Working from home now a psychological safety risk

Employers face a tough code of practice to ensure psychological safety for workers - at home as well as in the office.

Bullying is a ‘psychosocial’ hazard in workplaces.

Remote and isolated work has been identified as a ­potential “psychosocial hazard” under a new model code of practice being rolled out to employers across several states.

The code, released by Safe Work Australia in July, with similar versions now in place in Queensland, NSW and Western Australia, is backed by new workplace health and safety legislation that significantly increases the duty of employers to protect the mental health of employees.

Employers have long had a legal obligation to ensure the physical and psychological health and safety of workers, but they must now be proactive in identifying risks and implement measures to control those risks.

Lisa Berton, partner at Henry William Lawyers, says the changes follow recommendations in the 2018-19 ­Boland review of workplace health and safety laws and shift the focus from an individual’s mental health to a “systemic and holistic approach to managing psychosocial hazards” at work. Companies are now required to imple­ment a systematic risk management framework, she says.

Other psychosocial hazards identified in the codes are lack of control over jobs, inadequate reward and recognition, and bullying and harassment. (See Box.) Their identification by Safe Work Australia comes as wellbeing consultants argue that workers are complaining of more “toxic negativity” in workplaces.

Martine Beaumont, co-founder of consultants Select Wellness, says: “Remote work is not risky for some people, but it is risky for others. I’ve got a couple of companies I’ve worked with that have very young workforces, and some of them are finding young men who literally haven’t left their rooms or their houses for a couple of months. They might be a little socially phobic and remote work reinforces this and all of a sudden they start turning the camera off so their manager can’t see them.”

She says another example could be a team where 80 per cent of the team work in the office, so those working remotely might risk exclusion. “They might not be bullied but they might feel bullied because all of a sudden the people going into work are ­establishing closer bonds than those interacting through the camera,” she says.

But Beaumont says that even if companies want to have their staff in the office more, workers have leverage at a time of skills shortages.

“It might not be good for them, it might be risky for them, but they still like it, and it still feels easier. So they’re going to choose to work from home.”

But the new code is welcome because companies had to realise that it was no longer “one size fits all” in terms of job design and culture, and a much more targeted approach was needed.

Her company offers a wellness program called Betterment Wellbeing and she argues the “overwhelm” that emerged in the pandemic has not diminished.

“Often, it’s not during a crisis that you experience the impact of the crisis, it’s a few months later, when you find a release of symptoms and an increase in stress and overwhelm,” she says. “It’s almost like a climate of despair … you’re exposed to things … whether it’s pictures of Ukraine or weather and floods, or inflation … People have given up hope on things actually getting better.”

Beaumont says while workplaces may not be to blame for staff stress, they can “shift the dial” by changes in job design and workplace interaction.

“We know that people are more stressed, we know that rates of mental illness are up, employers know that, so they’ve got an obligation to manage that,” she says. “We’ve gone from a time when no one spoke about wellbeing or mental health in the workplace to where it became an informal responsibility that workplaces and leaders took on, then it became an expectation, particularly during Covid, and now it’s actually become a legal obligation. Workplaces have always had a duty to protect workers from physical and psychological harm … but (the codes) have made this more ­explicit.”

Under the code, companies must identify and manage the associated risks not just from the individual’s perspective, but from the perspective of job design and culture.

Says lawyer Berton: “This is not a set and forget obligation, it needs to be a living system … that not only considers workers throughout their employment/engage­ment, but also the changing risks and hazards applicable to the work and the workplace.

“A psychosocial hazard is a hazard that arises from, or relates to, the design or management of work, a work ­environment, plant at a workplace, or workplace interactions and behaviours and may cause psychological harm, whether or not the hazard may also cause physical harm.” Berton says psychosocial hazards and their effects on workers are not always obvious, and even when low-level can accumulate over time to significantly affect psychological health. Other psychosocial hazards may cause more ­immediate harm, such as a single traumatic or stressful event.

She says a company’s risk assessment must be tailored to individual workers, the work they perform and the workplace. The code is not prescriptive and “doesn’t let you tick a box … you need to consult with workers and other duty holders, you need to do your risk assessment, you need to put control measures in place, you need to continually monitor and assess the effectiveness of the control measures” .

“You have to consider aspects such as the operating environment, type and size of the business, economic pressures, interactions between people at work and your supply chain, the third parties who you might work with, the design and management of your organisation as a whole, decisions that might affect work demands, design and management of the work tasks and jobs,” she says.

Along with work intensity or bullying managers, lack of psychosocial safety can be caused by low control over your work, or mundane, repetitive tasks. Berton says while it’s not always possible to fix those issues, employers must as far as is reasonably practicable control the risk of psychological injury by developing safe systems of work and put support measures in place for workers.

Beaumont says this year there has been “a ­noticeable increase in hopelessness and a rise in toxic negativity which is thwarting employees’ motivation to even engage with their wellbeing”. Remote working has contributed, because workers are “dealing with someone virtually on a screen all the time and you don’t get all those little non-verbal signs of ­acceptance”. Beaumont focuses on three challenges: people often don’t know what they need to change, have low self-awareness and an inability to prioritise self-care; wellbeing is often pursued in a “destructive way” with people looking perfect on the outside but not having a good experience of life; a sense of hopelessness, lack of motivation and cynicism.

A recent poll of 200 employees by Select Wellness showed 90 per cent felt overwhelmed and uncertain about the future. The firm also analysed more than 1000 mental health and wellbeing interviews that measured the severity of stress reported by employees. It found that in the first half of 2022, 60 per cent of employees reported their stress as “overwhelming”, “severe” and “extreme”, compared to 5 per cent in 2021-22; and 3 per cent in 2020-21. The industries most affected include tech, ­finance, recruitment, media and marketing.

Select Wellness co-founder Camilla Thompson says many overwhelmed employees often decide resignation is their best stress management tool. Women in particular must be “equipped with strategies to lighten their emotional load” and “a mindset that helps them to balance caring for self with caring for others”.