Australia's Work Health & Safety Act requires businesses to manage psychosocial risks to workers by minimising or eliminating hazards. Mental health workplace risks can be complex and intangible, so we unpack the factors and share a framework to help your business better understand psychosocial hazards.
A psychosocial hazard is anything that could harm someone's mental health. Safe Work Australia provides comprehensive guidelines1 to help business owners implement systems, approaches and examples of common workplace mental health hazards.
Recognising and understanding factors that can cause and/or contribute to psychosocial mental health hazards is critical for all businesses. Key examples categorised by Safe Work Australia include:
High job demands means high levels of physical, mental or emotional effort are needed to do the job. This may look like:
Low job demands means sustained levels of physical, mental or emotional effort are needed to do the job and can include:
Poor support means not getting enough support from supervisors or other workers or not having the resources to do the job well, such as:
Low job control means workers have little control or say over the work. This includes how and when the job is done and can look like:
Lack of role clarity means workers aren't clear on their job, responsibilities or what is expected. This may happen when they aren't given the right information or things keep changing, and may look like:
Harmful behaviours range from severe to low intensity behaviours that are frequent or prolonged. They can come from managers, other workers or third parties such as customers, clients or patients, and may include:
Other psychosocial hazards include:
Businesses need to be able to recognise if these hazards apply in their businesses. There are multiple ways of identifying and exploring these risks, including:
In most workers compensation claims an eligible injury is one arising from working conditions occurring in the course of employment, with many workers compensation schemes specifying that employment must be the main or major contributing factor. It's important for businesses to be aware of workplace hazards with the potential to become a threat or cause injuries.
For more information about improving psychosocial risks in business — read Creating a Psychosocially Safe Workplace: 10 Steps to Protecting Employee Mental Health.
Workplace risk and mitigations are a specialty area that Gallagher provide to businesses Australia wide, and globally. For consultation, advice or solutions, we're here to help.
Our Workplace Risk team also offers services from safety mentoring and training through to health and wellness programs, hazard and risk profiling, and incident management and investigation for larger companies.
2People at Work, A free and validated Australian psychosocial risk assessment survey, Australian government — accessed 15 Aug 2024
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