Psychosocial hazard mitigation

Psychosocial hazards, such as workplace harassment, excessive workload, or low job control can cause both physical and psychological harm. Not all hazards can be eliminated, but when a hazard continues to exist, an employee may be harmed if they’re exposed to the hazard. If a hazard can’t be eliminated, the goal is to reduce the frequency of exposure as well as the potential severity of harm if exposure occurs. This is the purpose of “mitigation”.

Psychosocial hazards have been defined by the Canadian Standards Association Group (CSA) as “elements of the work environment, workplace social interactions, management practices, employment conditions, or the organization of work that have the potential to cause harm to a worker.”

This page outlines how HR, leaders, and health and safety committees work together to address psychosocial hazards. It does not cover detailed tactics. Dedicated guides for management and for health and safety are available on separate pages and provide specific strategies, tools for identifying hazards, and guidance on developing recommendations.

Organizational versus individual focus

Psychological health and safety (PHS) focuses on what is within the control and influence of the organization. While leaders play a vital role in supporting individual employees, including those managing disabilities or mental health challenges, psychosocial hazard mitigation is distinct:

• Hazard mitigation focuses on systemic changes to work design, culture, and processes to prevent harm before it occurs.
• Individual support focuses on accommodating and assisting specific employees as needed.

By addressing the root organizational causes of stress and harm, we protect our workforce and fulfill our duty of care.

Compliance and legal duty

Canadian occupational health and safety laws generally require employers to take reasonable precautions to protect workers’ health and safety. This duty applies to hazards that may cause psychological harm and are identified in legislation, such as harassment, and may also apply to those that are not explicitly named in legislation but could cause harm if not mitigated, which could include excessive workload and work pace. 

In all cases, organizations must follow:

• Applicable legislation, including:
  • Occupational health and safety
  • Human rights
  • Industry-specific legal requirements
• Applicable standards and codes, where relevant
• Collective agreements, where applicable 
• Existing organizational policies, procedures, and practices, which may need to be reviewed or updated to support psychosocial hazard identification and mitigation

Use a practical and collaborative approach

Psychosocial hazard identification and risk mitigation can use a practical, collaborative systems approach that is integrated with the organization’s existing processes. 

This means that human resources (HR), management and health and safety committees (HSC) look to embed these changes into already active systems, rather than create a lot of additional work. 

On this page, executive leadership is referring to those who make decisions regarding policies and resource allocation rather than frontline leaders or managers who don’t have this authority.

Set roles, authority, and boundaries

Clear roles, authority, and boundaries help ensure psychosocial hazards are managed effectively without duplication, gaps, or role confusion. The following sections outline how executive leadership, the HSC, and HR contribute to psychosocial hazard identification and mitigation. These descriptions are intended as practical guidance, and are not exhaustive. Responsibilities may vary based on organizational structure, policies, and applicable legislation.

While the roles and responsibilities for psychological health and safety extend to everyone in the workplace, the more specific responsibility for identifying and mitigating psychosocial hazards rests with management and where present, in part with the HSC. 

Executive leadership

• Role and authority: 
  • Psychosocial hazards are workplace hazards and fall within the organization’s Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) obligations. Canadian jurisdictions, through their OHS acts and regulations, require employers to identify hazards and take reasonable steps to protect the health and safety of employees from the risk of harm. 
  • While some jurisdictions explicitly reference psychosocial well-being, workplace harassment, or violence, these obligations also arise through existing, general duty provisions, even where psychosocial hazards are not named.
• Boundaries: 
  • Although executive leadership is legally responsible, delegation of responsibilities between executive leadership, HR, and HSC helps ensure work is not duplicated, expertise is leveraged and confidentiality is protected.

Human resources (HR)

• Role and authority:
  • HR supports psychosocial hazard management by administering and maintaining policies, procedures, and programs related to people management, human rights, and workplace conduct. 
  • HR manages individual employee concerns and related investigations, as well as confidential records.
  • HR leads processes related to harassment, bullying, discrimination, and other human rights-based concerns, and supports investigations where required by legislation or organizational policy. 
  • HR also provides guidance on policy application, training, and compliance, and manages confidential employee records and employment-related documentation.
• Boundaries: 
  • HR does not replace operational or occupational health and safety responsibilities for identifying and controlling workplace hazards, including psychosocial hazards related to work design, workload, or operational practices. 
  • Where a HSC is mandated by law, HR does not direct or conduct OHS hazard identification, inspections, or investigations that fall within operational health and safety processes. Instead, HR acts as a data partner to the HSC to highlight trends that require OHS investigation. The exception to this is where there is a requirement to support compliance, coordination, or employee entitlements. 
  • While HR manages confidential records, information shared with the HSC or leaders is limited to what is necessary to fulfill their roles. The information sharing must also comply with applicable privacy legislation and organizational procedures.

Health and safety committee (HSC)

• Role and authority:
  • The HSC’s role includes:
    • Identifying psychosocial hazards
    • Considering risk in terms of severity and likelihood of harm
    • Participating in workplace inspections and incident investigations 
    • Making recommendations to the employer
  • The HSC also tracks and monitors the status of recommendations and control measures to support prevention and continuous improvement, without assuming management or operational authority.
• Boundaries: 
  • The HSC does not conduct clinical assessments or diagnoses, apply disciplinary action, manage performance, or directly implement programs or corrective actions. 
  • The HSC’s consideration of risk is intended to support prioritization and recommendations. It does not involve conducting formal or complex risk assessments, which may require specialized expertise, additional data, or decision-making authority beyond the HSC’s role.
  • While HSC members may receive individual concerns or confidential information from employees, the HSC’s role is to identify potential hazards or systemic issues, protect confidentiality, and refer matters to the appropriate organizational process where required. This could include HR, management, or formal reporting mechanisms. 
  • Where individual concerns relate to health and safety or potential harm, the HSC should consider the issue at a trend or hazard level, without investigating personal details or resolving interpersonal conflicts.
  • In investigations involving employee health and safety, HSC participation may be limited by privacy and confidentiality requirements, or the need for specialized investigative expertise. Specialized investigative expertise often applies in complex or sensitive situations involving psychological harm.

How other roles support psychosocial hazard mitigation

• Supervisors: Apply controls day-to-day by setting clear expectations, monitoring workload, addressing issues promptly and escalating concerns they cannot resolve.
• Employees: Report hazards, participate in inspections or consultations when asked, and follow workplace policies.
• Unions or employee representatives: Support reporting, raise systemic concerns, and help ensure fairness.
• Advisors, including occupational heath, disability management, diversity, equity and inclusion: Contribute expertise where hazards disproportionately affect certain roles or groups.
• Leaders: Ensure time, resources, authority, and accountability are built into the system.

Embed psychosocial hazard mitigation into existing processes

What follows is discussion and suggestions to support executive leadership and HR in embedding psychosocial hazard mitigation in their existing processes for risk management and good governance. 

Identification and integration

Psychosocial hazard identification and risk mitigation should use a practical and collaborative systems approach, integrated with the organization’s existing processes. This means that, where possible, HR and the HSC look to embed these changes into already active systems, rather than creating an additional approach. Some ideas to help with this include:

• Methods: Integrate identification into regular workplace inspections, safety walk-throughs, hazard discussions, and incident investigations.
• Strategic alignment: Leadership and HR consider hazards throughout the employee life cycle, as well as throughout planning, when creating strategy, during decision-making, when developing policies, and during change management.
• Data sharing: HR shares existing aggregated, non-identifying information about recurring issues such as workload pressure, role confusion, absenteeism, turnover or interpersonal conflict so the HSC can see patterns without accessing personal details.
• Documentation: The HSC should document each psychosocial hazard the same way other hazards are recorded: by stating what it is, where it shows up, who is affected, and possible contributing factors.

The National Standard of Canada on Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace lists psychosocial factors. These psychosocial factors can all potentially be hazards when managed poorly, but can also be protective of employee PHS when managed well. Both the HSC and HR should be aware of how to use psychosocial factors to balance out hazards that cannot be eliminate. Psychosocial factor and hazards explains this concept further. 

Risk assessment 

The HSC can make recommendations to the employer to reduce the risk of harm to employees who could be exposed to psychosocial hazards.  It is ultimately the employer’s responsibility to take action.  The process of prioritizing action should be done collaboratively between the HSC, HR and executive leadership.

• HSC assesses the severity and frequency of identified psychosocial hazards, focusing on those that could reasonably cause harm if left unaddressed. 
• HSC with support from HR identifies whether existing policies, staffing practices, performance management processes, or training gaps are contributing to the risk, or to the mitigation of that risk.
• HSC identifies and recommends possible control measures in addition to what is already existing to executive leadership. 
• Executive leadership provides operational input on feasibility, timing, and resource constraints.
• Together, the HSC, HR and Executive leadership prioritize hazards that can be reduced through changes to work design, communication, expectations, or supervisory practices, consistent with the employer duty to take reasonable precautions.

Prioritization of control measures 

In health and safety, the prioritization of control measures is called the hierarchy of controls. It ranks the control measures from most effective, meaning elimination of the hazard, to least effective, meaning helping employees only after they have been exposed to the risk. 

The idea is to start with the most effective approaches and only turn to less effective if they are not possible. HR and Executive leadership can also prioritize their chosen approaches in a similar way.

• Where possible, eliminate or reduce the potential source of harm such as unrealistic deadlines, chronic understaffing, or unclear authority.
• Where elimination is not possible, introduce controls such as clearer role definitions, workload planning processes, respectful workplace procedures, or training.
• After organizational controls are considered, individual training and coping strategies can be explored to provide more tools and resources to employees.
• Executive leadership implements changes within their teams that helps minimize risk.
• HR updates or reinforces policies and provides guidance or training where required.
• HR enhances the accountability processes related to minimizing risk.
• HSC tracks whether controls are put in place, monitors whether they are effective, and follows up with executive leadership and HR. 

Monitor, review, and adjust

Responsibility for ensuring that controls are in place and working, rests with the employer. Using a collaborative systems approach and leveraging HSC expertise helps the employer fulfill this responsibility and keep employees safe.

• HSC reviews whether identified psychosocial hazards are declining, stable, or worsening over time. Information for reviews can come from various sources, such as HR indicators, leadership reports, employee feedback, etc.
• HR tracks indicators such as absenteeism trends, disability durations, employee turnover, and recurring complaints. They share trend-level data only, to protect employee confidentiality. 
• Executive leadership reports whether controls are effective in practice. 
• Adjustments are made as part of continual improvement, consistent with OHS requirements to regularly review hazards and risk controls.

All of the above are practical suggestions to help your organization manage psychosocial hazards. These suggestions do not replace legal or regulatory obligations. Regulatory guidance on psychosocial hazard identification and mitigation is available through provincial and territorial OHS regulators, safe work associations, and organizations such as the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS).

Guides for mitigation by role

For detailed strategies tailored to specific roles, please select the appropriate guide below:

• Management guide for psychosocial hazards – Information and strategies for executive leadership, including human resources, to identify and manage psychosocial hazards. The focus for management is policy development, resource allocation and data collection, program and process implementation and psychologically safe leadership.
• Health and safety guide for psychosocial hazards –  Tactics for hazard identification, risk assessment, and incident monitoring. The focus for health and safety committees is to embed psychosocial hazard mitigation into existing responsibilities and processes for overall health and safety.

Frontline leaders also have a role to play, but it’s less formal in terms of psychosocial hazard mitigation and more related to the environment they provide for their direct reports. Many tools such as the Psychologically Safe Leader Assessment and the Psychologically Safe Team Assessment can help identify opportunities for improvement. 

Share this page with someone who is  responsible for reducing employee exposure to workplace hazards. 

What’s next?

• If you’re a manager or human resource personnel, check out Management guide for psychosocial hazards. 
• If you’re a health and safety committee member, check out Health and safety guide for psychosocial hazards.