Protecting workers’ mental health is just as important as their physical health. A workplace that supports mental well-being not only safeguards workers’ health but also helps maintain a safe and productive environment.
What are psychosocial hazards?
Psychosocial hazards are factors in the design, management, or social interactions of work that can cause physical or mental harm. These hazards stem from:
- Job design and management: The way tasks are organised, supervised, and managed
- Inherent risks: Tasks or roles with built-in psychosocial risks
- Work environment: Physically hazardous or challenging environments
- Social factors: Workplace relationships, social dynamics, and interactions.
These hazards focus on the psychological and social conditions of the workplace rather than just the physical environment. Examples include stress, fatigue, bullying, violence, aggression, harassment, and burnout. Both short- and long-term exposure to psychosocial hazards can lead to harm.
Types of psychosocial hazards
- Ongoing problems: Daily stress from unclear roles or lack of support. These may seem minor but can accumulate to cause significant harm
- One-time incidents: Aggression or violence from a coworker or customer. These are more noticeable and immediate.
Impact of psychosocial hazards
Short-term exposure to severe hazards, such as workplace violence, can result in immediate harm, like acute stress disorder or PTSD. However, repeated low-level exposure to psychosocial hazards can also accumulate over time, causing psychological or physical injuries. Workers may experience a range of symptoms, including:
- Psychological harm: Anxiety, depression, PTSD, sleep disorders
- Physical harm: Musculoskeletal injuries, chronic illnesses, or fatigue-related accidents.
These hazards can also affect workplace performance, increase the likelihood of accidents, and reduce overall well-being.
Who is at risk?
Some workers may face higher risks due to their tasks or personal circumstances, including:
- young, new, or inexperienced workers
- older workers or those returning after an injury or illness
- workers from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds
- those with past exposure to trauma.
Why manage psychosocial hazards at work?
A person conducting a business or undertaking (PCBU) must eliminate psychosocial risks, or if that is not reasonably practicable, minimise them so far as is reasonably practicable.
Psychosocial hazards can increase the risk of work-related stress, which occurs when workers feel they cannot meet job demands. While stress itself is not an illness, prolonged or excessive stress can lead to serious psychological and physical health issues.
Unmanaged stress can result in:
- Burnout: A state of extreme mental, emotional, and physical exhaustion
- Reduced productivity: Increased absenteeism and lower work performance
- Health problems: Long-term harm to workers’ mental and physical well-being.
Effective management of psychosocial hazards helps businesses to:
- fulfill their work health and safety obligations
- minimise workplace disruptions and the costs of injuries or illnesses
- create a healthier, safer, more supportive, and productive work environment.