What are Psychosocial Hazards in the workplace?
What are psychosocial hazards and how can businesses minimise them in the workplace?
A psychosocial hazard is anything that could cause psychological harm (e.g. harm someone’s mental health). While there are similarities between mental and psychological health, psychological health delves deeper. It’s about comprehending the why behind your emotional and mental experiences. It is understanding the mechanisms, patterns, and processes that drive your thoughts and behaviours.
Focusing solely on mental health might help someone feel better in the moment and manage stress, anxiety, or low moods effectively. However, they may miss understanding the root causes or recurring patterns of these feelings without considering psychological health.
For small businesses especially, understanding and mitigating these hazards is challenging, but is crucial to fostering a healthy and productive environment.
Common psychosocial hazards at work include:
- Overwhelming job demands
- Low job control
- Poor support
- Lack of role clarity
- Poor organisational change management
- Inadequate reward and recognition
- Poor organisational justice
- Traumatic events or material
- Remote or isolated work
- Poor physical environment
- Violence and aggression
- Bullying
- Harassment, including sexual and gender-based harassment; and
- Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions
Some of the above hazards may not create psychosocial risks on their own but may do so if combined with other hazards and/or over a lengthy period of time.
Mary van Sambeek, HR Specialist, Business Solutions Hub, says, “The best way to ensure that risk of psychosocial hazards in the workplace is minimised is to have workplace policies and procedures in place to inform employees of expected behaviours, educate them on how to report a hazard and provide training for people managers on how to identify and act upon events which may lead to psychosocial harm.”
Need help managing overwhelming workloads, isolation, or uncertainty in your small business? Mary, Our HR Specialist can guide you on mitigating the risks of psychosocial hazards in the workplace. Call 1300 445 687 or email us at info@businesssolutionshub.com.au for assistance today.
For more information call 1300 445 687
