• Section 1 - Purpose and Scope
• Section 2 - Definition
• Section 3 -  General Principles
• Background 
• Characteristics of psychosocial hazards 
• Managing psychosocial risks 
• Management commitment and support 
• Employee consultation 
• Psychosocial Risk Management 
• Section 4 - Roles & Responsibilities 
• Section 5 - Records of Documentation  
• Section 6 - Revision and approval history 
• Section 7 - References 
• Section 8 - Related Documents 

Section 1 - Purpose and Scope

(1) The purpose of this procedure is to ensure Southern Cross University’s management, employees, contractors, students, visitors and others are aware of the risks associated with psychosocial hazards in the workplace, relevant management strategies and to provide advice on risk mitigation process. 

(2) All employees, students and others including both independent contractors and contractors under SCU control are to be made aware of and follow this procedure. 

(3) This Procedure applies to all SCU Work Units and sites. The procedure aligns with WHS legislation in the relevant jurisdictions SCU operates in. 

Section 2 - Definition

Section 3 -  General Principles

Background 

(4) Work, health and safety legislation include psychological health within its scope because persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs), typically employers, have an obligation to ensure that the risk of psychosocial hazards are appropriately managed. Further, employees at all organisational levels also have a proactive duty to take reasonable care of their own psychological health and not to adversely impact the psychological health of other people.  

(5) The importance of psychological health at work is recognised by the World Health Organization (WHO), which has stated that psychological health is a basic human right and a key catalyst for personal, community, and socio-economic development. Given that workplace activities and interactions can affect psychological health, it is imperative that all employees understand their duties and obligations under national and local laws, as well as engage in effective psychosocial risk management practices. 

(6) Without proper management, psychosocial risks can trigger acute or chronic stress responses, increasing the risk of psychological harm and/or physical harm. The complex interrelationships between the human mind and body means that psychological harm (in the form of uncontrolled stress) can create physical injuries, and vice versa. Workers compensation data has revealed that psychological injuries take significantly longer to recover from than physical injuries, have large costs to individuals, employers, and the community, and negatively affect productivity. Therefore, prevention of psychosocial risk through elimination (where possible), and effective management of psychosocial hazards at their sources for all other exposure situations, is imperative to safeguard the health and livelihood of employees. 

(7) Importantly, when psychosocial risk is managed well, these effects can extend beyond prevention of exposure and into the promotion of a psychologically supportive, inclusive, and wellbeing-oriented culture. Not only do employees with psychological health benefit from improved relationships and productivity, but the organisation is likely to have lower absentee and better overall performance. 

Characteristics of psychosocial hazards 

(8) Psychosocial hazards can arise from: 

1. The design or management of work.
2. A work environment.
3. Plant at a workplace.
4. Workplace interactions or behaviours. 

(9) It is important to recognise that the nature of psychosocial hazards will be unique to every organisation, and may even vary within organisations and between work units (e.g. primarily administrative-based roles versus customer-facing roles).  

(10) Harm caused by exposure to psychosocial hazards can be: 

1. Immediate eg. psychological injuries, such as post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) or self-harming ideation.  
2. Delayed eg. physical health conditions such as high blood pressure, heart disease, and stroke, as well as psychological injuries such as depression and anxiety.

(11) Individual factors play a role in influencing the likelihood and degree of harm. 

(12) Different people have different vulnerabilities to psychosocial hazard exposure. Particular groups of people in the workplace that SCU considers as part of their risk management processes include: 

1. Young people 
2. Older people  
3. New employees 
4. People on temporary or insecure work arrangements 
5. People with diverse language, literacy, numeracy or cultural backgrounds 
6. People with previous or current workplace injuries or illnesses, or have experienced exposure to psychosocial hazards in the past (e.g., traumatic experiences). 

(13) These employee groups should be represented as part of broader employee consultation and involvement in the management of psychosocial risks. 

(14) Psychosocial hazards can combine and interact with each other and physical hazards to increase the risk of harm. 

(15) Psychosocial hazards are rarely experienced in isolation. For example, employees may experience high job demands and unreasonable workload as well as poor role clarity. SCU’s risk management system therefore considers the sum of all psychosocial risk exposures on employees’ psychological health rather than treating each one separately. Further, psychosocial and physical hazards can combine or interact with each other to increase the risk of harm, for example, an employee who is working remotely in a socially isolated environment may also experience physical strain from a poor ergonomic office setup. The experience of stress can be functional.

(16) An important consideration for psychosocial risk management is that similarly to activities in the physical domain that carry risk (e.g., manual handling builds physical resilience), some level of stress can be positive when it is experienced in appropriate doses and within the framework of a well-performing organisational risk management framework. An example is a moderate level of job demands, which can be interpreted as a ‘challenge’ stressor that drives motivation and engagement in work tasks.  

Managing psychosocial risks 

(17) There are four key steps involved in managing psychosocial risks: 

1. Identify hazards.
2. Assess risks. 
3. Control risks. 
4. Review control measures. 

(18) Throughout all four risk management steps, there are two important consistent considerations: 

1. Management commitment and support. 
2. Employee consultation. 

Management commitment and support 

(19) Effective management of risks of all types (physical and psychosocial) requires genuine and sufficient commitment and support from senior leaders. Such commitment ensures that risk management systems are allocated the resources needed to be effective, risk-related decisions are appropriately elevated and prioritised by SCU, and there is ongoing commitment to the verification and monitoring of psychosocial risks and their corresponding controls (leading to continuous improvement). Senior leaders must be aware of their duties and obligations personally (e.g., WHS Act 2011 Section 27 – Due diligence) as well as the general duties that apply to the PCBU (e.g., WHS Act 2011 Section 19 – Primary duty of care).  

Employee consultation 

(20) Consultation is critical for effective psychosocial risk management as outlined in WHSMP07: WHS Consultation, Communication and Participation Procedure. Consultation is so important because most psychosocial hazards are intangible and subjective, so cannot be reliably assessed and controlled without involving the employees who are likely to be exposed. Further, individual characteristics may affect employees’ risk profiles, such as diversity in cultural and religious beliefs, sexual orientation, language and literacy issues, gender, age, and working/contract arrangements. Only meaningful consultation will reveal whether these characteristics affect employee health and safety, and what control measure(s) are most appropriate and effective.  

(21) Consultation must be done at each step of the psychosocial risk process, and done as early as possible so as to be meaningful and inform risk-related decision making. Situations that may trigger proactive consultation on psychosocial risk include: 

1. Structural changes to the organisation. 
2. New technologies or work processes that substantially impact the way employees perform their duties. 
3. New or substantially changed organisational policies and procedures. 
4. Redesign of plant or work environments. 

(22) Confidentiality throughout consultation is important due to the nature of psychosocial hazards – for example, bullying and harassment can be demonstrated by a manager within a team, therefore, employees will need to feel comfortable and reassured to share information openly about their experiences (to inform an appropriate risk management response by SCU). 

(23) It is best practice to ensure feedback loops are maintained throughout and after consultation.  

Psychosocial Risk Management 

Step 1: Identify psychosocial hazards 

How psychosocial hazards can be identified

(24) The first step in identifying psychosocial hazards is to reviewed meaningful data and patterns. Examples of the types of data that can be reviewed to inform the identification of psychosocial hazards include the following: 

1. Surveys 
2. Observations of work and behaviours 
3. Human Resources data such as absenteeism rates. 
4. Exit interviews (e.g., the reasons for leaving a job and overall experiences in the team). 
5. Identified information and trends from the employee assistance provider regarding usage of the service (e.g., presenting issues, demographic characteristics, changes in frequency of use over time).  
6. WHS incident reports. 
7. Existing or historical surveys and other employee consultation sources, especially open-ended comments around engagement and retention. 
8. Regulatory standards, guidelines, and codes of practice. 
9. Meeting minutes or issue registers from committees. 
10. Rostering and workforce planning data. 
11. Position descriptions. 
12. Existing WHS risk registers. 

Consult employees 

(25) Throughout the identification process, employees must be consulted. Employees may use different terms to describe exposure to psychosocial hazards, for example, they may say: 

1. stressed, burnt-out or emotionally exhausted about their workload 
2. anxious or scared about talking to or dealing with an aggressive person 
3. humiliated, degraded or undermined by sexual harassment or discrimination 
4. angry about policies being applied unfairly 
5. confused about what their role involves, torn between competing priorities or ‘feeling like a failure’ for not being able to meet unrealistic expectations, or 
6. distressed, unable to sleep, or traumatised by exposure to traumatic situations or content.  

(26) Good consultation allows for differences in how employees may describe hazards and seek to identify the underlying cause.  

Step 2: Assess the risks 

(27) To assess the risk of one or more psychosocial hazards, consider the following questions: 

1. How serious are the consequences if an employee is exposed, including severity, frequency and duration of harm exposure? 
2. What is the combination of reasonably foreseeable consequences and likelihood, and what risk level (before and after controls are in place) apply? 

(28) Consulting employees as part of the risk assessment process is a vital validation and sense-checking function. 

Step 3: Control the risks 

(29) When considering controls, SCU will aim to eliminate the risk. Where this is not possible, controls will be implemented to minimise risk so far as is reasonably practicable. Controls will be implemented from most to least effective and combinations of controls will be considered wherever possible. Controls that are reliable and offer the highest level of protection are the most effective. Minimising the risks can be achieved by changing the: 

1. design of work, including job demands and tasks involved 
2. systems of work, for example: 
   1. allocating tasks to match skills 
   2. ensuring sufficient time to complete tasks 
   3. support from supervisors and other workers 
3. work environment and conditions 
4. workplace interactions including ensuring respectful behaviours and relationships, or 
5. objects or tools used in the task, for example ensuring plant, substances and equipment are safe and fit for purpose.  

(30) Physical risks contributing to psychosocial risks will be minimised through relevant substitution, isolation and engineering controls.  

(31) Administrative controls and personal protective equipment (PPE) are the least reliable controls and provide the lowest level of health and safety protection. SCU will consider these last and use them in combination with more effective controls. Further controls, such as supervision, may be needed to make a control more likely to be effective. 

Step 4: Proactively implement, maintain, monitor, and review the effectiveness of controls 

(32) Once controls have been implemented, it is imperative that adequate resources are provided and responsibilities clearly articulated to supervisors so that controls can be maintained, monitored, and reviewed. Recognising that the properties of psychosocial hazards can change over time, the risk management process will be continually implemented at SCU. Formal reviews of controls will happen on a regular basis, in addition to regular informal reviews as part of operational activities and supervision. In addition, control measures will be reviewed when workplace conditions change, there is a new hazard or risk scenario, a significant WHS event occurs (e.g. injury or illness), if requested by a health and safety representative, or where a review is otherwise indicated as necessary (e.g., a control is performing ineffectively).  

Section 4 - Roles & Responsibilities 

Section 5 - Records of Documentation  

(33) All relevant documentation will be recorded and kept in accordance with WHS Legislation and other legislative obligations including:  

1. Risk assessments 
2. Consultation records 
3. Implementation, monitoring, and review of control measures aimed at managing psychosocial risks, including any changes or updates to these measures. 
4. Training records 
5. Incident reports relating to psychosocial hazards 
6. Health monitoring for employees exposed to significant psychosocial risks 
7. Review and audit records on the psychosocial risk management process, including findings, recommendations, and actions taken. 

Section 6 - Revision and approval history 

(34) This procedure will be reviewed as per nominated review dates or because of other events, such as: 

1. Internal and external audit outcomes. 
2. Legislative changes. 
3. Outcomes from management reviews. 
4. Incidents. 

Section 7 - References 

Section 8 - Related Documents