Our Approach to Psychosocial Safety

Safe Work Australia’s release of the Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022 has increased expectations on organisations to be active in preventing psychosocial safety risks. The regulator released this Code—along with amendments to the Work Health and Safety Regulation—as an essential component of regulatory compliance and psychosocial safety governance for organisational leaders.

It provides practice guidelines and expectations, and is an additional policy plank to Safe Work’s previously released suite of guidelines for the prevention of workplace bullying, violence and aggression.

Psychosocial safety is a goal achieved by creating a workplace or social setting that promotes both psychological health and positive social interactions. It recognises that a person’s wellbeing is not solely determined by their internal psychological state but the social dynamics, relationships, and support systems in their environment. While psychological safety focuses on individuals feeling safe to express themselves and take interpersonal risks, psychosocial safety expands that concept to include broader social factors that impact an individual’s wellbeing. It regards the combination of psychological and social safety in the workplace.

 For this reason the Code of Practice expects organisations to address:

Organisational factors such as poor role clarity; role design; workload pressures; inadequate role reward/recognition and lack of wellbeing support

Experiential factors such as traumatic events or experiences; isolating shift work; remote or demanding shifts or excessive job pressure

Relational factors such as poor workplace relationships; bullying, harassment and disrespectful behaviour; conflict; social, interpersonal and communication stressors.

 The World Health Organisation defines psychosocial factors as ‘organisational and social aspects of work that could become psychosocial hazards (or psychosocial risk factors) and finally psychosocial risks’ (WHO, 2010).

 Broadly speaking the current spheres of research and practice contributing to psychosocial safety improvements are directly addressing:

 1.     Organisational factors such as workforce policies, role design, conditions and procedures that increase psychosocial hazards (Dollard et al, 2007).

2.     Cultural factors such as social environments and workplace relationships and behaviours that increase psychosocial safety (Weaver et al, 2023).

Both of these factors cyclically inform each other, with the literature suggesting that ‘organisational culture and climate influence and are influenced by the nature and quality of working relationships’ (Keashly, 2023).

Working at the intersection of organisational responsibility and self-efficacy will be an ongoing priority for the psychosocial safety field.

Hence the National Psychosocial Safety Network takes an integrative organisational culture approach to supporting its members in working across the policy-and-people lifecycle.

The International Labour Organisation identifies that organisations have a responsibility to minimise psychosocial hazards at work such as ‘interactions between and among work environment, job content, work organisation and workers’ capacities, needs, culture (ILO, 1984).

Equally, a working understanding of the social brain recognises that social- and self-regulatory processes are critical mediators of safety behaviour and harm.  The science here is consistent with recommendations to take a comprehensive approach to workplace safety where self-regulatory processes mediate the relationship of job demands and resources to safety behaviours (Yaris, 2020).

For instance, recent neuroscience research indicates that individuals with greater psychosocial safety resources (such as learned skills, emotional processes or socially acquired and supported practices) exhibit significantly less cortisol reactivity (Taylor et al, 2008).

However, perhaps more important again at this intersection is the chicken-and-egg paradox challenging us that organisational performance influences relationships, while relationships are the key driver of performance (Brown, 2012).

It is generally established that organisational climate and supportive leadership are key sources of change in fostering safety behaviour (Neal, 2002). One important Australian study, for instance, cites significant organisational influences—such as a ‘long-hours’ culture and organisational climate factors of safety, wellness and support for diversity—as strategic priorities in meeting corporate responsibility to employees, families and communities (Parkes, 2007).

Meanwhile a wide body of literature exists today providing insight into the profound impact of workplace relationships on organisational innovation and performance (Xerri, 2012; Tran et al, 2019; Reisyan, 2015).

Indeed organisational neuroscience researcher Garo Reisyan states that countless studies confirm the high failure rate of projects, strategic initiatives or mergers—each over 50%. Behaviour is most commonly found to be a reason for that (Reisyan, 2015, p 1).

The fundamentally cyclical nature of this dichotomy is a premise that underpins the National Psychosocial Safety Network—identifying safe relationships as a mutually rewarding goal in the pursuit of workplace psychosocial safety.