What is psychosocial risk?
Psychosocial risk refers to the risk that psychosocial hazards pose to people’s psychological and physical health at work.
Here’s a quick overview to help you mitigate psychosocial risk in your workplace, including ISO 45003 insights.
Why the right time to mitigate psychosocial risk is now:
In Australia* and New Zealand**, employers have a duty to protect employees from workplace health and safety risks, including risks to psychological health.
Legislative developments*** and case law**** indicate a move towards potential criminal liability for failure to protect employees’ psychological health.
Throughout Australia, states and territories already have, or will in the near future*****, be adding legal obligations to address psychosocial risks in the workplace to their local regulations.
All states and territories in Australia except Victoria have implemented ‘model’ work health and safety laws intended to harmonise the approach across Australia.
What are psychosocial hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are hazards that may cause harm to psychological health and wellbeing. Common psychosocial hazards include high workloads, remote or isolated work, lack of autonomy, poor organisational change management, lack of role clarity, workplace harassment, inadequate reward or recognition, sustained levels of high or low physical, mental, or emotional effort, and workplace conflict.
While a psychosocial hazard is something that could potentially cause harm, a psychosocial risk is the degree of likelihood that harm will occur. Psychosocial risk assessment involves understanding the nature of the harm a psychosocial hazard could cause, how serious the harm could be, and the likelihood of it happening.
What is required to meet employer obligations?
Employers must have a robust process to:
Identify psychosocial hazards
Assess psychosocial risks
Implement control measures
Regularly review the success of control measures
Meeting employer obligations for psychosocial risk is an ongoing, active process. Requirements for the process are set out in ISO 45003: Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. They are also reflected in Safework Australia’s model code practice Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work.
What does the ISO 45003 standard say?
The ISO 45003 standard (2021) provides guidelines for managing psychosocial risks. It’s applicable to organisations of all sizes and sectors and provides a roadmap for the continual improvement and maintenance of healthy and safe workplaces.
Along with its parent standard (ISO 45001), ISO 45003 helps organisations figure out how to prevent work-related psychological and physical harm. It also provides guidelines for managing psychosocial risk within an occupational health and safety (OH&S) management system.
Summary of key points in ISO 45003:
The organisation should understand the underlying sources of harm before control measures are considered to manage psychosocial risks. This should be done through establishing, implementing, and maintaining processes for hazard identification that are ongoing and proactive.
When identifying psychosocial hazards, organisations would take into account that psychosocial hazards interact with each other and with other types of hazards in the work environment. For example, increased workload could lead to human error, which could have implications for physical harm (e.g. injury) or psychological harm (e.g. poor self-esteem).
Consulting workers, and where they exist, worker representatives, is essential for the success of the process(es) to manage psychosocial risk.
For further information, please refer to the ISO 45003 and ISO 45001 information sites.
Psychosocial risk and workplace wellbeing
A robust workplace wellbeing strategy is a cornerstone of mitigating psychosocial risk.
Organisations committed to taking care of their people focus on four key aspects: Health and Safety, Psychological Health, Psychological Safety, and Psychosocial Risk Mitigation.
Even though these terms are different conceptually, there are several overlaps between them. A safe, healthy, low-risk, and legislatively-sound workplace requires all of these cornerstones to occur simultaneously.
How can Groov help?
We take the guesswork out of compliance to requirements to manage psychosocial risks.
Our psychosocial risk management framework helps you identify psychosocial hazards that give rise to health and safety risks in your workplace. We then provide guidance to assess risk, implement appropriate control measures, and review success.
The framework also helps to foster a healthy, positive work environment where your people are empowered to perform at their best.
>> Talk to our experts to get the latest info and how Groov’s platform can help
Footnotes
*The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 - Australia
**The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 - NZ
***In October 2022 The Work Health and Safety Regulation 2017 (NSW) (NSW Regulation) has been amended so that there is now an explicit requirement for employers to manage psychosocial risks in the workplace and to implement control measures in NSW.
****Kozarov v Victoria [2022] HCA 12; 96 ALJR 405; 399 ALR 573; 317 IR 7
*****Although Victoria has not adopted the harmonised work health and safety laws, the state is currently proposing to amend its Occupational Health and Safety Regulations 2017 (Vic) to incorporate an express obligation to manage psychosocial risks at work. The Victorian proposal is more extensive than the NSW Regulation or the Model Code, as there is an intention to include additional record-keeping and reporting requirements.