Workplace wellbeing & psychological safety

All employees have the right to a workplace in which they can thrive, and it is important for leaders and managers to provide a psychologically safe environment.

We all spend a large portion of our waking hours in the workplace, and often have more time with work colleagues than our friends or family. So it’s not surprising that what happens in the workplace plays a big role in our mental health and wellbeing. A good work environment is conducive to good mental health, and a toxic work environment can contribute to poor mental health. And it’s a two- way street – mentally healthy workers are more productive and less likely to take time off work.

Mental illness is now the leading cause of sickness absence and long-term work incapacity in Australia, which is perhaps not surprising given the high burden of poor mental health in the community.

Therefore our workplace has an important role to play in promoting and maintaining mental health, and business owners, leaders and managers have a responsibility to build psychological safety and ensure staff wellbeing. But equally there is an obligation on all workers to engage in creating a mentally safe workplace too.

Workplace Health and Safety and Psychosocial Hazards

Workplace health and safety regulations require employers to provide a safe work environment for their employees. It is now being recognised that this goes beyond physical safety and must now include efforts to reduce psychosocial hazards.

Psychosocial hazards are factors in the design or management of work that increase the risk of work-related stress and can lead to psychological or physical harm. Examples of psychosocial hazards might include:

• Low job control where employees have little control over aspects of the work, including how or when a job is done.

• High and low job demands when sustained high or low physical, mental or emotional effort is required to do the job. For example, long work hours; high workloads; work that is beyond the capability or training of employees; emotional effort dealing with distressed or aggressive clients including difficult patients; working with clients with challenging behaviours; having to perform work wearing uncomfortable protective clothing.

• Poor support such as tasks or jobs where employees have inadequate emotional or practical support from supervisors and colleagues; information or training to support their work performance; or tools, equipment and resources to do the job

• Poor organisational justice with inconsistent application of policies and procedures; unfairness or bias in decisions about allocation of resources and work; or poor management of under-performance.

• Low recognition and reward with a lack of positive feedback; an imbalance between employees' efforts and formal and informal recognition and rewards; a lack of opportunity for skills development or skills/experience are under-utilised.

• Low role clarity where there is uncertainty about or frequent changes to tasks and work standards; important task information which is not available to the worker; or conflicting job roles, responsibilities or expectations.

• Poor workplace relationships where there is workplace bullying, aggression, harassment, sexual harassment and gendered violence, discrimination or other unreasonable behaviour by colleagues, supervisors or clients; poor relationships between employees and their managers, supervisors, colleagues and clients or others the employee has to interact with; conflict between employees and their managers, supervisors or colleagues. T

• Violent or traumatic workplace events where an employee is exposed to abuse, threat of harm or actual harm causing fear and distress which can lead to work-related stress and physical injury. This is common in workplaces including first responders, health care workers, disaster and emergency services, social workers and defence personnel.

What is psychological safety?

At its core, psychological safety is the belief that you won’t be punished when you make a mistake. It’s being able to speak up without fear of humiliation. There’s a misconception that creating psychological safety is about being soft, or cocooning people from the harsh realities of the workplace.

“Psychological safety is not about being nice, it’s about creating the space where honesty is truly possible.” Amy Edmondson

What are the keys to a psychologically healthy workplace?

• Open and honest leadership

• Fair and respectful culture

• Inclusion and influence

• Good job design

• Prioritising mental health

• Work/life balance

• Employee development

• Workload management

• Mental health support

Does your workplace have these things? If not, what steps can you take toward building them into the workplace culture. Creating a workplace where people watch out for each other, where managers and staff understand mental health and can talk openly about it, where there are opportunities to build resilience and staff can seek help early for mental health concerns will improve staff wellbeing and satisfaction.

It provides the opportunity for staff to take risks, make mistakes, be creative, learn and grow, which in turn improves team performance. Which drives better relationships in the workplace and enhances meaning and engagement. All keys to wellbeing.

Taking the time to identify psychosocial hazards and improve psychological safety is an investment that every business must make.

Previous issues: If you are new to Dental as Anything, you can go back and read some of the previous popular issues, including my thoughts on the Indigenous Voice To Parliament, Poor Oral Health In Aged Care, Federal Budget A Kick In The Teeth and Dentistry and COVID-19: How Risky Is It?