Psychosocial hazards seem to be receiving a lot of attention – but why?

The easy answer is that there is change to Workplace Health and Safety (WHS) laws and in particular, the Commonwealth Code of Practice on managing psychosocial hazards at work that took effect on 1^st April.  Let’s dive in and take a look at what is happening and what this means to employers.

Psychosocial Hazards

First up, psychosocial hazards in the workplace “are aspects of work which have the potential to cause psychological or physical harm “ [1].  We all know a lot about physical harm such as tripping hazards, the dangers of working with heights and so on but what of the defined psychosocial hazards?  The list is significant, and you can click on each of them to be taken through to the Comcare website for further information on each.  Comcare is the national authority for work health and safety and workers compensation and has some comprehensive information to help us all understand what these hazards are and how they can be identified.  The defined list as per the Code of Practice is:

Excessive job demands

• Intense or sustained high mental, physical or emotional effort required to do the job.
• Unreasonable or excessive time pressures or role overload.
• High individual reputational, legal, career, safety or financial risk if mistakes occur.
• High vigilance required, limited margin of error and inadequate systems to prevent individual error.
• Shifts/work hours that do not allow adequate time for sleep and recovery.
• Sustained low levels of physical, mental or emotional effort is required to do the job.
• Long idle periods while high workloads are present, for example where workers need to wait for equipment or other workers.

Low job control

• Workers have little control over aspects of the work including how or when the job is done.
• Workers have limited ability to adapt the way they work to changing or new situations.
• Workers have limited ability to adopt efficiencies in their work.
• Tightly scripted or machine/computer paced work.
• Prescriptive processes which do not allow workers to apply their skills and judgement.
• Levels of autonomy not matched to workers’ abilities.

Poor support

• Tasks or jobs where workers have inadequate support including practical assistance and emotional support from managers and colleagues, or inadequate training, tools and resources for a task.

Lack of role clarity

• Uncertainty, frequent changes, conflicting roles or ambiguous responsibilities and expectations

Inadequate reward and recognition

• Jobs with low positive feedback or imbalances between effort and recognition. High level of unconstructive negative feedback from managers or customers. Low skills development opportunity or underused skills.

Poor organisational change management

• Inconsistent, unfair, discriminatory or inequitable management decisions and application of policies, including poor procedural justice.

Traumatic events or material

• Experiencing fear or extreme risks to the health or safety of themselves or others. Exposure to natural disasters, or seriously injured or deceased persons. Reading, hearing or seeing accounts of traumatic events, abuse or neglect. Supporting victims or investigating traumatic events, abuse or neglect.

Remote or isolated work

• Working in locations with long travel times, or where access to help, resources or communications is difficult or limited.

Poor physical environment

• Exposure to unpleasant or hazardous working environments.

Violence or aggression

• Violence, or threats of violence from other workers (including workers of other businesses), customers, patients or clients (including assault). Aggressive behaviour such as yelling or physical intimidation.

Bullying, harassment (incl sexual harassment

• Harassment due to personal characteristics such as age, disability, race, nationality, religion, political affiliation, sex, relationship status, family or carer responsibilities, sexual orientation, gender identity or intersex status.
• Sexual harassment - any unwelcome sexual advance, unwelcome request for sexual favours or other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature, in circumstances where a reasonable person, having regard to all the circumstances, would anticipate the possibility that the person harassed would be offended, humiliated or intimidated.
• Harmful behaviour that does not amount to bullying (such as single instances) but creates a risk to health or safety.

Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions

• Poor workplace relationships or interpersonal conflict between colleagues or from other businesses, clients or customers.
• Frequent disagreements, disparaging or rude comments, either from one person or multiple people, such as from clients or customers. A worker can be both the subject and the source of this behaviour.
• Inappropriately excluding a worker from work-related activities.

What are your employer obligations?

The list of hazards that you need to address is a lot to digest but knowing what they are is important because under the new regulations, employers are required to eliminate or minimise psychosocial risks as much as is possible. 

Key to the process is identifying risks within your workplace.  As per the Code, you must consult with your workers when identifying the hazards that result from the work they are conducting.  

The Code also outlines the use of surveys from your workforce and you may be able to access various tools to support this process that may be available through a relevant work health and safety regulator, industry association, union, technical specialist and/or safety consultant.

Take time to observe your workplace paying particular attention to areas that may result in the above outlined psychosocial hazards.  Review available information from such things as incident reports, investigations, exit interviews and the like.  A comprehensive list of areas to review can also be found in the Code.

Next on your to do list is to assess the risks identified.  You need to understand the severity of the risk and what is possible in terms of managing it.

You will then need to put in place control measures that support the elimination, where practicable, of any risks to health and safety. 

Who does this cover?

The new regulations apply to pretty much anyone who is involved with your business including:

• Employers
• Employees
• Contractors
• Sub-contractor
• Self-employed individuals
• Apprentices and trainees
• Work experience students
• Volunteers
• and anyone else in the workplace such as customers or visitors.

Why is this important?

There is a very real cost to having an unhealthy or dangerous workplace for both psychological and physical injury. Take a look at the following stats:

• 1 in 5 Australian workers report taking time off work due to feeling mentally unwell according to Beyond Blue
• Comcare reports that there has been an 18% increase in claims that are a result of work demands over the past three years.
• The average time lost as a result of mental health conditions was five times that of physical injuries and illness.  That means, on average a worker suffering a work related mental health issue is taking 30.7 weeks to return to work as compared to 6.2 working weeks for a physical injury! (Safe Work Australia)
• And the Productivity Commission estimates that mental health costs the Australian economy between $10-$18 billion in lost productivity and reduced participation in work.  WOW!

More than that, do you want to be responsible for the possibility of one of your team suffering a psychosocial injury under your watch?  Not only do you get hit with the raw dollar cost to your business, the likelihood of a workplace investigation, penalties for not mitigating known risks and possible reputational damage, one of your people ends up suffering.  Doesn’t sound appealing, does it?

Our recommendation is to tackle your understanding and actions around psychosocial hazards in the workplace, the same way you would eat an elephant. One bite at a time. We suggest creating an action plan of steps to take, and then take a bite each week… to ensure your business is a safe place for your people.

There’s a lot to digest here so if you have any questions as to your obligations, please contact the HR Staff n’ Stuff team for a confidential discussion.

[1] Australian Government, Comcare 2023