Despite the increased attention that mental health and psychological safety has accumulated, many organisations still disproportionately address physical safety at the expense of psychological safety. While physical safety hazards and their causes are more easily observed and identified, psychological hazards can be more difficult to identify, and health and safety officers can often feel ill-prepared to call these out.
One example of this gap in resources is the presence of contractual requirements for the appointment of an adequate number of suitably skilled and experienced Health and Safety Professionals, while there are no set requirements for resources for psychosocial safety.
This is why there is a need to have a dedicated resource to focus on addressing psychosocial safety, in addition to and to support those focussed on physical safety. This can be achieved through the creation of a dedicated Wellness Officer who is embedded in the senior level of your organisation.
Creating a dedicated resource for wellness does not require a completely novel approach to managing employee safety, but requires us to evaluate how we can adjust our existing strategies and requirements so that they are relevant to psychological safety.
For example, the health and safety risk management process contained in Safe Work Australia’s Code of Practice can be used to manage both physical and psychological safety risks.
What Are The Responsibilities?
There is a great opportunity to leverage your existing safety management systems when directing the responsibilities of your Wellness Officer. For example, if you apply the Plan Do Check Act (PDCA) model these responsibilities could include:
PLAN
Designing the principles, policies and activities that address psychosocial factors to build an integrated wellness strategy
Engaging senior leadership in the wellness strategy
Identifying wellness champions.
DO
Championing and implementing your wellness strategy and initiatives
Managing psychosocial health and safety risks by using established risk management processes
Working in partnership with Wellness Champions to coordinate and lead activities in alignment with the wellness strategy.
For example, the Wellness Officer may choose to undertake activities to address a particular psychosocial factor for a period of time and can direct the Wellness Champions to focus on this during this periodEducating the broader organisation about mental health and psychosocial safety hazards.
CHECK
Measuring engagement with the program’s activities to ensure it is positively impacting psychosocial factors
Consulting with stakeholders, employees and wellness champions to evaluate any barriers or enablers to the program’s success
Examining how psychosocial safety hazards or incidents are managed
Linking overall performance metrics with wellness culture programs.
ACT
Using the evaluation process to make any necessary adjustments or improvements to the policies, practices and activities.
Critical attributes to consider when selecting a wellness officer are:
Knowledge of the organisational factors that affect wellness and can create psychosocial safety hazards.
Knowledge and enthusiasm about your organisation’s need for a wellness strategy.
Understanding of an employer’s duties and obligations under Australian health and safety laws.
Interpersonal and leadership skills to manage and direct stakeholders and wellness champions.
Experience in managing and discussing health and safety risks in your industry, or in a similar environment.
Psychosocial safety hazards can be more complex and obscure than physical hazards.
Therefore, a Wellness Officer must have expertise beyond typical safety and human resources management so that they can properly address these issues and not be distracted by physical hazards or incidents.
This expertise could include but is not limited to psychology, organisational psychology, health sciences, and psychological first aid.
While being passionate about particular issues is still valuable, this can restrict our thinking and cause us to become distracted.
Therefore, Wellness Officers should have a holistic understanding of mental health that enables them to understand and address the breadth of issues relating to psychosocial safety and mental health.