78: Wellness at Work—Understanding Psychological Safety and Psychosocial Hazards, with Dr. I. David Daniels

How can we create supportive and mentally healthy workplaces?

In this episode in our Wellness at Work series, discover the key to fostering mental well-being in your workplace by understanding psychological safety and psychosocial hazards with Dr. I. David Daniels. Learn the difference between psychological safety and psychosocial hazards, how an environment where individuals can freely express their thoughts without fear is crucial for a thriving organization, and how the COVID-19 pandemic highlighted existing issues rather than creating new ones.

Turning our focus to mental health and employee turnover, we challenge the common practice of blaming individuals for frequent job changes. Instead, we emphasize the importance of scrutinizing and improving work environments. Understand why legacy systems need to be modified to meet contemporary objectives and how inclusive design processes involving diverse perspectives can foster resilience and growth in employees.

Join us for a comprehensive discussion on designing workplaces with human well-being at their core, ensuring healthier and more effective organizations.

Dr. I. David Daniels is an occupational health and safety professional, former public safety executive, thought leader, and Founder/CEO of ID2 Solutions, LLC, a safety-focused solutions company specializing in helping organizations plan and execute safety management systems, including focusing on psychosocial hazard mitigation strategies. He’s also the host of the Psych Health and Safety USA podcast.

You can learn more about David on his podcast Psych Health and Safety Podcast USA. 

Go to https://betterhelp.com/resilience or click Notes on Resilience during sign up for 10% off your first month of therapy with my sponsor BetterHelp.

Transcript

I. David Daniels: 1:13

Effective safety is not something I do to you. I don't do it for you either. I have to do it with you, and that's what's missing. Most of the times, we feel like we have to do it for people. So there's OSHA, there's compliance.

Manya Chylinski: 1:29

Hello and welcome to Notes on Resilience. I'm your host, manya Chylinski, and this is another episode in our series on wellness at work, and my guest is Dr I David Daniels. He's an occupational health and safety professional, founder and CEO of ID2 Solutions and the host of the Psychological Health and Safety USA podcast, and we talked about psychological safety, psychosocial hazards, what are the differences between them and what does that have to do with mental well-being and what does it have to do with our workplaces? It was an amazing conversation. I think you're really going to learn a lot, david. Thanks for being here. I'm so excited to be talking to you today.

I. David Daniels: 2:19

It is absolutely a pleasure. I too have been looking forward.

Manya Chylinski: 2:22

Yes, Well before we dive into the heart of the matter, the question I start with is if you could have dinner with any historical figure, who would it be and why?

I. David Daniels: 2:35

It would undoubtedly be President Barack Obama.

Manya Chylinski: 2:39

Yes.

I. David Daniels: 2:40

I'd buy him dinner. I would. I actually had opportunity to attend his first inauguration. Oh, I share for people. It is literally the first time that I waved an American flag and it meant something to me. It was colder than Alaska, but, yeah just, I'll never forget that moment for the rest of my life and I would love to. Yeah, I'd sit down. I don't even drink coffee and I drink a cup with him.

Manya Chylinski: 3:09

Yes, I hear you. I think that's fabulous. Let's see if we can tag him on this podcast, get him to invite you. Yeah, yay, I'm in. I think that sounds great and I would love all my guests say these great people and I'm always like I want to join you on this. Let's see if we can make that happen.

I. David Daniels: 3:29

Absolutely.

Manya Chylinski: 3:30

Well, thank you for sharing that, and let's dig into the heart of the matter. So we are talking about wellness at work and I want to chat with you about psychological safety and psychosocial hazards, and what are these things and why are we needing to pay attention to them in the workspace? So I guess let's start out, give us some definitions.

I. David Daniels: 3:56

And Manya, thank you for the question. I believe that there's a lot of conversation about at least one of them. The psychological safety conversation has been really, really fervent, particularly as we've had this joint experience of exposure to a biological hazard that we called COVID-19. And the concept has actually been around for many, many years. Dr Amy Edmondson is probably the one who gets the most credit for it, though she's not the first person to talk about it. It's actually talked about in the late 60s. But the more current definition of psychological safety is basically an environment where we can feel free to express our ideas, thoughts and opinions about whatever and not have to worry about how folks are going to look at us differently. The culture is free for that kind of conversation difference, different views and I think it's a really critical and important concept. Again, the pandemic kind of focused us more on that. My view of the pandemic is it didn't change much of anything, but it exposed most of everything.

Manya Chylinski: 5:03

Yes.

I. David Daniels: 5:03

Because the issues weren't new. The pandemic forced us to pay attention, though, to things that had already been there.

Manya Chylinski: 5:10

And people who were not typically paying attention now felt that these were new issues that were coming up.

I. David Daniels: 5:16

Yeah. So having that conversation about psychological safety has almost become trendy. Everybody's talking about it, there's books out there about it, there's all kinds of discussion, but the part that they miss is that psychological safety is not really a safety topic at all. It's a management and leadership topic. And that's from someone myself who has a doctorate in occupational health and safety. I can tell you that's really not a safety thing. It's a management and leadership thing. It's kind of safety adjacent, but it isn't really safety.

I. David Daniels: 5:51

The safety concept is the existence of psychosocial hazard. So if you talk in the safety community, we talk a lot of the identification of hazards and how do we deal with them. And this is an example of where we've spent a lot of time talking about physical hazards biological, chemical, ergonomic, that type of thing. We know a lot about that as a society, but we don't know a lot about psych hazards. And a psychosocial hazard. Again, the definition of my research is a psychosocial factor that's perceived or experienced by the person who's exposed, as a threat that in turn affects their behavior. That's all those things, something I perceive as a threat and it's another threat that it affects the way I behave. Yes, because there are threats out there all the time. There are hazards out there all the time. That don't necessarily motivate us to behave any differently, because the hazard is mitigated. The room that you're sitting in has electrical hazards, I guarantee you, but they're mitigated Right. You don't have to worry about getting shocked, because I doubt that there's an open wire right next to you Now.

Manya Chylinski: 7:01

I'm looking right, Because now I'm seeing hazards all around me.

I. David Daniels: 7:06

So again, people talk about psychological safety but they don't identify the psychosocial hazards you're exposing people to, and many of them are specific to that person. So if you never ask, I may not and it's not safe enough for me to bring it up. So I simply am feeling some kind of way. I suppress it, I deal with it in my own way, but at a certain point it can, and sometimes does, affect my physical health.

Manya Chylinski: 7:32

Now you brought up something interesting that it is self-identified. So it is. We can be standing next to each other and what feels dangerous to me or hazardous to me might not to you, but when we're talking about like a workplace or another organization, how?

I. David Daniels: 7:47

do you?

Manya Chylinski: 7:48

manage. If the hazards are self-identified, they're not necessarily obvious to me as a manager or an executive.

I. David Daniels: 7:57

So I wish I had a quick. I'll try to give you the quickest and simplest answer, though it's not quick or simple, it is. This is where this is one of the benefits of an inclusive leadership style, because we somehow, in a lot of our business, schools and books and writings and whatnot, we've talked about this typical traditional command and control leadership, where I'm the leader and I'm supposed to come in and kind of make everything safe for everybody. My job is not to make it safe for everybody, because I can't. My job is to understand what's safe for me and to work with you so we can be safe. So effective safety is not something I do to you. I don't do it for you either. I have to do it with you, and that's what's missing.

I. David Daniels: 8:43

Most of the times, we feel like we have to do it for people. So there's OSHA, there's compliance, I have to, and, yes, there are some things that are pretty standard across the board. Anybody who's exposed to acid without protective gear is probably going to be burned by the acid. That's probably going to be the case, and then to determine a lot of the mitigation is really pretty simple. It's not like we have to change the entire organization, but you may have to do something different. For me, you may not be able to do that thing as well. That's a righteous situation to be in as well, but I think we have to take off the mindset that says there's one way to make it safe for everyone yes, and to say that our goal is to have it be safe for everyone, but we don't know what it's going to take to make it safe for everyone. So we have to work together to keep it as safe as possible for everyone, because you also can't eliminate all psychosocial has.

Manya Chylinski: 9:46

Right, it's the inclusive piece. And right, you said that command and control, where we're saying this is what we're going to do, this is what we have decided is safety versus.

I. David Daniels: 9:57

Yes.

Manya Chylinski: 9:58

Yeah, and I feel a lot of the organizations that I've been part of lean much more toward the command and control piece and the inclusivity and the let's hear from everybody. How do you prevent that from being anarchy for an organization?

I. David Daniels: 10:15

There's a part of me that says if that's what everyone wants, you don't. So anarchy for one group is free and open expression for another. Cultures get created by people. They do, and I think that we've been too exclusive, even our definition about what works. What works for who. Who said that that was anarchy? Who said that that was right or wrong or didn't work Generally, there is some individual or some group who says this is what works.

I. David Daniels: 10:45

So I do everything perfect for me. I really do. The things that I do for me are always perfect, and that's where it stops. It's not perfect for anybody other than me.

I. David Daniels: 10:54

So if Manya and I am going to do something whatever that thing is we have to discuss what works for both of us. And then if we're being a third person or a 10th person or a thousandth person now people will sometimes get kind of. You know, we can't have a system that absolutely works for everybody. No, I disagree. It's not going to look the same, because that means for me to get something that I want, I will likely have to give something as well. It won't be the same as it was by myself, but I'm also getting a benefit that I wouldn't get by myself. So that causes all of us to go for us to achieve whatever the goal is.

I. David Daniels: 11:31

What do we have to do to do that? I've been in a committed relationship with the same person for 37 years and I married her 36 years ago, and there's some things that she does that are very different from me and I do very different from her, and we finally figured out let's try to not make each other something that we weren't when we got together. We weren't that way. So let's find out the things that we do enjoy and do that yes, and not try to make her something she's not, or make me something, because I'm not going to do that anyway, and the longer I do it, the less likely you are to make me do something I don't want to do. So what is it that we do want to do?

Manya Chylinski: 12:10

Now you're talking about a relationship with two people, maybe a small workplace, three or four people. I can get my head around that. Let's talk about, let's figure out what works for all of us. How do you do that at scale?

I. David Daniels: 12:23

nothing that you do is going to work for all 10,000 people. Nothing I guarantee you. If you make $10, somebody is going to want to make 11. So let's not set up unrealistic expectation about we've got to get every. No, we have to get a critical mass of us on this topic. Okay, Because we're not going to get agreement on every particular. We want to have these big organizations then turn us all into drones. Right, and that's what you get on Star Trek. They're called the Borg.

Manya Chylinski: 13:00

Resistance is futile, David.

I. David Daniels: 13:02

Exactly. I'm not a Borg, I'm not a drone. I'm a human being. So the more humans you bring into the discussion, the more different ideas you're going to get, and it requires, yes, you're going to be able to do some things that are going to work across the board. That doesn't mean let's stop this nonsense about oh yeah, everybody agreed. Of course they did, yeah, but they don't have to. We have to agree on certain things at certain times, and it's okay that I don't agree on that, but it's not enough for me to leave the relationship. So I'm not going to leave the company over that thing, but that thing's important to me, and it's important for me to bring that up to know myself, to know what's important to me. So both of us know that, as long as we don't do that thing, I'm good. I may not particularly care about this. Everybody needs to know where each other's red lines are, and so we can all make decisions the decisions we get to make in a free society. We should be able to make them.

I. David Daniels: 13:55

I find, though, that groups aren't very honest about what's really going on. Oh, it's family. No, it's not. This whole psychological bring your whole self. You know good and well, I can't bring my whole self to that. I have to wear shoes when I come here, and at home I go barefoot. So let's be clear about what it is we're trying to achieve and the ground rules that we're going to use in this environment. Let's do that and let's not. There are some employers who should stop the fibbing about being equal opportunity employers. No, you're not, because you say it's open for everyone until someone applies and then you don't hire them, or you do hire them and you treat them such that they're going to leave anyway. So be honest about it. Just say we want X, right, and then you know it's okay. Right, you may not be able to get public money, but it's okay, right, I'm a big one for that.

Manya Chylinski: 14:44

Like, just tell me and I'll deal with it. That's right, Whatever it is but don't pretend that you're something that you're not. That's right. So when we talk about psychological safety and we talk about psychosocial hazards, you know a lot of the conversation now post-pandemic has been about mental wellness in the workplace. How are those connected?

I. David Daniels: 15:06

So mental health and mental illness are two separate things. They get talked about as if they're the same thing and you can have people who have a diagnosed mental illness who can come into an environment and their mental health that particular day is absolutely fine. It's no different than a person who's been diagnosed with hypertension or diabetes. I don't have either one, but there are people who live normal lives with those physical conditions. That also occurs with people who have diagnosed conditions like depression or anxiety or whatever. I can still function, but there are some things that are not helpful to that condition. It's on the extreme. So perhaps we should be creating spaces that are safe enough for people to disclose that. I have issues with that kind of environment. I can do this kind of work. I just have issues with that kind of environment and we make the accommodation because we want that person's skill right. Right. This is the way we do it, and if that's the way you want to do it, that's fine.

I. David Daniels: 16:09

I believe that a lot of the mental health challenges that people have are environmentally imposed. It's the environment, it's not me. So why is it I mean, I think about this often why is it that employers are able to tell you that there's something challenging about your work history, because you've moved from job to job but they never check out the job to find out what was going on there. I'm not the only one. If you were to check that business, you'll find that their turnover rate is 40%. And again, it doesn't mean that they're good or bad people. It just means that they, the organization, hasn't made the shift to create the environment that's going to get the people they say they want. They just haven't gotten there yet. So why is that held against me? It's not held against them. You'll still do business with them, but you won't hire me. So again, I think often we're just too locked into a particular archetype that says this is the way it is. No, that's one of the ways that it is.

Manya Chylinski: 17:06

And I think a lot about that culture and that environment and how that impacts our health, our mental health. It does, it does, I feel like we put so much focus on. It's really important for you to be resilient and it's important for you to be taking care of yourself, and then there's that lack of attention to well, yes, but I'm living in this society and I'm living in this environment where these other things are happening to me and where's the responsibility of our organizations?

I. David Daniels: 17:36

Bingo. It's not a binary choice to me. It's not simply working on the human being. It's also not simply creating the perfect environment, either. It's both. The perfect environment, either it's both. Both are necessary, because if you take a really resilient, really healthy, really pragmatic, really intelligent, really capable human being and you put them in a super toxic, dysfunctional environment, eventually they're going to wear down. They will. They will wear down. Conversely, if you have a really super, super, super healthy environment and you take a person yeah, I'm dealing with some things, I've got some issues, but that environment is so healthy and enriching and positive and uplifting, you can actually heal some of what that person brought with them. It's just like where do you plant a seed? You have to plant the seed in soil that will grow for that particular kind of plant or vegetable or whatever. Not everything will grow everywhere. Some need wet climate, some could go in the dry, different between a cactus and a watermelon, right, right, exactly. And so are you creating an environment that will grow the things you say you want.

Manya Chylinski: 18:45

Well, what are some strategies or practices that organizations can implement to build that psychological safety and to reduce the incidence of hazards?

I. David Daniels: 18:57

It depends on whether or not you're brand new or whether or not you're existing. If you're brand new, perhaps in the establishment of your startup or of your small company, that it should be centered on human beings and not centered on other things. First, if we created an environment that is focused on how is it most helpful and healthy to the human beings, all the other things are a product of a healthy environment for the human beings, to include things like market share and income and influence. If you can get a group of healthy human beings, there's all kinds of things that can be done Now, because many, many, many actually. I looked that up recently. I can't remember the numbers, but I think there's somewhere around 12 to 15% of our businesses get created every year something along those lines and so there's a lot of things that are already existing.

I. David Daniels: 19:47

The other part is for the existing organizations. Let's not be naive as to what the organization was built to do. Every system, every organization is perfectly designed to produce whatever it's currently producing, and so what we do is we forget or don't take into account what was it designed to do, and then we wonder why it's not doing something different today. It wasn't designed to do that. If you want a legacy system to produce something new, that system has to be modified to do it, Not simply getting different.

Manya Chylinski: 20:21

Yes, absolutely. I said in a call a while back. I said the system is broken and somebody said, nope, stop right there. It is doing exactly what it is designed to do. It's just not designed to do the thing that you want it to be doing.

I. David Daniels: 20:38

That's right and again, and legitimately. How do we take the judgment out of that? Right, because then we'd start to get judgy. In particular, I'll get judgy because, ok, so when this country, when the Constitution was written, people who look like me were considered to be property at the time. So am I surprised? You know, these few hundred years later, that we still have deficits? But no, I'm not surprised. I'm shocked that people wouldn't get that it wasn't designed for me. Shocked that people wouldn't get that it wasn't designed for me.

I. David Daniels: 21:13

And so if you want it to be good for me, you have to help design it with me. That's the point. You can't do it for me. You can't sit in your ivory tower or your corner office or wherever, and come up with something that's for everyone else and think it's always going to work. It'll work sometimes, you'll guess, every now and then, but people need to be involved. My involvement may be just being in the room, it may be the survey that you gave me, it may be there's all kinds of different ways. And just because I don't answer the survey doesn't mean that's a bet. It means you gave me the opportunity and I didn't care, but I've had at least had the opportunity. Yes, it's okay, it's okay, it's okay.

Manya Chylinski: 21:50

I had that experience. I was asked to take a survey in my role in a particular way and I remember thinking, okay, I know what I want, here's what I'm answering in the survey. And I thought to myself I don't think they're going to do what I want, but I so appreciate that they bothered to ask me.

I. David Daniels: 22:09

That's right Now. I will say if you're rarely going to do what people want, stop the survey.

I. David Daniels: 22:15

Yes, yeah, and that's just lying and that's that's what you're doing. So, again, it is so important that I, as an individual, know what I'm getting myself into on the front end. I should do an investigation of that company organization before I join, cause some of that's on me. I know what's important front end. I should do an investigation of that company organization before I join, because some of that's on me. I know what's important to me. I know what I like and don't like. I know how I want to be treated, and if there is no indication that they're going to do that, why would I go there and then complain after I get there that they didn't do that? Some of that's on me.

I. David Daniels: 22:44

On the other hand, employers organizations should be honest about the real hazards that people are going to face. So the example is people who have. Again, they say we have a zero tolerance for racism, sexism, homophobia, zero tolerance. Well, that's not true, because there are 50,000 people and some of those people don't like people like me, and so why not be honest to say this is our, our goal, and there are cases where we don't meet it and when we don't. Here is how we address it. We've been working on this for years.

I. David Daniels: 23:19

I was in the fire rescue service for 32 years. The fire rescue service is one of the least diverse publicly funded things we do in this country. Publicly funded things we do in this country Roughly 90% white and 95% male. That's what it is. So stop telling people it's something else, when that's just what it is. And so I can prepare myself when I go into about what it's going to be. Are you trying to get better? Perhaps, but it's going to be hard and we both need to know that. We both need to know that and let's not be naive about how hard it's going to be, right?

Manya Chylinski: 23:49

I like the focus on the honesty and let's be open about who we each are and what we each need out of this.

I. David Daniels: 23:57

Yes.

Manya Chylinski: 23:58

Now, if I'm a leader listening to this, thinking, maybe feeling attacked, well, you're talking about me and I do care, but I can't fix my organization. What do? You say to someone who's feeling like I don't think we can do this, or we're doing it and we're already perfect at it.

I. David Daniels: 24:15

Yeah Well, for those who feel like they're being attacked, that's probably an issue that they have with themselves, personally, that is. I mean take that personal suggest that there's something going on in you that you're probably going to have to work your way through. I can't fix that for you. Like I said, as a safety professional, it's not my job to make people safe. It's my job to provide people with information so they can make a decision. I'm not in the business of trying to change people's minds, because there are enough people out there who are interested. I know there's something going on in my organization. It's not really what we want it to be. We think there's some. It doesn't feel safe to us here. Hey, can you come and help us? I'm happy to do that, but I'm not there to convince anybody and tell them they're wrong or any of that kind. And for those who don't feel like they can fix it, they probably can. So you're right, you probably can't, but if you feel that you can, you're probably right. Then as well. If you're simply going to say we can't fix this, that's great and personally that's okay. But I think you're going to find that organizations have two choices evolution or extinction. That's the choice that you have.

I. David Daniels: 25:23

There are a group of people we call them the younger millennials, and Gen Zers and Gen Alphas are right behind them. They're not going to come into an environment where they don't feel that they're cared for and taken care of. These are the kids. We put the mats under their jungle gyms, we told them about stranger danger. We we told them wear a bicycle helmet, yeah. And then when they come into the workforce, they're worrying about all this stuff. We told them that they're not weird, they're not wrong. There's not. That's not that, it's. The environment needs to adjust because otherwise they're going to go work someplace else.

Manya Chylinski: 25:53

Right, Absolutely. Oh, David, I could talk to you for so long on this topic. I love this conversation. It's time to wrap up and I'm just curious what is giving you hope these days?

I. David Daniels: 26:06

Well, one of the things that gives me hope and you're going to be joining me here fairly soon to talk on my podcast, the Psych Health and Safety USA podcast shameless plug the people that I'm meeting, not only here in the US but around the world, who have figured out that psychological health and safety and physical health and safety are the same thing, this bifurcation, this difference of separation that we've tried to make over the course of history. Folks have figured out the deal. You can't separate them, as people are starting to realize that. They're starting to figure out that, look, if we can prevent some of the psychosocial harm that we're exposing people to, yeah, our workers' comp costs are going to go down, the place is going to be more fun to work at, we're going to keep people, it's going to save us money. It's simply a better way of doing business, and I'm encouraged by that. I'm encouraged Again.

I. David Daniels: 26:59

I think I'm probably a Gen Z-er that was born a couple of decades too early. I agree with him. I agree that we should not be placing ourselves in these toxic situations and just staying there. We should move on to something that's not. And so the more realization that I see, the more people that I meet that, get that. It just tells me that we'll get there. It took us hundreds of years to get to where we are. At least we're not dueling out in front of the company.

Manya Chylinski: 27:26

Well, ideally we're not doing that.

I. David Daniels: 27:29

Most people aren't, but we're getting better. The optimist in me said we'll get there.

Manya Chylinski: 27:34

Excellent. Yes, the optimist in me says the same thing. Well, david, you mentioned your podcast. Tell us a little bit more about what you do and how people can reach you if they want to learn more about you.

I. David Daniels: 27:44

So the Psych Health and Safety USA podcast is actually sponsored by a company in Australia. It's one of five or six they have. Around the globe Talk about this topic of psychological health and safety, and we in the United States are just finding out more about it. We don't have laws in place like they have in Canada and UK and Japan and Mexico and other places. There are 37 countries around the world who figured out this.

I. David Daniels: 28:09

The fact that they are the same and that's my cause, celeb these days is to help people figure out that here in the US we could do a better job. We're doing okay in some areas, but there's some areas that we're not, and I'm here to be the tour guide as much as I can and get people together to talk about not only the laws that we need to have in place, but there's some things that can be done without laws, and a lot of it is just around treating each other better, being kinder to one another, and you know, we could stumble into a more healthy workplace if we just were more considerate of each other. And so, yeah, the podcast can be found any place that people are looking for podcast information or at psychhealthandsafetyusacom.

Manya Chylinski: 28:50

Excellent. Well, we'll include a link in the show notes so people can find you easily. David, thank you so much for this conversation. It was wonderful and I'm excited to be a guest on your podcast very shortly.

I. David Daniels: 29:02

Absolutely, and we're going to pick up the conversation. I'll be asking the questions this time.

Manya Chylinski: 29:06

Exactly. Thank you so much.

I. David Daniels: 29:09

Thank you.

Manya Chylinski: 29:12

Thank you for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. So if you'd like to learn more about me, manya Chylinski, I work with organizations to help understand how to create environments where people can thrive after difficult life experiences, and I do this through talks and consulting. I'm a survivor of mass violence and I use my experience to help leaders learn about resiliency, compassion and trauma-sensitive leadership to build strategies to enable teams to thrive and be engaged amidst difficulty and turmoil. If this is something you want to learn more about, visit my website, www. manyachylinski. com, or email me at manya@manyachylinski. com , or stop by my social media on LinkedIn and Twitter. Thanks so much.