What is Psychosocial Risk Management?

State Codes of Practice now require you to protect staff psychological safety in the same way as physical safety. This includes identifying hazards in the way work is designed/managed, and workplace interactions/behaviours. You must also assess and minimise the risk that any hazards can cause psychological harm. You must also regularly review the effectiveness of any efforts you are making to reduce risk.

I’m pretty sure we have this covered as we informally assess hazards and implement control measures via our HR/People and Culture/Well-being department…

You’re likely already managing psychosocial risk to some degree, but not meeting your psychosocial risk management requirements.At mibo, we help you and any external consultants to conveniently identify and record current psychosocial risk measures, then automatically review measure effectiveness by identifying current hazards and assessing risk which usually informs new control measures.

We already use an EAP including a Well-being Platform. Does this mean we are meeting our requirements?

No. Traditional workplace well-being platforms and EAP’s focus solely on the individual, placing much of the well-being responsibility on self-motivated employee action outside of work hours. Unfortunately, this approach fails to recognise the biggest influence on staff well-being – the work environment. We recommend EAPs in their rightful place...as safety nets for struggling individuals who require support in addition to proactive, work centred prevention measures. Psychosocial risk management is a mandatory workplace health and safety issue. You are required to take 4 steps to eliminate and minimise risk as the level of work design, management, and inappropriate work behaviours: identify hazards, assess risk, control risk, and review control measure effectiveness.

Won’t this just make more work for me…I’m already under the pump!

At the forefront of our mind has been helping reduce administration requirement in managing psychosocial risks. Our intelligent delivery and monitoring system does the majority of the work for you, garnering and presenting key staff data, automatically assessing risk, delivering relevant trainings to managers and employees, reviewing risk management effectiveness, and providing personalised well-being and self care options to each person (if you include our well-being support).

We’ve just started the psychosocial risk management process, but not sure of the best way to move forward…

The best way to move forward is to put in place processes that include the 4 required steps, 1 step at a time. That’s why at Mibo our 4 levels of service align with the steps you need to complete. Companies often begin with Service Level 1, and expand to Levels 2, 3, and sometimes 4 sequentially over time.

How do I stop talk and assessment of psychosocial risks turning into giving staff excuses not to be effective contributors?

Work environment assessments are usually conducted from a risk-based lens. As a result of our combined background in high performance sport and clinical health care, we approach psychosocial risk management from a holistic perspective, rather than purely risk-based lens. Our technology uniquely assesses both harm and benefit providing a comprehensive view of the psychosocial environment. This approach allows a nuanced understanding of factors contributing to both positive and negative mental health staff outcomes. Overall, we are experienced in helping this process become a cornerstone of more effective employee well-being and performance.

Employees are going to be concerned about the confidentiality of their survey responses. How do you address this?

All employee data is held securely in mibo systems available only to our health care professionals bound by their registration confidentiality obligations. Your organisation will only have access to aggregate team data when there are 8 or more members in a team. We communicate confidentiality extensively to your employees before participation.

But how do I really know all the data is safe and secure?

Mibo takes data security very seriously and has consequently made significant investment to ensuring data is protected and confidential. Mibo has implemented a sophisticated penetration testing regime for internal and external infrastructure, web and mobile application, and build and configuration reviews. The regime includes, yearly scheduled pen testing, additional agile pen testing to coincide with the release of software and app updates, and a combination of black, white and grey box testing. Mibo conducts expert, third party data and platform security reviews. Mibo uses Microsoft Azure data warehouses. All data collected is a locally stored in keeping with data residency laws