What is Psychological Health and Safety?
Psychological Safety in a workplace is about creating an environment or space where people can be their genuine self, sharing feelings and perspectives without fear of repercussion.
Psychological Health within the workplace is best defined as a condition where the employee themself feels in a reasonable and continuous state of satisfaction, with an ability to perceive and function in their environment with relative freedom from distortion.
There is research to suggest there are considerable benefits to psychologically safe workplaces, including improved productivity, better decision-making, inclusivity, staff retention and a higher willingness to stop unsafe behaviours. A business' employees are one of the best receptors to know when the business or its people are not okay. Safe and comfortable environments promote early intervention, the courage to speak up, and allow the business an ability to respond and adjust to avoid unwanted events.
Our Insights
When working with clients and industry, we consistently find ourselves positioned to interpret or provide clarity to organisations on what constitutes good mental health within the workplace. You only need to scroll through your daily professional networks, forums and feeds to see it’s becoming an organisational expectation within our workplaces that people have the right to a psychologically safe and healthy workplace. Additionally, it has fast become a core requirement and key driver to talent attraction, retention and overall happiness in the post-pandemic workplaces of today.
Historically these psychological elements of work were commonly overlooked in the overall risk profile of the businesses operations. But since the inclusion of the ‘Psychological Health and Safety’ duty into our National WHS framework, it’s no longer a sub-component of work and is now an expectation of operating a strong business. With this pendulum finally shifting to include psychosocial risk into our standard day to day operations, it will need to be a key component inside our business dialogue, values, culture, operations and risk management considerations. If it isn’t, then we are likely operating behind the eight ball.
So, this may leave us in the same predicament as stated at the beginning of this section. So, what does good Psychological Health and Safety look like? And where do we start?
Over the last few years there has been an absence of uniform and consistent information available to businesses to guide positive psychological health and safety outcomes. This has driven a need to create and define a standardised approach to get businesses progressing in the right direction.
Our prayers were answered in June 2021, with the development of ISO 45003 Occupational health and safety management — Psychological Health and Safety at work — Guidelines for managing psychosocial risks which is the first global standard of its kind. This standard provides comprehensive guidance on the management of psychosocial risks and the promotion of wellbeing within the workplace. The ISO 45003 standard is consistent in its intent with other ISO work health and safety standards [ISO 45001] and is the game changer for businesses seeking a solid foundation to start from.
The ISO 45003 framework focuses on the defining the organisational context of psychological risk and guides business to analyse, treat and manage risk in a methodical and standardised approach. What makes it unique is that it emphasises the business imperatives for promoting and protecting psychological health within the workplace, broadening the responsibility of wellbeing beyond Human Resources to Work Health and Safety. The ISO 45003 standard is applied in conjunction with its parent standard, ISO 45001, which outlines the requirements and guidance on planning, implementing, reviewing, evaluating and improving a WHS management system.
Leadership, Leadership, Leadership
As leaders, we play a pivotal role in promoting psychological safety by creating an atmosphere that reduces risk and encourages a culture of positive mental health by challenging and changing mindsets and behaviours within the organisation to care for psychological exposures. Additionally, leaders are accountable and responsible for driving the creation of parameters and structure that assure positive psychological action. It’s imperative that leaders meet their ethical and duty of care obligations to the workforce, creating an organisational undercurrent within the business that is serious about reducing the risks of burnout and mental illness and pulls its people toward positive behaviours.
Mental Health Responsibility Is Carried Collectively
There is a considerable amount that businesses can do create safety, comfort, security and assurance within the workplace. These include promoting a positive mental health agenda, protecting individuals from adverse action, discriminatory behaviour or risk and providing formal training and education for all. The Management of the psychological elements of safety is done in the exact same manner as the traditional model of work health and safety. That is, we endeavour to identify risk triggers, exposures and sources, and eliminate or place mitigation strategies in place to negate the associated impacts. Businesses with a capability to understand their existing risks and their treatments are already well placed to effectively manage their psychosocial risk profiles.
The key to achieving great outcomes in the workplace are leaders actively supporting the objectives of mental health and assuring that the framework exists with the business to educate, respond and define parameters for operations. Despite this, mental health responsibility is carried collectively by everyone in a business and that doesn’t mean that everyone needs to be an expert in mental health. An employee only needs to understand the business expectations and possess a genuine and transparent approach to psychological health and safety to successfully support the business in creating and sustaining mentally safe workplaces.
In Summary
ISO 45003 is a proactive attempt to encourage businesses to consider and prioritise mental health as an integral component of our working lives and is a timely evolution of ISO 45001. Employees must be encouraged to feel comfortable and accepted in the workplace, with a culture of transparency, openness, and inclusivity that allows mistakes and deviations. The ISO 45003 framework in itself will not alter attitudes towards workplace mental health, but it certainly sets the foundation for a systematic approach that businesses can deploy to drive commitment and conversations that will. Progressus partners with businesses to build identity, capability, value and sustainability. We provide exceptional business value and improvement services to organisations who need guidance in a range of spaces such as this.
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