Psychosocial Risk Management - Progress Not Perfection

Have you identified your organisation’s psychosocial risks but unsure of the best controls?

Perhaps you’ve developed a psychosocial risk management protocol but unsure how to monitor?

Or are you thinking ‘this is out of my wheelhouse, how do I even begin with these issues?

We have clients in all of these stages and whilst there is a plethora of information out there from regulators, researchers, experts and non-experts, I think one aspect common throughout all stages of this work is the need for a multidisciplinary approach.

I have a sports physiotherapy background. The need for input from more than one discipline is very commonplace in healthcare, where the combined knowledge and skills from several disciplines fuel an integrated and holistic approach to patient treatment.  

At Shared Safety and Risk, we’ve tapped into this approach, partnering and collaborating with a number of professions and disciplines to support recent psychosocial risk management projects for a variety of clients. 

To effectively lead and organise these projects, support is required first and foremost from top leadership. Then, depending on organisational size, input may come from people and culture teams, diversity and inclusion teams, risk and compliance, legal counsel, health, safety and wellbeing personnel and workplace psychologists. 

In this series, we’ll chat with experts from each of these disciplines to understand how working together produces more effective results in psychosocial risk management. 

In today’s Q&A, I sit down with psychologist and founder of Elemental Coaching and Psychology, Kate Connors. Kate has previous C-Suite experience driving mentally healthy workplaces, as Chief Mental Health Officer at PwC Australia and CEO of EAP provider, Assure Programs. I love Kate’s down to earth approach and deep knowledge of this topic so let’s dive in.

Kate, it’s great that psychosocial risk, psychological safety and workplace mental health are getting so much focus at present. For professionals and workplaces that are a little overwhelmed with all of the information out there, how do you suggest they start on this journey? 

One of the key challenges for people to grasp, and a good place to start - is to take a few moments to understand the terminology.  Particularly the difference between “psychological safety” and “psychological health & safety” – both of which are important in creating mentally healthy workplaces.  

“Psychological safety” is when people feel comfortable to take interpersonal risks, to speak up, challenge ideas and raise concerns without fear of repercussion or reprisal.  It is a key driver of high performance in teams as it enables team members to leverage each other’s strengths, learn from mistakes, be honest with each other and continue to grow and develop with a strong sense of trust, and limited fear of being psychologically hurt by taking an interpersonal risk such as “speaking up”.  

Whereas “psychosocial risk” is managed through “psychological health & safety” processes, just the same way physical risk is managed through “physical health & safety” processes.  

“Psychosocial” is a term that sounds very academic – but ultimately what it means is the management of the “psychological” and “social” factors that exist in workplaces.  And these factors can be either risks, or protections.  

For example, leadership behaviours are a psychosocial factor in a workplace, and depending on the behaviours, they can potentially be a risk that creates psychological harm (eg avoiding dealing with conflict between team members or having performance related conversations with an angry tone in an open plan environment), or can protect psychological health (eg being clear on work expectations, providing constructive feedback or following up with a team member to check in after noticing they have been much quieter than usual in team meetings).  

Understanding the terminology, concepts and the synergies between psychological health & safety and physical health & safety is an important foundation.   

How can we use the now enforceable (in most states) regulatory psychosocial risk management requirements to drive improvements for organisations in this space?

Reducing the impacts of psychosocial risks has at least the same benefits for organisations as reducing physical risks, but usually more so!  

Less harm to people – be that physical harm or psychological harm - leads to higher productivity through less downtime, distraction and disengagement.  

However, in many ways reducing psychosocial risk has the potential to have even greater organisational and business benefits as by reducing those risks we reduce the frequency, duration and impact of moments that cause negative emotions.  Reducing negative emotion and increasing positive emotion has a significantly beneficial impact on workplace innovation, collaboration, creativity, problem solving – all factors that drive better business outcomes.  

Kate, in your experience, what skills sets do psychologists bring to the multidisciplinary approach to management of workplace psychosocial risk and should look for in a partner in this space?

Psychologists are experts in understanding the impacts of patterns in thinking, behaviours and emotions. However not all practitioners have specialist understanding of the organisational processes and system design issues that are known to mitigate against and prevent psychological harm.  

Psychology qualifications are sometimes seen as the most effective way to identify an expert in this space, but the registered title of psychologist alone doesn’t always equate to having practical expertise in a workplace psychosocial risk context. 

Experience in applying psychology in the workplace context through inhouse roles, insurance and claims rehabilitation, employee assistance programs and workplace consulting consolidates experience in this area and will make for a much more effective partner in this process. 

How does a multidisciplinary approach work in this space? What’s required to make it work well?

One of the things that gets in the way of success in this space is when organisations are too siloed in their approach, and don’t include other disciplines and stakeholders in the design of their psychosocial risk response.  For example, as WHS regulators are requiring these risks to be managed, it is easy for WHS teams to move ahead with risk assessment processes and design risk controls, without necessarily drawing on other teams in the organisation who are critical for success.  Eg HR, Leadership / Talent, Data/IT, Operations, DE&I, Recruitment, Reward & Recognition.  

Establishing steering committees with senior representation from key portfolios and stakeholders in the business is essential to create buy-in, understanding and successful corrective actions and control mechanisms – that can be measured and evaluated ongoingly.

I often see that organisations are pretty good at identifying their psychosocial risks but not as comfortable with identifying and monitoring controls. What are some simple approaches to help at this stage? 

The first thing I would suggest is ensuring there is a well considered governance model to enable and support an effective and meaningful approach to identifying and monitoring controls.  This governance model needs to have a clear “owner” of the process, which would tend to be a WHS / Wellbeing senior manager, but that person or team cannot identify and design monitoring controls in isolation.  

A well considered governance model needs to include a Steering Committee representing multiple stakeholders from across the business, that are able to make decisions and recommendations, as well as a consultation mechanism that provides feedback and generates ideas for the Steering Committee to consider.  Stakeholders that can make decisions and/or senior representation on areas such as changes in business and operational processes,  prioritisation of strategic projects, changes to data and IT related processes to support monitoring and evaluation of the impacts of controls and budget holders for people or operational related change.  

Without these senior representatives “at the table”, the organisational commitment necessary to green light control and monitoring mechanisms will not be successful, and the process will fail.  

I also suggest having subject matter expertise such as workplace mental health experts included in the governance model for identifying and designing controls.  This expertise increases the likelihood of the effectiveness of controls, and brings knowledge of frameworks and theories such as Job Demand-Resource theory and SMART role design (SMART model) to ensure protective factors are integrated into the planning and prioritisation of controls.   

This knowledge can often assist to identify and target high level strategic factors for focus e.g. leadership system, reward and recognition methods and business improvement projects that if approved have significant impact on not only reducing psychosocial risk, but increasing productivity and other business outcomes.   

I think the key strategy is informing and educating the multidisciplinary stakeholders about psychosocial risks and protective factors. Leaning into protective factors and good work design , is so important in creating effective controls and why its necessary to measure impacts of the controls.  It is also important to highlight and understand how the controls fit into pre-existing strategic projects / pieces of work that are already budgeted for and underway.  

Breaking through all of the ‘noise’ out there, if there’s one thing you’d like professionals and organisations to know about managing psychosocial risk, what would it be?

Psychosocial risk cannot be effectively managed from within a WHS department alone.  It is imperative that a cross function and whole-of-business approach is taken – and the sooner that happens, the quicker co-design and collaboration brings about genuine change. And therefore a better workplace experience for all.   

Do you need assistance to identify and promote protective factors in your workplace?

Do you and your leaders understand the key concepts and how to monitor controls? 

Shared Safety and Risk’s focus on practical and person-centred solutions aligns perfectly with Kate’s effective and knowledgeable approach. Reach out with questions, comments, training or workshop requests to:

 sue@sharedsafetyandrisk.com.au or kate@elementalcp.com.au 

Elemental Coaching & Psychology provides human sustainability expertise to support your organisational success.  Through workplace mental health advisory, WHS / HR leader mentoring and leadership wellbeing coaching, Kate supports WHS, HR and executive leaders to design better workplaces and better workplaces supports, to create thriving.  

Shared Safety and Risk’s mission is to maximise human and organisational potential through targeted and solution-focussed health, safety and risk management initiatives.