In last month’s blog we highlighted some recent statistics around workforce mental health in New Zealand.
We established that taking reasonable steps to minimise or remove work-related risks to psychological health and safety is ethically and legally an employer’s responsibility.
Finally, we outlined two key fundamental skills required to be able to effectively manage and support employee mental health:
Identifying signs of poor or declining mental health.
Providing appropriate support, including having a one-to-one conversation with your staff member.
This month, we continue our focus on manager/employer responsibility and opportunity to support employee mental health by zooming out and looking at the bigger picture.
While the above mentioned skills are absolutely necessary and indispensable skills to develop as a leader, we would be missing a very key piece of the puzzle if we failed to consider how the work environment itself may be contributing to mental distress.
Identifying and managing psychological hazards
Without addressing this third arm of leading with mental health in mind, we are missing a huge opportunity to reduce the need to use the skills of identifying and supporting. We may very well be taking a band-aid approach, neglecting potential sources of employee distress and missing the opportunity to focus on prevention over cure.
This is equivalent to trying to dry off while standing under a running shower! Or using a water bucket to empty a boat with a big ‘ole hole in its hull!
The aim here is to protect employee mental health.
Identifying and supporting are fantastic secondary and tertiary mental health intervention approaches, but nothing beats the value of a proactive, prevention-focused primary intervention approach. It often costs less than secondary and tertiary measures such as training, counseling, assessments, or filling employee gaps. But more importantly, it is the approach that most minimises the risks of psychological harm to your people.
The reality is that your work environment and nature of the job design of various roles is very likely to contain what we call psychological hazards. This is almost guaranteed.
What we can’t know without having a closer look, is the magnitude of its potential adverse impact.
15 April 2021, 8.30am-4pm, Hamilton
MENTAL HEALTH TO LEAD
In our public workshops, learn how to:
identify signs of poor mental health in your staff.
confidently provide the appropriate supports.
identify and manage risks to employee mental health present in your workplace.
Assessing the risk of psychological hazards
Psychological hazards or risks, also commonly termed psychosocial hazards/risks, are not necessarily obvious to an employer. They could be the last thing you would suspect, in fact! For example, while it would be easy to see how under-developing or promoting someone could cause psychological distress, it is just as possible, but less obvious, that over promotion could have the same effect on someone else.
Not all hazards are equal in their impact, and not everyone is affected the same by specific psychosocial risks, so not all hazards require the same urgency to address.
How likely is it that someone will be exposed to the identified hazard? How regularly may they be exposed to it? What is the harmful impact of an exposure to the hazard? How many of your team may be exposed to it?
Prioritising identified hazards is a practical way to get started, and a fantastic way to make the biggest impact!
When referring to work, the term ‘psychosocial hazard’ refers to the ‘aspects of the design and management of work, and its social and organisational contexts that may have the potential for causing psychological or physical harm’ (Cox, Griffiths, & Rial-Gonzalez, 2000)..
Once you’ve identified the hazards, and assessed their associated risk level, it is time to take steps to manage the risk.
While we’ve simplified the process in this article, it’s important to ensure you engage the right people, and employ the appropriate protocols to carry out this task. Ideally, the process would involve multiple stakeholders, relevant tools and measures to collect data, professional guidance, a clearly outlined process, and the ability to gauge success.
Why not have a go at assessing the psychological risks to your employees today?
For professional assistance – you know where to find us!
References
Cox, T., Griffiths, A., & Rial-Gonzalez, E. (2000). Research on work related stress. Luxembourg: Office for Official Publications of the European Communities
Blog by Ance Strydom