A psychosocial hazard is anything that could harm someone's mental health, and there are multiple causes and contributing factors that give rise to these risks. Australia's Work Health & Safety Act requires businesses to manage psychosocial risks to workers by minimising or eliminating hazards. Here we provide a summary of Safe Work Australia's comprehensive guidelines1 to help business owners implement systems and approaches to addressing workplace mental health hazards.
Employers have a duty of care to address psychosocial risks and eliminate or minimise them2. To better understand what psychosocial hazards are read this overview about recognising psychosocial hazards in the workplace.
Addressing psychosocial hazards risks requires an effective risk management process with mechanisms for:
This calls for scrutiny of current processes, management structures and reporting mechanisms to understand where gaps or deficiencies may be occurring, or if behavioural issues such as bullying or harassment, or even just personality clashes and communication failures are involved.
When choosing control measures you must consider all the hazards present and how they may interact and combine. An effective management approach for workplace risk mitigation focused on psychosocial hazards should include the following 10 steps.
It's important to review your control measures to check they are working as planned. The review process should be based on documented data, with clearly defined processes for internal escalation and adjustment.
A benchmarked process enables an overview of the effectiveness of claim and injury management/rehabilitation strategies and ensures they are regularly assessed and that progress towards goals is recorded and communicated.
Workplace risk and mitigation are a specialty area that Gallagher provides to businesses Australia wide, and globally. For consultation, advice or solutions, we're here to help.
Our Workplace Risk team offers everything from safety mentoring and training through to health and wellness programs, hazard and risk profiling, and incident management and investigation for larger companies.
Gallagher provides insurance, risk management and benefits consulting services for clients in response to both known and unknown risk exposures. When providing analysis and recommendations regarding potential insurance coverage, potential claims and/or operational strategy in response to national emergencies (including health crises), we do so from an insurance and/or risk management perspective, and offer broad information about risk mitigation, loss control strategy and potential claim exposures. We have prepared this commentary and other news alerts for general information purposes only and the material is not intended to be, nor should it be interpreted as, legal or client-specific risk management advice. General insurance descriptions contained herein do not include complete insurance policy definitions, terms and/or conditions, and should not be relied on for coverage interpretation. The information may not include current governmental or insurance developments, is provided without knowledge of the individual recipient's industry or specific business or coverage circumstances, and in no way reflects or promises to provide insurance coverage outcomes that only insurance carriers' control.
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