This white paper outlines 5 important capabilities next-generation psychosocial assessment tools should include.

Hazard ID surveys were instrumental in shifting the field toward the inclusion of quantitative approaches in psychosocial risk management

And while more recent 2nd generation risk assessment tools rooted in the Occupational Hygiene Model were an important step forward, they’re not suitably equipped for the complexities of the psychosocial environment.

To advance the field it’s critical to recognise current limitations so we can better:
👉 Assess the impact of psychosocial factors on work and health outcomes
👉 Support more targeted and efficient qualitative consultation, and
👉 Design more effective controls

Quantitative Psychosocial Assessment: A Brief History and Next Generation Requirements

This paper reflects on the evolution of quantitative psychosocial assessment, highlighting how far we’ve come and where we need to go next.

Ultimately, it calls for an updated, nuanced approach to psychosocial assessment that reflects the distinct characteristics of psychosocial risk, including the capacity to cause both psychological harm and benefit, along with its interrelated, cumulative, dynamic, and variable nature.

Contents

The Evolution of Psychosocial Risk Assessment Summarises the journey from early Hazard ID surveys to more recent, risk-focused psychosocial assessment approaches.

Next Generation Requirements for Psychosocial Assessment Outlines the limitations of current models and presents key requirements for a more effective, nuanced approach to assessing psychosocial risks.

Moving Forward: Improving Assessment and Promoting Transdisciplinary Teams Advocates for an integrated psychosocial assessment approach that supports cross-functional collaboration and accurate, actionable insights.

The Evolution of Psychosocial Risk Assessment

1st Generation Tools

The journey began with Hazard Identification (Hazard ID) surveys, which played a foundational role in the shift toward quantitative approaches in psychosocial risk management. These early tools categorised and measured work-related psychological hazards.

Late 1970s: The Job Content Questionnaire was developed, laying the groundwork for measuring psychosocial factors as workplace hazards.

1997: The Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire introduced a more comprehensive assessment of workplace psychosocial hazards, and has continued to be updated over time.

2004: The UK’s HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool was developed to identify six core work-related stress categories: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change.

2007: Australia’s People at Work project was established, leading to the development of the People at Work Survey still used today.

2009: Canada’s Guarding Minds at Work survey was introduced, a tool that would go on to align with Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety.

2010: A significant development with Dr. Maureen Dollard’s Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) framework.

This shifted the focus from assessing psychosocial hazards to evaluating the value senior management places on workers’ psychological health and safety through organisational policies, procedures, and practices.

This approach now has a large evidence base demonstrating its ability to indicate the likelihood of psychosocial hazards, as well as associated work and health outcomes.

1st Generation Tool Limitations

While 1st generation tools (outside of PSC) identify psychosocial hazards, they do not directly assess risk. Understanding whether factors present harm requires more than identification—it requires assessment of actual impact on workers.

Accordingly, 2nd generation tools have emerged over the last decade with the goal of suitably assessing psychosocial risk.

2nd Generation Tools

Current regulatory requirements and several popular 2nd generation tools are rooted in the Occupational Hygiene Model, originally designed to protect worker physical health by controlling workplace hazards that can cause harm.

This approach recognises that while Hazard ID surveys can indicate whether work factors are hazards, they do not measure the risk of harm to workers. And while risk assessment is not a legislative requirement in all jurisdictions, it is necessary to help prioritise and plan risk controls accordingly.

Therefore, 2nd generation psychosocial assessment tools aim to examine participants’ actual experience of work factor harm. This method has since played a vital role in increasing awareness and adoption of psychosocial risk management.

But while drawing from the occupational hygiene model offers advantages over Hazard ID alone, a core assumption—that physical and psychosocial risks can be assessed in the same way—has long been questioned.

Challenges with Current Approaches

As early as 2000, Rick and Briner challenged the application of traditional physical risk assessment models to psychosocial contexts, suggesting such frameworks are conceptually and practically inadequate to capture the complexity involved.

Additionally, 2nd generation tools are usually preferable to Health and Safety professionals who are familiar with risk assessment approaches. However, Human Resources teams are typically comfortable with culture or engagement surveys, which more closely resemble Hazard ID surveys that tend to explore both negative and positive work aspects.

This can lead to misalignment among key internal stakeholders and barriers to building the collaborative, cross-functional teams needed to manage psychosocial risks effectively.

Physical Risk vs. Psychosocial Risk

The fundamental differences between physical and psychosocial risk environments require different assessment methodologies. Understanding these distinctions is critical for developing effective next-generation tools.

Next Generation Requirements for Psychosocial Assessment

While effective in managing physical risks, Occupational Hygiene Model-related approaches require substantial revision to suit inherently complex and variable psychosocial environments—and to promote broader, more effective adoption.

1. Measuring Both Harm AND Benefit

Unlike physical risks which only cause harm, many psychosocial factors—such as how work is designed, how workers are managed, and governance systems—can both harm and benefit mental health and wellbeing.

That’s why it’s not enough to only look for harm in psychosocial assessment. Also, the absence of harm does not necessarily mean a factor is protective.

Therefore, we also need to measure how much psychosocial benefit is being experienced—because it is psychosocial benefits that help mitigate potential harm from hazards and actively support positive mental health outcomes.

This is particularly important where exposure to psychosocial hazards is inherent in a role. In these cases, targeting the most appropriate protective factors becomes a critical risk management strategy.

Examples of Harm and Benefit

Psychosocial Harm Examples	Psychosocial Benefit Examples
Poor Role Clarity	Good Role Clarity
Poor Manager Support	Good Manager Support
Workplace Disrespect	Workplace Respect
A lack of fairness	Fairness
Poor Reward and Recognition	Good Reward and Recognition

2. Accounting for Interrelated and Cumulative Nature

Physical risks are typically analysed individually, with the highest-rated risk prioritised for intervention. This approach does not consider the interrelated nature of psychosocial factors or the cumulative effect that multiple hazards may have.

For example, consider the influence poor organisational fairness and high productivity hindrances might have on increasing workplace incivility downstream. Or consider the cumulative impact several minor hazards may have when combined.

Example System Interaction:

• Factor 1: Procedural Fairness (30 – Very Low)
• Factor 2: Productivity Hindrances (55 – Very High)
• Factor 3: Workplace Civility (40 – Very Low)
• Factor 4: [Influenced by Factors 1-3]

Effective psychosocial assessment must evaluate which factors have the biggest influence on the entire system, analyse the balance of total harm burden versus protective benefits, and inform controls that prioritise system-wide influence.

By doing so, we increase the chance that control measures will result in improvements across multiple factors and deliver the greatest return on investment.

3. Measuring Present vs. Future Harm

In the occupational hygiene model, potential future harm is evaluated by assessing the risk (likelihood and consequence) of hazards causing harm (e.g., falling into an uncovered hole).

In contrast, most psychosocial factors shape all workers’ immediate, daily lived experiences, providing direct awareness of psychological harm or benefit. For example, a reasonable workload, meaningful work, or a supportive direct leader contribute recognisable benefit. Or workplace unfairness and incivility contribute recognisable harm.

Therefore, traditional risk assessment based on likelihood × consequence is largely unnecessary for psychosocial risks. Instead, the psychosocial environment allows assessment of psychological injury or illness based on workers’ actual reports of current felt harm and benefit, measured as prevalence × impact (harm severity or benefit significance).

Assessment Methodology Comparison

2nd Generation: Likelihood × Consequence Next Generation: Prevalence × Impact

4. Reconsidering Frequency and Duration

The occupational hygiene model and model codes of practice require that organisations have regard for the duration, frequency, and severity of hazard exposure. Assessing frequency and duration is suitable for some factors (e.g., job demands, harmful behaviours).

However, psychosocial resource factors (e.g., role clarity, job control, manager/co-worker relationships) tend to affect workers continuously once established. For example, if someone is unclear about their responsibilities, has little choice in how they complete work, or feels unsupported by their manager or co-workers, these conditions persist.

As a result, measuring hazard exposure or harm frequency for such factors (e.g., asking “How often are you exposed to this factor?” or “How often does this factor affect you?”) is unnecessary.

Further, hazard exposure (or harm) duration from social factors like incivility or manager and co-worker support changes with each interaction. For example, depending on their nature, a five-minute co-worker interaction might have an impact for days, while a longer exchange may be quickly forgotten, making it difficult and often confusing to quantify harm exposure duration in a traditional manner.

This means assessing hazard exposure or harm duration for these factors (e.g., asking “how long does exposure to this factor last” or “how long does the effect last for”) is also impractical.

Instead, resource-related factors are best assessed using a degree of agreement scale. This reflects their typically continuous but fluctuating nature once established.

Assessment Approach Example: Role Clarity

2nd Generation Questions:

1. How often are you exposed to this factor?
2. How often does this factor affect you?
3. How long does exposure to this factor last?
4. How long does the effect last for?

Next Generation Question: “I am clear on what my responsibilities are”

• Strongly Disagree
• Somewhat Disagree
• Neither Agree nor Disagree
• Somewhat Agree
• Strongly Agree

5. Capturing Variable Nature

While the experience of physical hazards tends to be more stable, the psychosocial environment is highly variable, both between and within organisational groups. This is because many psychosocial factors are dependent on social interactions, and how they are experienced is influenced by our individual personalities, circumstances, and histories.

This often leads to significant variation between teams within the same department, driven by factors like team dynamics or the capabilities of individual leaders.

And also differences among individuals within the same team, for example:

• Some team members finding the emotional demands of a role energising, while others experience them as stressful
• A direct leader’s management being experienced as beneficial for some, but harmful by others

Traditional risk assessment approaches are not fit to capture these complexities. Instead, effective psychosocial assessment requires:

i. Recognition that some psychosocial factors are neither only harmful or protective, but both, depending on the individual differences of each group member, and

ii. The capacity to then measure these differences

Example: Variable Experiences

Manager Support:

• 27% experiencing harm
• 52% experiencing benefit
• 19% neutral
• (2% not shown)

Emotional Demands:

• 32% experiencing harm
• 5% experiencing benefit
• (63% neutral/not shown)

5 Critical Differences Between Physical and Psychosocial Risk Assessment

#	Difference	Key Insight
1	Harm and Benefit	Most psychosocial factors can cause benefits, not just harm, so both possibilities must be measured where relevant
2	Interrelated and Cumulative	Psychosocial factors tend to interact and are cumulative in impact, so require a whole-system approach
3	Present vs. Future Harm	Psychosocial risk is better assessed via current felt harm and benefit rather than future likelihood and consequence
4	Limits of Frequency and Duration	Psychosocial resource factors are experienced continuously but fluctuate, so exposure/harm frequency and duration aren’t the best way to assess them
5	Highly Variable	Experiences differ widely between and within teams, so assessments must capture individual variation

Moving Forward: Improving Assessment and Promoting Transdisciplinary Teams

Evolution of Approaches

1st Generation: Hazard ID only Identifies psychosocial hazards without assessing risk.

2nd Generation: Risk Assessment Focuses on psychological harm only (harm lens).

Next Generation: Integrated Hazard ID and Risk Assessment Assesses both harm AND benefit from psychosocial factors.

The Path Forward

Hazard ID surveys were instrumental in shifting the field toward quantitative approaches in psychosocial risk management. And while 2nd generation risk assessment tools were an important step forward, they aren’t suitably equipped for the complexities of the psychosocial environment.

To advance the field, it is critical to recognise these limitations to more accurately measure the impact of psychosocial factors on work and health outcomes, and also support the design of effective controls.

Further, to help overcome the barriers of siloed approaches to psychosocial risk management, the industry needs quantitative tools that bridge the gap between HR, WHS, and other relevant departments.

Tools that suitably account for both harm and benefit, the interrelated and cumulative nature of psychosocial factors, and the continuous, variable, and immediate daily lived experience of the psychosocial environment.

Supporting Transdisciplinary Collaboration

Next-generation psychosocial assessment tools must serve multiple stakeholders—Health and Safety professionals familiar with risk assessment frameworks, Human Resources teams comfortable with culture and engagement surveys, and senior leaders requiring clear, actionable insights.

By integrating the strengths of both Hazard ID and risk assessment approaches while addressing their limitations, we can create tools that support truly collaborative, cross-functional psychosocial risk management.

This integrated approach enables organisations to move beyond siloed efforts toward comprehensive strategies that protect and promote worker psychological health while meeting regulatory obligations.

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Author

Dr. Anthony Ross Founder, Chief of Psychosocial Safety at Mibo

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