Managing Psychological Health and Safety at Workplace 🔗

Introduction

Exposure to work-related psychosocial hazards is escalating in today’s 24-hour society, which is increasingly dominated by knowledge work. This training focused on psychosocial hazards and provides an overview of key concepts related to psychosocial hazards and risk assessment. The psychosocial hazards and work stressors that increase the risk of injury/illness consisting time pressure; cognitive demands; emotional demands; hours of work; poorly defined work roles; conflict; poorly managed change; violence and aggression; lack of job control; lack of supervisor and/or co-worker support; organisational injustice; and inadequate reward and recognition. The risk assessment process for psychosocial hazards is outlined and implications for Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) practice are discussed. Psychosocial hazards pose a unique challenge to OHS professionals. This challenge is fuelled by the complexity of research findings, high media interest, the limitations of regulations, unique skills required by professionals working in this area, industry perceptions of the issue, and the often cumulative nature of injury or illness outcomes that are not proximal to one particular workplace event. Despite this, these hazards can and should be managed in the same manner as any other OHS hazard. One of the defining characteristics of psychosocial hazards is their interface with the very core of work, including how work is designed and operationalized through management and human resource practices. This means the reach of the hazard can be long with tentacle-like influence on many aspects of the workplace through the nature of work demands, the behaviours of individual workers and managers, and organisational policies.