Workplace Wellbeing - Psychosocial Risk Factors in the Workplace

Psychosocial Risk Factors in the workplace have been identified as a major contemporary challenge for organisations over the following decade, and in order for us to protect our people we must think of risk management not only in the ‘Physical’ sense, but also in the Psychological sense.

It is now a legal imperative to support our people from psychosocial, wellbeing, and mental health in the workplace. Legislation in New Zealand implies psychosocial risks / hazards need to be addressed to protect mental health, with legislation in New South Wales and Queensland (Australia) stating that psychosocial risks in the workplace need to be eliminated or minimised. A new ISO standard ISO 45003 has also been developed to help orgaisations meeting their obligations when it comes to the psychological health of those at work. Psychological health consulting is now very in demand due to these changes.

So what on earth is psychosocial risk?

In a nutshell, ISO45003 states that psychosocial risks in the workplace are any risks that are of a psychosocial nature. Psychosocial risks in the workplace are about the combination of the likelihood of occurrence of exposure to work-related hazards of this nature and the severity of the injury that can be caused by those hazards. So key words here are likelihood, exposure and severity.

The word Psychosocial refers to the combined influence of psychological factors and the surrounding social environment on human behaviour.

What is a psychosocial hazard?

In very simple terms, a psychosocial hazard is anything that makes people feel crap at work, and psychological risk management is the process of assessing and controlling those hazards and reviewing the outcomes. A more formal definition from ISO 45003 is that hazards of this nature include work organisation, social factors, environment and hazardous equipment and tasks.

WORKPLACE PSYCHOLOGICAL RISK ASSESSMENT & RECOMMENDATIONS- AXON

Glia’s Psychological Risk Management Tool, AXON, aims to connect organisations with their people to better understand and support Hauora WELL-BEING / mental health.

Axon uses a range of evidenced-based well-being practices to approach psychological risk management more strategically: Just like axons in the brain, AXON connects psychological health across different areas (business units) and the entire brain itself (the organisation).

Further, AXON incorporates the ISO45003 standard to create a solution-focused personalised strategic executive and board-level plan to allow an organisation’s systems and people to thrive.

Far from just another survey (let’s be honest, who is sick of those?!), our psychosocial risk management assessment tool AXON allows us to work directly with your people to really understand what their needs are. Your organisation can then put in place not only a strategic wellbeing workplan, but one that is also responsive to your people’s needs. Our psychological health consultants essentially capture the voice and narrative of the people within your organisation.

It is the duty of all organisations to ensure that risks in both domains are assessed and controlled.

No need to panic! If you are thinking how on earth do I tackle this whole psychosocial risk management in the workplace thing no need to worry as we’ve got you! We have been supporting organisations with workplace well-being and psychological health consulting for many years and we make sure we keep up with the latest research and developments in this area. This includes the latest ISO standard IS0 45003 in which we have been trained in. We actually started developing AXON long before the changes in legislation reached our shores and the ISO45003 standard was created. So AXON is very tried and tested and it takes out all the hard work out of psychosocial risk assessment for you (and potentially stress, we definitely don’t want you to stress over how to manage stress!). We will work with you using one of our very talented AXON-trained psychologists to give you and your people peace of mind. We love psychological health, it is our jam!