Workplace Psychosocial Reviews
Preventative
Workplace Psychosocial Safety and Wellbeing
WorkPsych recognises that each organisation’s environment is a unique and dynamic ecosystem. Our third party reviews offer a targeted, contextualised and data driven approach towards informing your company's workplace safety and wellbeing strategic roadmap.
Designed by organisational psychologists, our evidence-informed and robust assessment of workplace psychosocial safety, helps leadership answer the following questions:
What unnecessary workplace stressors including job conditions, demands and interactions are potentially detracting from our employee's health and wellbeing?
What could we be doing more of to protect and optimise our workforce's health and wellbeing?
What actions and initiatives would strengthen our workforce's health and wellbeing?
What is the Workplace Psychosocial Safety Questionnaire?
We draw upon social science methods to provide impartial, anonymous and data driven insights.
We recommend the following stages:
1. Initial consultation to understand current state, desired outcomes and tailor a review process so to best meet clients’ timelines and requirements.
2. Information gathering through qualitative and quantitative data gathering methods (e.g. questionnaire, interviews etc ), policy audit and organisational data.
3. Analysis and reporting including data driven observations and recommendations.
4. Presentation and collaborative action planning.
5. Evaluation of impact.
Wellbeing does not reside solely within the individual, but is evidenced across the quality of interactions, workgroups, divisional units, leadership and organisational culture!
(Cooper & Leiter, 2017)
This association between workplace psychosocial hazards and mental health and wellbeing has gained global traction (International Organization for Standardization, 2021; Niedhammer et al., 2021; Safe Work Australia, 2022).
The CIPD’s (2023), health and wellbeing report indicated that 60% of work related stress is attributable to workload, and further linked with labour trends such as 24-7 technologies, after-hours work-related ICT usage, flexible working arrangements and work-life boundary shifts.
Across most States in Australia, work health and safety legalisations have recently began to place responsibility on employers to monitor and prevent psychosocial hazards posing risks to psychological or physical wellbeing (Safe Work Australia, 2021). In Hong Kong, less policy attention has been directed towards such matters, despite evidence underscoring the international city’s ‘always on’ culture and excessive working hours, as key factors compromising the working population’s health (Cigna, 2021; UBS, 2015).
So What Are Workplace Psychosocial Hazards?
Psychosocial hazards arise from the design, management, environment or social interactions at work, which may increase the risk of work-related stress, and potentially be harmful to employees’ physical and psychological well-being (Niedhammer et al., 2021; Safe Work, 2022).
In 2021, the International Organisation of Standardisation published its first global standard giving practical guidance on managing psychological health in the workplace. While not mandatory, the role of ISO is defining best practices, so that the rest of the world and employers committed to quality, safety and efficiency of products, services and workplace systems can follow.
Accordingly, to foster a psychologically healthy culture and prevent incidence of work-related mental health injuries, employers are advised to proactively:
- Gather evidence in order to assess the presence of workplace psychosocial ‘hazards’,
- Determine the level of risk to workers’ physical and psychological wellbeing,
- Implement measures that aim to eliminate and reduce risks to as low as reasonably practicable (International Organization for Standardization, 2021).