break for a minute? No, well, what should we be doing about it? If you're a business owner or manager, you're what we call a PCB, so that's a person conducting a business or undertaking and anyone familiar with WHS legislation.
Angela Gauci:
That will be familiar. Yes, exactly.
Susan Rochester:
And your responsibility in this case is to eliminate psychosocial risks or, if it's not reasonably practicable I knew I'd trip on that one To eliminate them, then to minimise them as far as sorry, as far as it's practical for you to do so.
Angela Gauci:
Okay, so that sounds a lot like a physical hazard, you know, tripping over a box or something like that. We want to first try and eliminate if we can, if not reduce the risk of it happening. So it sounds like the formula is the same.
Susan Rochester:
We're just applying it to a different type of hazard. And I think that's the easiest way to think about managing psychosocial hazards in your workplaces to treat it like any other risk management exercise, and the process that you need to go through to show that you've considered the risks and that you're taking those reasonable steps to manage them are exactly identical to any other, the way you treat any other WHS risk. Okay.
Angela Gauci:
So if I'm a business owner and I've already got some systems and forms in place to handle those hazards, identify them, think about what to do and consult and all those things, can I just pick up that process and now apply it to these new forms of hazards? Don't say why not? Great, do you? Sounds good to me. Why reinvent the wheel if it's already there? We just want to now expand our thought around psychosocial hazards, exactly, yeah.
Susan Rochester:
And then you can assess the hazard if you like, but basically you'd be going through the same four steps. You identify the hazard, so you need to find out what could cause harm, right, and then you're going to assess the risks, so you want to understand the nature of the harm that has caused, how serious it could be. Yeah, so a lot of those things that I listed you may think are more or less serious.
Susan Rochester:
And this is where you start consulting with your staff about the risks and how you're going to control them, because a lot of how open you are to difficulties I'm trying to think of the right word to challenges on this will depend on your staff. Yeah, yeah, and the individuals.
Angela Gauci:
Sorry, there's something right there. No worries, I'm so sorry to break. Your trainer thought that's all right.
Susan Rochester:
So we've talked about identifying the risks, assessing the risks and the likely how serious it's going to be and how likely it is to happen and then the next step is controlling the risks. So this is where you're going to implement effective control messages. Yeah, this is where you can implement whatever is the most effective control measures.
Angela Gauci:
Right, so we're taking action here.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, and so when you're taking action, you're really going through a process of looking at eliminating the risk, if it's possible to do so. If that's not possible to eliminate, what can you do to effectively control it and minimize the risk? Okay, so you need to make sure that what you're implemented is going to be effective over time, which leads us into step four, which is your review step. So you're going to review control measures, ensure that they're still working as you planned, making changes if you need to.
Angela Gauci:
I'm imagining a circular thing here. We keep coming back.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah.
Angela Gauci:
You want to review it, you can get analysed it and so on.
Susan Rochester:
Yeah, okay, and, as we're saying, that's a risk management model that would be familiar to most business owners. I would hope so. As we mentioned earlier, safework provides a lot of resources on this, and as do the various state bodies. Yeah, we'll be putting up some links to some of those and some of the downloads in our show notes.
Angela Gauci:
And so you canwhat do you call it? Hoo, great. Okay, let's see if we can do like a little outro. What can I do? Well, if you've got any questions or Hmm, okay, great, come on, let's go over something. Well, that's great, that's a really no, no, no, no. What am I trying to say? Helpful, that's great, susan, that's a really helpful way to look at it. I like that. If you're a business owner with those systems already in play, we're just now adapting it to this new way of thinking, or expanding our thinking.
Susan Rochester:
Hmm.
Angela Gauci:
Sign on the door, but anyway.
Susan Rochester:
Do you want to just do that again?
Angela Gauci:
Yeah, I think I will. Well, I like that, susan. That's a really full list to start us thinking about all the different types of psychosocial hazards and what they might be, and then taking that work health and safety system, or that you know, analysing risks and understanding how to eliminate or reduce the risk and applying that to now those new types of hazards. So I wonder what that means for you and your business and what you might do with that information. Now you've listened to today's episode, is there one thing that might have stuck out for you or one thing that you might be changing as you go away today back into your day? If you've got any questions, please feel free to reach out to us on our LinkedIn page Work Wonders podcast and any questions, please feel free to send them into the show via our website, wwwworkwonderscomau.
