Psychosocial Risk Management
Workplace Health and Safety legislation in NSW treats both physical and psychological risks in the workplace equally.
As such, organisations are now legally required to manage psychological hazards in their workplace to the same extent as physical hazards, as detailed within SafeWork NSW’s Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at work.
What are Psychosocial hazards?
Psychosocial hazards refer to elements within the workplace related to how work is organised, designed, and managed, and the social and environmental conditions of work. It encompasses factors such as workload, job control, role clarity, workplace relationships, and organisational justice. Psychosocial safety refers to the practices, policies, and organisational culture that protect workers' psychological health and wellbeing.
Ignoring the risks or hazards can affect mental health, well-being and job satisfaction of workers, resulting in lower staff morale, increased lost time, higher absenteeism, decreased productivity and the potential for increased claims costs and legal issues.
The cost of ignoring Psychosocial hazards
The financial impact of poorly managed psychosocial safety in Australian workplaces is significant, with mental health conditions costing businesses $39 billion per year in lost productivity and compensation claims in Australia (Productivity Commission's Mental Health Inquiry Report). Lost time related to mental health condition claims was shown to be 4 times the time lost across all claims, with the cost of these claims being 4 times the median of all claims.
Benefits of managing Psychosocial Risks
Managing psychological risk is about ensuring healthy and productive workplace environments, where employees feel supported, recognised, engaged, and empowered to succeed to the benefit of both the worker and the organisations goals.
How we can help
Caliso offers psychosocial management awareness training to strengthen your organisation’s safety culture and guide your business towards fulfilling WHS obligations related to psychosocial hazards.
Caliso can support you to minimise the risk of costly work-related psychosocial injuries and illnesses through identification of hazards relevant to your workplace.
If you would like a confidential discussion on how Caliso could assist please contact us on admin@caliso.au