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Written by: Professor Jane Burns
Professor Jane Burns is a distinguished C-Suite Executive with over 20 years of experience across the NGO, industry, government, and university sectors. She is a leading international expert in mental health and wellbeing, suicide prevention, digital transformation, and integrated models of workforce wellbeing.
In April 2023, important changes to Commonwealth work health and safety laws came into place. For the first time, Work Health and Safety Regulations prescribe how employers must identify and manage hazards and risks to workers’ psychological health and safety.
What is Psychosocial Safety
Psychosocial safety is the identification, removal and minimisation of psychosocial hazards (risk factors in the workplace that can potentially cause psychological harm).
Examples of psychosocial hazards in the workplace include fatigue which may be caused by shift work or an expectation that employees work long hours, violence, and bullying and organisational challenges such as poor change management, low job control or job insecurity.
Psychosocial hazards can contribute to mental injury and stress which, if severe or sustained, can result in a psychological injury.
Workers’ compensation claims are rising in Australia, (approximately $543 million annually), posing an unsustainable strain on the nation’s workplaces. Two in five Australians report they have left their job due to a poor work environment, and in the next ten years 33% of all worker’s compensation claims are expected to be on the grounds of mental injury.
The financial impact of absenteeism and presenteeism alone is $17 billion each year and resignation turnover costs are around six to nine months of salary.
What is Australia’s New Psychosocial Safety Legislation
Psychological health has always been a feature of the Work Health and Safety Act 2011. After a review of model WHS laws in 2018, new laws came into effect on April 1 2023 with a stronger obligation for employers to manage employees’ psychosocial safety at work.
The psychosocial hazards this legislation refers to include “aspects of work design, the work itself, and the interactions between employees which can negatively influence their mental health and emotional wellbeing.”
These are essentially hazards at work that can create stress and cause psychological and physical harm arising from or relating to:
- The design or management of work;
- The working environment;
- Machinery, equipment, appliances, etc in the workplace;
- Workplace interactions or behaviours.
The amended Work Health and Safety Regulations prescribe how duty holders must identify and manage hazards and risks to workers’ psychological health and safety. This legislation seeks to prevent psychosocial hazards by establishing a safer, more supportive environment for every employee.
Going forward, organisations will need to consider and review approaches to managing psychosocial risks and fostering mentally healthy workplaces. This includes engaging and consulting with workers.
What Psychosocial Safety Legislation Means for your Organisation
Justin Napier, General Manager of Comcare’s Regulatory Operations Group explains that, “Psychological injury prevention is a significant focus for work health and safety regulators and should be a priority for employers. It’s an important time for duty holders to review their approach to managing psychosocial risks and fostering mentally healthy workplaces. This includes engaging and consulting with workers on how they manage and control these risks.’
Employers must now create a psychologically safe environment by using a “hierarchy of controls” to manage psychosocial hazards, as set out in the WHS Regulations. This is a step-by-step approach, ranking controls from the highest to the lowest level of protection to eliminate or reduce psychosocial risks.
Enterprise Professor Jane Burns is Corporate Diversity Pathways’ Principal – Workplace Wellbeing. With over 20 years of experience in mental health and wellbeing she believes that mental health is everyone’s business.
“We know for instance that more than 55% of employees who go on leave due to psychosocial injury in the state of Victoria for more than six months do not return to work—compared to just 23% of those with physical workplace injuries. And mental health claims are expensive and complex to manage, resulting in poor outcomes for both the staff member and the business.”
How Corporate Diversity Pathways can Support
The main challenges for organisations are:
- Effectively navigating and demystifying the management of psychosocial risk factors;
- Understanding how to use psychometrically validated tools to measure psychosocial risk and psychological safety in real time;
- Moving beyond risk management to focus on the prevention of psychosocial risk to enable a culture of psychosocial safety;
- Equipping leaders with the skills and knowledge to support and empower their teams and to intervene when necessary;
- Designing work and workplaces that protect and enhance worker wellbeing while also supporting individuals to make informed choices about their own health.
In response, we provide tailored solutions:
Customised prevention plans to address psychosocial hazards including the identification of control measures to mitigate the identified risks;- Strategies and policies to address psychosocial risk;
- Coaching and support for leaders in the science of mental health and wellbeing;
- Co-design and implementation of wellbeing strategies with employee input;
- Individual workplace wellbeing plans that support employees in understanding the small things they can do to improve their mental health;
- Workshops and customised coaching to support teams in proactively addressing psychosocial issues;
- Short courses and micro-credential training that create strong and resilient workforces;
- Tailored workplace diversity consulting;
- DEI strategy support;
- Psychosocial risk audits;
- Inclusive policy implementation.
“Every organisation, school, factory, café needs access to evidence-based methods for monitoring, managing and responding to the mental health needs of its employees. Dozens of surveys, toolboxes, pledges and campaigns exist but workers often do not engage with them, and leaders struggle to know how and when to take action. Even when people are feeling burnt out, waking in the middle of the night and stressed, they do not put their hand up for help. Early identification is important, but critical to breaking the cycle of poor workplace practice by reducing risk and preventing problems before they create an unsafe workplace.”
Contact us today for a personalised consultation on how your organisation can achieve psychosocial safety compliance with Australia’s new psychosocial safety legislation.
Our evidence-based solutions are designed to transform your company culture, enhance team collaboration, and drive sustainable success.
Take the first step towards a more inclusive future. Connect with us today! Call us at +61 404 888 335 or email us at hello@corporatediversitypathways.com to get your questions answered and start making a difference in your organisation!
