Psychological Health and Safety (PHS) is about creating a work environment that actively prevents harm to employees’ mental health and promotes overall well-being.
PHS not about creating a workplace that is stress-free. Stress is a normal part of work and life.
Psychological health and safety is about building a work environment where everyone feels:
- Safe to speak up, admit a mistake or offer a new idea, without fear of being judged, ridiculed or punished.
- Treated with respect, fairness and dignity at work.
- Clear about what is expected of them and how they can be successful at their job.
- Supported when challenges arise.
- That there’s fair balance between effort and reward.
Everyone in an organization has a responsibility to do no harm to the PHS of others at work. While leadership and human resources (HR) are responsible for the formal systems and frameworks like policies and resources, PHS is built and maintained by the daily interactions of every single person in the organization. The responsibilities could be different depending on the size and structure of the organization.
Below, we outline the specific actions each role can take to support PHS according to Canadian Standards Association (CSA/ASC) z1003 – Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace (Latest edition). Where your roles and responsibilities differ, simply modify the lists accordingly.
The role of senior management
Building and reinforcing the foundation
Senior management plays a key role in building the foundation for PHS in an organization. While it’s their responsibility to ensure compliance with laws and regulation, they also often lead the decision-making that influences the systems, policies, and processes that impact PHS at work.
When it comes to PHS, some of senior management’s roles and responsibilities can include:
- Embedding PHS into organizational structure. Establishing, leading, and promoting PHS at work. This includes:
- Communicating the organization’s commitment to PHS to all workers.
- Ensuring this commitment is included in written policy, and providing it to all employees in accessible formats.
- Reviewing and revising organizational policies, programs, and procedures to support PHS.
- Integrating PHS into planning and decision-making processes, consulting with employees affected by imposed changes, and providing support to employees adapting to changes.
- Protecting employee PHS by clearly communicating the organization’s policies and expectations with external parties. These may include, but are not limited to, contract employees, clients, customers, students, and patients.
- Taking timely corrective action to uphold and support PHS at work.
- Keep improving. Creating, managing, and continually improving PHS as part of their overall approach to health and safety.
- Implementing the Standard can support you in planning, implementation, evaluation, and embedding continual improvement in a formal management system.
- Assessing PHS through data collection, hazard identification, and employee surveys. Evaluation planning for psychological health and safety shares an assessment tool called Guarding Minds at Work and helps you create a strategy for success.
- Promoting strategies, supports, resources, and processes of work that protect and enhance the PHS and well-being of employees. This might include personal protective equipment, unplugging from work policies, peer support groups, employee resource groups, and social events.
- Applying control measures throughout the employment life-cycle to reduce or eliminate the risk of harm from psychosocial factors and hazards. Psychosocial hazard mitigation and Evidence-based actions for PHS share strategies that can help reduce risk.
- Involve everyone. All levels of management shall actively promote and facilitate opportunities for inclusive, meaningful, and effective employee participation in addressing PHS. This includes:
- Providing employees with appropriate time, training, and resources to participate effectively.
- Identifying, removing, and preventing barriers to participation.
- Involving employee representatives, health and safety committees, and as appropriate, other relevant members from committees, employee networks, or advisory groups.
- Remove barriers. Take into account the diverse needs of employees, including the way PHS risks may be higher for some employees, and ensure inclusion is embedded into the planning, implementation, evaluation, and continual improvement of PHS. Proactively removing barriers to inclusion helps you consider the diverse needs of employees and ways to ensure they are protected. This includes:
- Removing systemic barriers that prevent inclusion and equity in the organization.
- Promoting and leading meaningful participation for employees from diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
- Examining data to understand unique risks faced by employees from diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
- Implementing protective, preventive, and corrective measures that are advised by and designed for the needs of employees from diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities.
- Support people leaders. Supporting managers and supervisors to lead in a psychologically healthy and safe way. This includes:
- Identifying the technical and interpersonal skills and competencies necessary to supervise employees in a psychologically healthy and safe way.
- Providing managers and supervisors with the appropriate training, coaching, and resources to develop and maintain these skills and competencies.
- Establishing clear expectations for managers and supervisors to apply these skills and competencies.
- Holding managers and supervisors accountable for meeting these expectations.
- Ensuring leaders complete training that provides them with the skills and resources necessary to support and address the needs of employees from diverse backgrounds, experiences, perspectives, and abilities. Inclusion strategies for leaders has resources to help leaders consider their leadership approach, team interactions, and ways to evaluate their initiatives.
The role of human resources
Designing and managing the systems
Human resources is critical in helping senior management transform their actions and commitments for PHS into organizational communications, processes, and policies.
- Collect meaningful data. Human resources is usually responsible for collecting and reviewing data to measure how the systems in the organization may be impacting PHS and where gaps may still be.
- Communicate effectively. Human resources will support senior management to develop and implement a communication plan for employees and affected parties that:
- Adheres to confidentiality and aligns with the principles of inclusion, diversity, equity, and accessibility.
- Provides information about PHS, including but not limited to related plans, processes, programs, resources, and available training, and
- Raises awareness and understanding of:
- How work can positively or negatively impact PHS.
- How employees and affected parties at all levels can impact others’ PHS.
- How different hazards, including psychosocial hazards, can affect employees differently.
- Embed PHS in business operations. HR will usually be involved with reviewing the results of PHS assessments, considering improvements in existing policies and processes throughout the employment lifecycle. They will look to leverage any existing tools or resources to address the issues identified.
- Explain identified hazards, risk assessment results, and relevant details of the risk control and improvement plans.
- Clarify roles, responsibilities, and expectations at all levels in relation to PHS, including what employees can expect from the organization.
- Share details of how the organization will respond promptly to employees’ and affected parties’ ideas, concerns, and input for consideration.
- Provide updates throughout the monitoring and review process.
Learn more about the responsibilities for human resources.
The role of health and safety committees (HSC)
Identifying risks and solutions
The health and safety committee’s role is to help identify work-related hazards and the risks that impact the PHS of workers, recommend controls that address those risks, and monitor outcomes to support follow up and continual improvement.
- Identify psychosocial hazards at work. The HSC will work with human resources to gather existing data. This can include data related to absenteeism, formal complaints of harassment, discrimination, and violence at work, worker turnover, long-term disability and more. The HSC will analyze data to:
- Understand the current state of PHS in the workplace. 20 questions for health and safety committees can help get you started.
- Identify psychosocial hazards and assess the associated risks to PHS. This should include identifying:
- The unique needs of a diverse workforce, recognizing that psychosocial factors may affect individuals differently and should be considered when assessing risks.
- Indicators of impact on worker health, safety, and well-being.
- Make recommendations to eliminate or mitigate risk.
- Identify preventive and protective measures to eliminate hazards or mitigate risks.
- Establish relevant objectives and targets to assist in the evaluation and continual improvement of PHS.
- Assist senior leaders in making informed decisions to improve PHS.
Learn more about the responsibilities of health and safety committees.
The role of leaders
Facilitating a psychologically safe environment
While senior leaders have a direct impact on the systems, policies, and processes that impact PHS in an organization, leaders play a critical role in making sure these systems are applied appropriately at work so they can have a positive impact on an employee’s experience.
- Modelling PHS at work. It is also a leader’s role to manage and support employees in a way that does no harm to the worker’s PHS. Leaders do this by:
- Modelling respectful and inclusive behaviour.
- Modelling constructive dialogue and addressing conflict fairly.
- Ensuring employees clearly understand their tasks and responsibilities and supporting them in managing their workloads.
- Supporting the success of employees, especially through challenges.
- Identifying situations where employees are exposed, or could be exposed, to psychosocial hazards.
- Recognizing the signs of potential employee harm resulting from exposure to psychosocial hazards.
- Supporting employee participation in PHS. The Creating awareness series provides structured conversations to help implement changes that can support your team’s PHS.
- Fostering psychological safety. When leaders support a culture of psychological safety, they encourage and show appreciation to employees who report errors, hazards, near misses, close calls, and incidents. They do this by:
- Communicating a clear process for reporting and confidential reporting.
- Clearly defining the roles and responsibilities of all parties participating in the reporting process, including what employees can expect from the organization.
Learn more about the responsibilities of people leaders
The role of employees
Active participants
- Do no harm. It is the responsibility of every employee in the organization to do no harm to the PHS of those they work with. This includes their actions, behaviour, and language. Each employee is responsible for:
- Managing their personal well-being as best they can. Managing stress shares strategies employees can utilize both at work and outside of it to support their well-being.
- Not causing harm to others. The strategies and activities on Emotional intelligence for employees can help employees manage their reactions at work and reduce any negative impact they may have on others.
- Completing their assigned tasks and responsibilities.
Speaking up respectfully when they see actions or behaviours that could cause harm. Calling in team members is an activity that shares ways an employee can call a team member in if their actions or behaviours may be harmful to others.
Learn more about employees’ role in psychological health and safety.
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