People at Work

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Work related, mental or psychological health conditions have become a major concern in Australian workplaces due to the negative impact on individual workers and the costs associated with the long periods away from work that a typical of associated claims. Australian work, health and safety regulators have jointly funded people at work, a validated psychosocial risk assessment survey to help organizations identify the most common psychosocial hazards in their workplace, causing both psychological and physical harm.

Speaker 2 (00:32):
One of the benefits of People at Work is that it has Australian benchmarks. So, what that allows an organisation to do is to make a comparison of how they are tracking against the Australian benchmark, whether they're tracking, um, better than or the same as, or, um, not quite as good as the benchmark. So that, I think that's good information for organisations to have so they can form that comparison.

Speaker 3 (00:57):
Businesses often come to us, um, in, in our academic role and when I was working out in, uh, practice as well, asking what they can do to better manage work-related mental health. They know they've got a problem, they know their people are struggling, um, there's lots of absenteeism, or they can just see that people aren't coping with the workload. They want to understand what it is about the work itself that may be contributing to, um, people not, not traveling so well. And so that's where this particular tool is absolutely, uh, the perfect fit for what would help them, um, understand those issues. So, what it does is actually gives the business data about the evidence-based risk factors and, and well-established risk factors for psychological injury and quantifies which of those, for them, for their particular workforce, and the particular tasks that their workers are doing, um, may be contributing the most to poor mental health outcomes. And it measures 14 different known psychosocial hazards that are categorised as either job demands or job resources that may minimise the risk.

Speaker 1 (02:12):
The specific reasons for implementing people at work will be unique to each workplace. For some the legal considerations may be most important, whereas others may be motivated by financial or productivity benefits. Did you know workplaces that promote psychologically healthy and safe workplaces and identify and manage psychosocial hazards? Experience numerous benefits that include increases in productivity, increases in engagement and job satisfaction, increases in attracting top talent, and decreases in absenteeism, turnover, workers' compensation claims, and psychosocial work related injuries and illness.

Speaker 2 (02:57):
Well, think of the moment workplaces are very interested in looking at this area in terms of managing their psychosocial hazards and People at Work is an excellent way to do that. So, the People at Work program, uh, the hard at, which is the People at Work Survey is, is a way of collecting information from your workforce. So it, it has in-built consultation and collaboration, which I think is, is a really important feature of People at Work. So, you get is a sense of what are the psychosocial hazards in the workplace? And then once again, through consultation, have some discussion about how can we address these psychosocial hazards. So, what sort of control measures are going to suit our organisation?

Speaker 1 (03:36):
People at Work steps organisations through a five-step process to ready their workplace, identify, assess, and manage psychosocial hazards, which are known to cause harm, both psychological and physical, such as musculoskeletal injuries. We considered the resources that a workplace might need in implementing the process. We've designed the platform so that organisations have access to communication plans and supporting templates, implementation timelines and plans, promotional materials, a focus group guide, action planning guides, examples of controls, and a series of e-learning modules that are self-paced and provided overview of the steps to take when getting started.

Speaker 4 (04:20):
The digital platform provides organisations with their results in two reporting formats, a high-level summary, and a more detailed report that also provides suggestions for improvements in the workplace. Over time, organisations can monitor trends and the effectiveness on various strategies or actions that they may be taking. Using these leading indicators means the organisation can respond before their employees suffer from harm, including psychological injury.

Speaker 1 (04:55):
Creating an account is also really easy. You can customise the People at Work survey, distribute your workforce, and monitor the progress of this survey response rate in real time. You can select particular modules and group breakdown questions you might like to include in your survey to customise it to your organisation and see where your psychosocial risks might be high in the organisation. The reports have been designed to take the guesswork out of understanding what your results mean. They show your level of risk in relation to each psychosocial hazard, what that result means and what to do next. When there is a high risk result, there are some suggested actions you can take to help in overcoming that issue. There's also a second shorter report if you just want a quick snapshot of your results or something you can distribute to others such as executives in your organisation to learn more and set up your account. Visit the People at Work website.

Speaker 2 (05:50):
So People at Work has been around for quite a, a long time. Um, obviously now we have a digital platform, so that's a, that's a, a huge enhancement. Um, in terms of using the tool. It's a validated tool and, and has been picked up by all State regulators in Australia and Comcare and Safe Work Australia as well.

Speaker 3 (06:08):
It's fundamentally important that they're making decisions based on good data. The other thing I guess that's related to that is this, uh, compliance issue about what is reasonably practicable and what organisations, uh, reasonably ought to know about the risk and what can be done about the risk. And this tool provides organisations clear guidance about, you know, what they, what if, if they don't know, and what they reasonably ought to know. Asking these questions, um, fills that void for

Speaker 2 (06:40):
Them. If you're on the journey to creating a mentally healthy and safe workplace, I encourage you to visit the People at Work website and have a look at all the resources that are available.