Moving past the fruit bowls

Bridget Jelley shares how we can support leaders in identifying and managing psychological hazards in the workplace.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought psychological health in the workplace into sharp focus. Wellbeing and mental health have perhaps been viewed in the past as a bit ‘fluffy’, ‘soft’ or ‘abstract’, and not relevant to organisational productivity or the bottom line. However, COVID-19 has provided a tangible example to many of us on how our people’s mental health and wellbeing are vitally important to business.

Thanks to COVID-19’s magnification of the role of mental health in contributing to a healthy, happy workforce, now is the time to move beyond the fruit bowl and ad hoc approaches to wellbeing in the workplace. Leaders now need to take a more strategic approach to really understand what risks exist in the work environment and how to better manage them.

What’s the state of play in New Zealand?

In positive psychology, we look at wellbeing on a continuum. We can be anywhere on that continuum, from flourishing to languishing. In New Zealand, how wellbeing has been traditionally measured is through mental health data.

The following is a sample of the most recent findings from across a range of New Zealand surveys.

• In the 2020 General Social Survey, nearly 20 per cent of New Zealanders were identified as having poor mental wellbeing. These data were collected post- COVID-19 alert level 4 and are consistent with findings from previous years.

• These results are echoed in the 2019/20 New Zealand Health Survey, which shows that 20 per cent of the population suffer from a mood or anxiety disorder. This number has been steadily climbing since 2006 when it measured a more reserved 12.7 per cent.

• Data from the 2015, 2016 and 2018 New Zealand Mental Health Monitor and the 2018 New Zealand Health and Lifestyles Survey show that almost 31 per cent of people have had a personal experience of mental distress.

• Thirty-six per cent of people who were currently experiencing high mental distress reported being discriminated against because of their mental distress, and that discrimination was most commonly encountered in the workplace.

• A 2018 review of studies conducted in Australia, Canada, Denmark, France, Sweden, Switzerland, the United Kingdom, the United States of America and the EU-15 showed the annual economic costs of work-related stress to range between US$221.13 million to US$187 billion. The costs were primarily due to productivityrelated losses, followed by healthcare and medical costs.

• The Southern Cross Workplace Wellness report specifies the cost to the New Zealand economy, with NZ$1.79 billion due to absenteeism, which makes up an estimated third of the hidden cost of presenteeism (when workers are at the workplace but not mentally engaged with work).

These findings demonstrate some important points.

• Poor mental health remains an issue in New Zealand and its workplaces.

• The fact that many still fear opening up about experiencing mental distress, whether mild or severe, is almost ironic given that this human experience is so common. Most people know someone (77 per cent) who experiences mental distress.

• Poor employee mental wellbeing takes a significant toll on the employee, the team, the organisation and the economy. It affects productivity, turnover, sickness and absenteeism. It affects employee life satisfaction, job performance and physical health, which places a further financial and workforce burden on an organisation.

• Poor wellbeing has a considerable cost to businesses. Unwell employees cost businesses in absenteeism, presenteeism (estimated to cost three times that of absenteeism), reduced work performance, increased turnover and, of course, poorer health.

The good news is that investing in wellbeing has been associated with an increased return on investment, evidenced by current literature (Deloitte, 2017). Improved wellbeing often results in:

• reduced absenteeism, an area in which New Zealand organisations experience on average per employee per annum of $1,500 (Southern Cross and Mental Health Foundation, 2017).

• increased productivity of up to 31 per cent reported in some research (Community Mental Health Centre, 2013).

• increased retention and a significant reduction in employee turnover (Mental Health Foundation, 2016).

All of the above provide strong evidence that investing in mental health and wellbeing is a priority and that the right approach will yield positive outcomes for organisations.

What are our obligations? So, what exactly are our obligations? Should organisations be solely responsible for the wellbeing of their employees? Well, the short answer is we can’t possibly be 100 per cent accountable for everyone’s wellbeing at all times. However, we can do our part and put in place processes and initiatives that ensure people have everything they need at work to be happy, healthy and well.

What exactly is leader accountability for mental health in the workplace?

The Employment Relations Act 2000, the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015, the Human Rights Amendment Act 2001 and Health and Safety at work Strategy 2018–2028 all assign a duty of care and protection by organisations and their selected leadership to the mental wellbeing of their workforce.

While the Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 does not make it mandatory to implement steps to minimise or eliminate risks of psychological harm in the workplace, legally, employers are liable where evidence finds that reasonable steps were not taken where a risk was known.

The reality is that the risk of psychological harm and injury to employees is just as likely, if not more likely, than the risk of physical injury given the pressures, insecurity and cognitive load that comes with modern-day jobs.

All evidence points to the value of taking employee mental health seriously and acting early. Managers are ideally placed to do just that.

Leaders need to adopt a new mindset

Without addressing this third arm of leading with mental health in mind, we are missing a huge opportunity to reduce the need to use the skills of identifying and supporting. We may well be taking a Band-aid approach, neglecting potential sources of employee distress and missing the opportunity to focus on prevention over cure.

This is equivalent to trying to dry off while standing under a running shower! Or using a water bucket to empty a boat with a big ‘ole hole in its hull!

The aim here is to protect employee mental health.

Identifying and supporting are fantastic secondary and tertiary mental health intervention approaches, but nothing beats the value of a proactive, preventionfocused primary intervention approach. What we are talking about is identifying and managing psychological risks in the environment. It often costs less than secondary and tertiary measures, such as training, counselling, assessments, or filling employee gaps. But, more importantly, it is the approach that most minimises the risks of psychological harm to your people.

Assessing the risk of psychological hazards

What we can’t know without having a closer look is the magnitude of psychological risks and their potential adverse impact.

Psychological hazards or risks, also commonly termed psychosocial hazards or risks, are not necessarily apparent to a leader.

When referring to work, the term ‘psychosocial hazard’ refers to the “aspects of the design and management of work, and its social and organisational contexts that may have the potential for causing psychological or physical harm” (Cox, Griffiths & Rial- Gonzalez, 2000).

Not all hazards are equal in their impact, and not everyone is affected the same by specific psychosocial risks, so not all hazards require the same urgency to address. The questions leaders need to be asking themselves are as follows.

• How likely is it that someone will be exposed to the identified hazard?

• How regularly may they be exposed to it?

• What is the harmful impact of an exposure to the hazard?

• How many of your team may be exposed to it?

Once you’ve identified the hazards and assessed their associated risk level, it is time to take steps to prioritise and manage the risk.

1. First of all, everyone needs to get familiar with what constitutes a psychological hazard. See graphic, below.

2. Next is to understand what risks are relevant to your workforce and measure them. You can do this by simply asking your people through check ins or more structured surveys.

3. Once you have identified the risk areas, it’s about putting in place evidence-based initiatives to ensure you mitigate this risk as best as possible. For example, if isolation is an issue, it’s putting in place things like regular check ins, opportunities to connect, having multiple channels of communication.

4. Then, it’s checking in again with your people to evaluate how your interventions are going.

While I have given a snapshot of information in this article, it’s also important to ensure you engage the right people and employ the appropriate protocols to safely and successfully implement risk management of psychological risks in the workplace. A lot of information is coming out now to support organisations and their leaders on this very important topic. An ISO standard, ISO 45003 Psychological Health and Wellbeing, will be released on 7 July to provide guidelines.

This year is the year to put psychological health at the front of our leaders’ minds.

Bridget Jelley is a registered psychologist, and her passion is in supporting the mental health and wellbeing of organisations, professionals and senior executives so that they can thrive. She is experienced in educating leaders on mental health in the workplace, building resilience, assessing psychological health, professional supervision and psychological risk management. Bridget has been fortunate to have worked within many sectors, including government, mining, utilities, research and development, agriculture and construction.