Authors note: This article was originally written for World of Safety and Health Asia by Martyn Campbell and Rely’s CEO, Nathan Luker.
The global shift to increase psychosocial safety at work
The work health and safety landscape is ever evolving, and I think the last few years has seen an acceleration of development in one specific area – psychosocial safety. As an early adopter of psychosocial safety law, the Australian experience should be reviewed for others to learn.
Psychological and psychosocial safety are not new phenomena. They’ve been part of the work, health & safety (WHS) regulatory landscape for decades but have never had the equal visibility physical injuries have enjoyed. Indeed, all governments, industries and Regulators have historically focused more intently on other areas of health and safety. However, recent international legislation has changed that approach—raising the visibility of workplace hazards resulting in mental injury and illness into the spotlight.
The increased visibility of psychosocial safety hazards stems from the International Labour Organisation (ILO) Convention 190, which was legislated in 2019. The Convention, referred to as C-190, represents an historic opportunity to shape a future of work that is based on dignity and respect for all.
The Convention was adopted in June 2019 at the International Labour Conference of the ILO and came into force on 25 June 2021. Member states ratifying C-190 are required to transfer this international law into their domestic legislation and, for Australia, that occurred in 2022 – 2023.
The Australian law places specific, and very visible, duties on workers, employers and senior leaders, to identify, eliminate or reduce to a reasonable level, hazards that adversely impact worker mental health.
To support duty holders, Safe Work Australia, as the Australian WHS Policy Agency, developed a national Code of Practice to manage psychosocial hazards at work. The Code of Practice provides 14 psychosocial hazards for organisations to consider. They are hazards resulting from organisational structure, systems and process as well as behaviour. The Australian law now requires organisations to consider these hazards and assess the risk as to how they contribute to stress, anxiety and/or depression resulting in physical or mental injury from work.
Psychological and psychosocial safety are different
Psychological safety is about creating an environment where workers are free from fear of retribution, rejection or exclusion for speaking up.
Psychosocial safety is broader, and considers the environment, processes, and systems of work that can lead to mental injury or illness.
Navigating psychosocial hazards can be challenging for business and workers, requiring new thinking about safety risks. To help overcome these challenges, I Chair an Expert Advisory Group of Australia’s leading academics and practitioners, who support The National Psychosocial Safety Network to translate academic research into operational effective solutions. The Network takes an integrated approach to psychosocial and psychological safety—recognising that ‘organisational culture and climate influence and are influenced by the nature and quality of working relationships’ (Keashly, 2023). By working across the policy and people lifecycle, the Network helps organisations measurably increase psychological safety across the workforce in order to maximise the outcomes of worker consultation and participation in psychosocial safety improvement.
Indeed, organisational neuroscience researcher Garo Reisyan identifies countless studies that confirm the high failure rate of projects, strategic initiatives or mergers—each over 50 per cent. Behaviour is most commonly found to be a reason for that (Reisyan, 2015).
By working with leaders to identify and address psychosocial risks—such as for example a long-hours culture, isolated work and role conflict—and fostering a culture in which staff can safely participate in discussion, consultation and team interactions, the Network equips organisations to increase both psychosocial risk management outcomes and prevention of workplace bullying, incivility and behavioural conflict.
Asia’s working population is under significant strain
In Asia, workers face heavy workloads, cost-of-living pressure, new ways of working, and a range of COVID-19 impacts. The 2023 Asia Mental Health Index, which surveyed 13,000 workers across 12 economies in Asia, further revealed 82% of employees have a medium to high mental health risk profile, with 54% believe their career options would be limited if their employer knew about their mental health issue.
Where a climate in which people feel comfortable raising concerns, expressing and being themselves is lacking, mental health issues will continue to negatively impact employee engagement, productivity and performance. Moreover, as people are neurologically wired to err on the side of caution at work that they routinely hold back great ideas, not just bad news, doing nothing will significantly increase the financial cost to organisations.
Employees in Southeast Asia do not feel psychologically safe at work
In another Mental Health at the Workplace (2023) study in Southeast Asia, 45% of respondents feel that psychosocial safety is poor or non-existent in their workplace. Most organisations pay lip service to psychosocial safety, but don’t provide it. This discourages risk taking, idea sharing, and rigorous decision making, even as psychosocial safety plays a critical role in encouraging employees’ voice, catalysing organisational learning, and innovation. Without it, ideas go unshared, lessons go unlearnt, and opportunities are missed.
Psychosocial safety trend moving forward in Asia
Even as employers in Asia are increasingly mindful of the mental health and well-being of their staff, more can be done of leaders to invest in their own education about psychosocial safety, including creating a safe and supportive culture where people can bring their full selves to work. Already, leaders are swimming upstream against a deeply rooted collectivist culture in Asia, where team members seek to maintain team harmony and groupthink. Providing employees with a safe space to share their feedback and concerns will also make leaders aware of the psychosocial hazards and their effects. This information in turn helps management to decide how best to adjust risk control techniques – for the collective good of the organisation.
Essential steps for leaders
An important aspect of creating a workplace that is both psychologically safe and free from psychosocial hazards is the ability to speak up without fear, and to be able to identify hotspots of risk. Speak up & issue management software, such as Rely, can play a key role.
To proactively manage psychosocial hazards, it is good practice to establish a mechanism for workers to report hazards in a privacy protected way, with an option for reporting anonymously where possible. This can make reporting of issues more likely, so that they can be proactively managed and prevented. Another recommendation is to collect information so that trends and themes relating to hazards can be easily and quickly identified. For example, trends may show that workers in a particular location are exposed more frequently to certain types of hazards, which could indicate a problem with the design of work, job demand or the way in which it is carried out. Identification of trends can then inform your risk assessment processes to better prevent worker harm and the associated costs to the business.
The Rely platform has been designed to make it easier for employees to speak up about issues at work and to better prevent and manage psychosocial hazards at work through anonymous reporting options, intelligent case management, and trend reporting.
Conclusion
The ILO has now mandated psychological safety in legislation and Australia is an early adopter, enacting domestic law that places duties on businesses and workers to manage psychosocial hazards on an equal platform as physical safety.
Organisations must risk assessment the potential for psychosocial injury and eliminate that risk or reduce it to a level that’s reasonably practicable. Creating a psychologically safe place for workers to raise issues is a keystone aspect of success. The National Psychosocial Safety Network helps organisations understand the duties relevant to their business and chart the improvement journey.
Rely allows workers a means to raise concerns, build psychological safety and manage investigations where complaints are made, maximising high quality outcomes through thorough, factual, evidence based inquiry.
About Martyn
Martyn was formerly the Chief Executive of SafeWork South Australia and WHS Regulator in South Australia.
Additionally, he was the South Australian Board Member for Safe Work Australia, Chair of the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities and Deputy Chair of the University of South Australia’s Centre for Workplace Excellence.
Internationally, he was the Secretary-General of the International Association of Labour Inspection (IALI), the global professional body for WHS and IR Regulators and remains one of three global Technical Advisors to IALI.
He is currently the inaugural Chair of the Australian National Psychosocial Safety Network Expert Advisory Group, championing workplace psychosocial safety for all workers and workplaces, a Strategic Advisor to Rely, an independent Board Member to the Educational Standards Board of South Australia (the Regulator for early childhood education in SA) and Independent Board Member for South Australia Power Networks Board, WHS Sub-Committee.
A regular speaker at safety conferences, including the 2022 G20 OSH Network in Bali, Indonesia, the 2023 23rd World Congress on Safety & Health at Work in Sydney, the ASEAN Workshop for Labour Inspector on Violence and Harassment in the Workplace and Global Safety Conference in Tunisia in 2024.
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