Health AND Safety

Workplace health and safety. Occupational health and safety. Or in the current legislative framework,  work health and safety.

So many people think of physical risks when it comes to health and safety at work . Slips,  trips and falls.  But the elements of health and safety that are seen in the public eye are about health.

Silicosis? Health.  Asbestosis, mesothelioma. Health.  Lead poisoning.  Health.

Too often, mental health is only considered as a secondary injury. This is typically when an injured worker has been off work for several week. They may develop a secondary condition, such as depression as a side effect of their injury.

Bullying and harassment can cause mental injury. It is one of many psychosocial risks present in a workplace. Violence, whether from colleagues or members of the public. Employers have obligations about all risks to health safety, physical and mental.

Psychosocial risks, those risks to mental health can include such things as:

• Job demands that are too high or too low – unreasonably busy and exceeding an employee’s capacity, or monotonous work.
• Low job control – micromanaging, not allowing employees any input, or little input, into how the work is done, or scheduled, and little input into objectives and targets.
• Poor support – no or inadequate training and supervision, day to day support and leadership, inadequate tools, resources and information to do the job.
• Low role clarity – frequently changing work assignments and procedures, conflicts in scheduling and expectations.
• Poor organisational change management – where change is poorly planned, communicated, managed or supported.
• Low reward and recognition – where the employee may perceive an imbalance in effort vs recognition, either formally or informally.
• Poor organisational justice – little or no transparency about how are issues are managed, investigated and communicatdd, and little consideration for dignity or respect.
• Poor workplace relationships and conflict – from rudeness to disagreements and to ostracism and exclusion.
• Remote or isolated work – this could be location, time or nature of the work, such as night shift workers or surveyors on remote sites.
• Poor environmental conditions – when workplace conditions are unpleasant, in poor condition, physically hazardous, of hazardous nature, and could trigger a stress response.
• Traumatic events – experiencing, investigating, reading, witnessing or hearing about, for example, armed robberies, assaults, fatal vehicle accidents. This could also include intentional cruelty.
• Violence and aggression- where an employee could be abused, threatened or assaulted, and could be instigated by co-workers, customers, patients, clients or visitors.
• Bullying
• Harassment, including sexual harassment.
• Fatigue.

The “Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022” is the “gold standard” guide on how to prevent harm from psychosocial risks.

So how might that look?

Imagine that you manage a team of accountants at head office. One of those accountants is newly diagnosed, and requests supports and accommodations. Refusing those supports and accommodations, other team members making disparaging remarks, and the person suddenly being excluded from team lunches or outings, and a reduction in workload complexity without consultation could well cause psychosocial harm to that team member.

Or, say you have an internal auditor visiting a branch office. No desk space has been provided,  documents are not available and the auditor’s requests are ignored. The auditor is then threatened about making a complaint.

Or, say a female worker has just had a miscarriage, and she is ordered to work from home when she is ready to come back to work, because management don’t want her grief upsetting morale at the office. She then hears a snide remark about “keeping her legs closed” after a Teams meeting was not quite disconnected.

Why care about these things? Because the law says so. Persons in control of a business or undertaking (PCBUs) directors, designers of structures, officers and individuals all have obligations under health and safety legislation.

So once again, the call is to be kind, fair, transparent, and act with integrity. Know your obligations under law as an employer, and comply with obligations under the Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Qld) or the relevant legislation in your jurisdiction.