Psychosocial Hazards in Your Workplace - What You Need to Know

(Article first published in WBM - Australia's Wine Business Magazine March/April 2024)

Workplaces around Australia including wineries are coming to terms with the reality that psychosocial hazard legislation is now in effect and something that needs to be a key part of your wellbeing strategy. While many businesses may have taken positive steps to develop strategies, most are yet to digest and incorporate the new legislation.

We chatted to 15 small to medium sized wine businesses from the Barossa Valley recently to equip them with the right tools to develop a wellbeing strategy. Many of them were unaware of the new Work Health and Safety regulations that took effect in South Australia in December 2023 and most other States have also adopted similar regulations under the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice: Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work.

The term ‘psychosocial hazard’ is more than just the latest buzzword in the workplace, it has real world implications for businesses – both small and large – to support employees’ psychological health and wellbeing. But if you feel like putting your head in the sand waiting for it all to blow over, think again. As a business owner, or manager, you’re obliged under the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice to not only understand what these hazards are, but to be assessing and taking action towards eliminating or minimising them.

We’re hearing over and over again that business owners are feeling overwhelmed by the complexity of these hazards, and, unlike an electrical cord being taped down to avoid becoming a trip hazard, they are a lot harder to spot, and even harder to address.

A psychosocial hazard is anything in the design or management of work that increases the risk of work-related stress. There are 14 psychosocial hazards identified in the Safe Work Australia Code of Practice. And although the Code of Practice is national, each state or territory has their own legislation relating to the code, with the exception of Victoria where the legislation is (at the time of writing) still in proposition.

As a business owner, manager or (legally speaking) a Person Conducting Business Undertaking (PCBU) you are obliged to eliminate psychosocial risks, or, if that is not possible, you are obliged to minimise them as reasonably as practicable.

And while that’s all sounding very complicated, it helps if we can break it down even further. The term ‘psychosocial hazard’ in itself means the emotional and social hazards your employees might be facing in the workplace.

As workplaces themselves involve people interacting with each other, they’re often full of emotional and social interactions between people. So, how can you know when something has turned from being a one-off situation, to being a hazard?

The difference between a difficult incident and a psychosocial hazard is the frequency (how often) and intensity (how severe) the situation occurs before it becomes a hazard. With two exceptions: bullying and traumatic events. With both bullying and traumatic events, they don’t need to happen frequently or intensely, in order to become psychosocial hazards. A one-off incident can do harm to someone’s mental and psychological health, and so they must be mitigated and eliminated where possible.

For other hazards? We need to ask, how often is this occurring? How severe was the incident? And what impact could it be having on your people?

There are many free or low-cost tools that can help business owners with understanding what the experience of their employees might be in relation to hazards. Safe Work Australia have a handy visual, which shows what psychosocial hazards might sound like.

A great place to start is at the People at Work website (www.peopleatwork.gov.au) which is a collaboration between Work Health and Safety Agencies across the country, that aims to help employers to identify psychosocial hazards and factors and implement a psychosocial risk management processes. They have free psychosocial hazard risk assessment tools, and also free examples of some control measures.

Workplace Wellbeing SA uses a licensed evidence-based psychosocial hazard risk assessment survey that's suitable for all workplaces.

Key takeaways for employers at this stage:

1. Listen to the experience of your workers;

2. Look out for signs of work-related stress that your employees might be experiencing; and

3. Seek advice for extra support if you’re feeling overwhelmed by it all.

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