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How to Identify Psychological Risk in the Workplace | Altius Group

Written by Altius Group | Jan 31, 2023 3:03:58 AM

Just as a workplace is responsible for taking care of their employee’s physical health, employers are responsible for safeguarding against psychological injury. Altius Group’s Matthew Counsel explains why a plan to protect employee psychological wellbeing is more important than ever and outlines how to get started.

“With so much change and uncertainty, employees are leaning on their workplaces more than ever to help them feel psychologically safe and secure. Covid-19 has added another level to psychological risks already faced by employees”.

According to Safe Work Australia, 7,200 Australians are compensated for work-related mental health conditions, equating to around 6% of workers’ compensation claims, and approximately $543 million is paid in workers’ compensation for work-related mental health conditions.

Hazards or factors that can lead to psychological injury include:

  • Working in a high-stress environment
  • Work systems such as, undefined job role or tight deadlines
  • Poor or unhealthy communication or poor support
  • Micro-managing and leadership styles
  • Poor workplace culture or poor workplace relationships
  • Consumer-related occupational violence
  • Poor environmental conditions including remote or isolated work
  • Organisational change and uncertainty
Where to Start?

We recommend starting with a baseline measure to form a plan for improvement in the form of a Gap Analysis. Establishing baseline data on workplace psychological wellbeing enables an organisation to develop an effective strategy to improve, or sustain, wellbeing into the future.

Review

Our Gap Analysis for Psychological Risk will review the workplace environment, practices and potential triggers. As psychological risks aren’t as visible as physical hazards, we engage the expertise of PeopleSense by Altius’ organisational and clinically trained psychologists to carry out a gap analysis for psychological risk.

PeopleSense by Altius has pioneered customised proactive approaches, in alignment with legislative requirements, to enable organisations to identify, measure, monitor and evaluate the psychological wellbeing of their workplace.

PeopleSense by Altius psychologists use a range of evidence-based methods and tools, tailored to the needs of a workplace, to gather this baseline psychological wellbeing data, including:

  • Employee satisfaction surveys
  • Psychological risk assessments
  • Organisational Diagnostics and Culture surveys: Our diagnostic tools identify an organisation’s engagement, climate and culture strengths while also identifying potential weaknesses.
Recommend

Our services always include recommendations for improvement, action plans and programs to ensure we drive behavioural change and improvement within organisations. Our WHS team collaborate with PeopleSense by Altius to develop wellbeing guidelines, responding to the findings from the Gap Analysis review. This includes working with organisations to develop a policy to minimise workplace psychological risk against best practice frameworks.

We’ll deliver a practical action plan, aligned to budget requirements, to improve wellbeing. Altius Group partners with organisations to develop psychologically safe workplaces, where team members feel accepted and respected.

For more information on how to identify psychological risk within your workforce please join our free, open webinar.
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