Mental health

YOUR ORGANISATION AND HEALTH AND WELLNESS

STRATEGIES

PSYCHOLOGICAL HEALTH AND SAFETY AND LEGISLATIVE REQUIREMENTS IS THE MESSAGE AAPA AND THE BRAVEHEART FREEDOM FIGHTERS CHARITY ARE JOINTLY WORKING ON TO INCREASE AWARENESS AND EDUCATION AROUND THE HIGHLY TOPICAL AREA OF EMPLOYEE HEALTH AND WELLNESS.

The Braveheart program focuses on these six underlying triggers for mental health.

In late March 2020, the World Health Organisation released a paper detailing mental health and psychosocial considerations during the COVID-19 outbreak.

In the following months Australia’s unemployment rate jumped to 7.4 per cent, leaving manyuncertain about employment and stressed over financial burdens.

In 2018, Safe Work Australia reported 144 people were fatally injured at work and in the same year the Australian Bureau of Statistics recorded 3046 suicides across the country.

Long before the pandemic, a 2016 Mates in Construction report found the age adjusted suicide rate in Australia for those working in construction was 24.6 per 100,000, compared to 13.4 per 100,000 for those in other occupations. This demonstrated the significant mental health challenges faced in construction when operating as usual.

Recent changes to Victorian WorkSafe tolls are also highlighting the importance of a strong focus on good mental health.

In July 2020, the Victorian State Government broadened the criteria that defines a workplace death to include suicides attributable to a workplace health and safety failure, this will now be recognised in the WorkSafe toll.

As changes such as this come into effect, alongside the added pressures of COVID-19 stress on workers and organisations, mental health strategies might never have been more important.

The Australian Asphalt Pavement Association (AAPA) highlights that a Mental Health Strategy including a Psychological Health and Safety Policy is now embedded into legislative requirements, making it necessary for all companies and organisations to implement such. A strategy such as this will outline an organisation’s intent to help address the state of mind of their employees.

Any company has the duty under the Work Health and Safety Act to manage risks associated with exposure to work hazards that could result in physical or psychological harm. Safe Work Australia states this must ensure the health and safety of people at the workplace as much as reasonably practicable.

SafeWork Australia outlines organisational psychological hazards as job demands, job control, support, workplace relationships, role clarity, change management, recognition and reward and organisational justice.

The Braveheart Freedom Fighters Charity has already been working extensively with industry on developing and expanding their Health and Wellness Strategies to better focus on individual factors and aims to equip businesses and employees with the tools to prevent workers getting to a point of stress.

This tool comes in the form of an easily accessible App program that enforces why it’s crucial to embed good well-being practice into work-sites.

Working together with AAPA, Braveheart provides a targeted state of mind solution to the wider construction industry.

Founder David Broadhurst says while he understands the sentiment behind, ‘it’s okay to say you are not okay’, it is important to have strategies in place to ensure people do not reach the stage of not being okay.

“Legislation for mental health requirements in businesses has been around for a number of years and because of rising mental health issues now, it’s an even bigger focus,” Broadhurst says.

“So far industry has been focused on organisational factors that create a psychologically safe workplace, but not

The program is made to be implemented into an organisation’s business as usual practice.

individual factors.”

On an individual level the prevention steps are around protecting workers from workplace conflict and developing policies and procedures that set the standard for workplace behaviour.

Tanja Conners, Executive Director of Knowledge and Partnerships at AAPA, says the association wants to be able to provide industry with tools and accessibility to improve the state of mind of workers.

“We have partnered with Braveheart so that we will be able to give our members access to resources on state of mind and well-being. We want to get to the point where we can send our members notifications with short videos to provide reminders about mental health,” Conners says.

“We can’t mandate that kind of work, but we can provide support and offer guidance on where people can go to get this information and who can assist on developing Health and Wellness Strategies and policies.”

The Braveheart program focuses on six underlying triggers for mental health, these are health and nutrition, sleep hygiene, financial literacy, effective communication, growth mindset and importance of purpose.

“Braveheart was set up to address these individual factors whether in construction or any other industry,” Broadhurst says.

He says a lot of organisations might simply create a policy everyone signs, and it can turn into a set and forget approach, that doesn’t change behaviour and thought processes. Braveheart’s app program has been developed to be a plug and play solution that can even be run as a video meeting.

“It can be easily integrated into business processes, for example inductions, onboarding, toolbox talks, pre-starts and lunch and learn sessions,” Broadhurst says.

“The Codesafe App that hosts the Braveheart program uses short videos as the medium to demonstrate what good looks like, that helps people understand and decipher what should they be implementing at an individual level.”

He says it’s a solution that can become part of an organisation’s business as usual practice.

“On weekly toolbox meetings, the team leaders can share out a short video on sleep hygiene or mastering your money, as well as working at heights and working around mobile plant. That way we weave the psycho-social risk factors in with the physical risk factors,” Broadhurst says.

Conners says checking on people’s state of mind has been especially important thorough COVID-19, even AAPA team members suffered stress about new working environments and industry uncertainties.

“Often in construction it’s not normalised to show your feelings. Feelings are there to guide you and not to be hidden away so normalising mental health awareness will take the stigma away from different emotions,” she says.

While the construction industry has been able to continue in Australia through the pandemic, though in some cases with significantly reduced personnel, it is in no way immune to the many mental health impacts of the pandemic.

Work on site looks very different than ever before, social distancing, increased safety procedures and PPE measures mean connections with workmates are harder to keep up.

AAPA and Braveheart understand this only reinforces the importance of adhering to legislative mental health requirements but also ensuring every worker is equipped to increase their capacity to manage stress in all areas of their life. If you need to talk to someone or need further support please call Lifeline at 13 11 14

Scan this barcode to learn more about the Braveheart program.