Psychosocial risk management scenario

This scenario is an example of how to use the risk management process for psychosocial hazards and risks. This is an example only, the hazards and risks are different at each and every workplace, and the ways of managing psychosocial health and safety will need to be specific to your workplace.

Identifying psychosocial hazards and risks

Kate owns a small business that employs 8 workers who install masonry in residential homes across the ACT. Kate wants to know how to keep workers safe from psychosocial hazards and their risks. Kate isn’t sure what the psychosocial hazards are for her workplace. To find out Kate:

• asks her workers to complete an anonymous survey
• reviews records of previous complaints and injuries, workers’ compensation data, and exit interviews from previous workers, and
• goes out on a few jobs with the workers to observe who they interact with, how they work as a team, their behaviour, how the work is done.

Kate identified that there were several psychosocial hazards present.

She found that some workers were consistently taking personal days directly after complex jobs were finished. While there were no workers’ compensation claims for stress related illnesses, there were minor injuries to hands and legs and trips, slips and falls that were linked to very busy weeks or complex jobs.

The survey showed that Kate’s workers did not think their work was evenly spread across the team; with some workers having too much work and others with too little. It also showed that some workers felt that they were being harassed or spoken to inappropriately by other workers or customers.

Kate didn’t have many complaints from her workers about psychosocial issues. But she did identify some complaints from customers about work being ‘hurried’.

Some of the more difficult jobs didn’t have enough time allocated to finish them, and workers rushed to get them done. On one occasion, the rushing led to a mistake being made. The customer became irate and aggressive towards the workers.

Kate also observed that one of the more senior workers, Bruce, would be short tempered towards the newer workers when they asked a question, with a few instances of Bruce swearing at them. Kate talked to Bruce about his behaviour, he said he felt guilty about it and that it only happened when he was extremely busy and stressed.

Assessing psychosocial risks:

Kate undertook an assessment of the risks using an online risk assessment tool.

It identified that the uneven work distribution had a long duration and high frequency, as it happened most days over the previous 12 months, with moderate severity. The uneven workload was putting extra pressure on workers, who were then swearing at some of the other workers. The abusive language between workers was infrequent and did not happen often and caused a moderate amount of stress. The uneven work also impacted the stress levels of the workers overall.

The abusive behaviour from customers did not happen very often. However, it was severe and caused a significant amount of stress when it did happen.

Kate shared this information with the workers and encouraged them to provide their feedback on the risk assessment.

Controlling psychosocial risks:

To eliminate and manage the psychosocial risks, Kate talked to all the team members about what controls would best suit them and their work. The draft management plan included:

• a new way of booking jobs to ensure that complex jobs were interspersed with simple ones and flexibility to substitute jobs in peak times
• a more evenly distributed workload among the staff, based on their skills and experience
• new phones for each worker to call for advice, help or assistance
• allowing more time for difficult jobs to be done
• a policy on behavioural expectations
• a mentoring and training plan to build skills in supervision and de-escalation, and
• a rewards and recognition scheme where Kate would more openly voice her appreciation and acknowledge the team more regularly, including providing immediate positive feedback when possible.

This plan was provided to all the workers, who agreed to it. It was then implemented by Kate and the workers.

Monitor and review the control measures:

Kate reviewed the new control measures by regularly checking in with workers and asking if the new measures were working for them.

Kate also reviewed incident reports, personal leave trends and workers’ compensation claims to see if any similar trends were being seen since the control measures were implemented.

The survey was repeated after a few months, with Kate reviewing the results.

Adjustments were made where needed, with Kate talking through the changes with the workers and getting their feedback.

Kate scheduled the next review of control measures, unless there was an issue, incident or change in the workplace that would require it to happen sooner.