Episode 2: Staying ahead of the curve of psychosocial risk

Lauren Brignull:
Hello and welcome to Ashurst's Business Agenda. My name is Lauren Brignull from Ashurst's Risk Advisory Team in Australia, and you are listening to episode two in our miniseries that marks the beginning of a new partnership between Ashurst and safety culture specialists, Sentis. In our previous episode, we explained what psychosocial risk is and why it's rocketing up corporate agendas across the world right now. We also explained what our partnership with Sentis means for our clients. Now, in this second episode, you'll hear how to get ahead of the curve and crucially, what to start or stop doing to achieve the productivity and strategic benefits that comes from having a mentally healthy and safe workplace.

For this second discussion, I was again joined by four experts on psychosocial risk. Trent Sebbens, Employment and Safety Partner at Ashurst, Anthony Gibbs, the CEO of Sentis, Tony Morris, Partner at Ashurst Risk Advisory, and Amy Hawkes, a leading psychologist from Sentis. But before we start at Ashurst, we acknowledge First Nations people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work in Australia, and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Now let's hear what our experts had to say.

Thanks for joining us again, Trent. Would you be able to recap on what psychosocial risk is and why it's such an important issue for organizational leaders right now?

Trent Sebbens:
Yeah, sure. Thanks, Lauren. Look, psychosocial risk and the psychosocial hazards that those risks arise from relate to the risk that is opposed to psychological or traditionally called mental health from a number of areas. They are the design and management of work, the work environment and plant, and also workplace interactions and behaviors. Now, those risks may cause psychological harm, whether or not they also because physical harm, and really is a key focus now for employers, workers, and workplace participants and also regulators focusing initially on workplace bullying and harassment, but also now broadening out to consider those other matters that we've just identified.

Lauren Brignull:
Thanks, Trent. And before I pass over to our other esteemed guests, you have such an important insight into this area, particularly in relation to boards and executives and why they need to take this risk seriously. But I'd be interested to hear from you, what does the regulator expect from organizations at the moment and what should our listeners be aware of?

Trent Sebbens:
Well, it's quite clear from the discourse of the last two years or so, primarily starting with the Respect At Work report and the debate about legislative reform in this area, that the work health and safety laws do already comprehensively deal with the risk to psychosocial harm or mental health risk because the language of the legislation is to ensure the health, including psychological health, and the safety of workers when they're at work in the workplace. It's quite clear from that in discourse that the legislation already comprehensively covers it. But what we are starting to see is then some more detailed regulatory change, including at the level of the implementation of regulations specifically focused on psychosocial risk as well as guides and practice notes that the regulators are developing and promulgating.

The importance of those changes and also the effective crystallizing of the view that work health and safety laws do deal with this particular area, and it's an obligation of employers and therefore officers of those employers to focus upon this is that regulators will now have a sharp focus on this area of risk and that they're developing their own guidance materials that should be referred to. They're providing briefings and education to employers and workers about those risks as an initial step, but more importantly, they are also then increasing their own capability, investigating and taking enforcement steps in relation to the management of those risks and instances when they're not managed.

And that includes by training their own inspectors in focusing on this particular area and being able to deal with investigations concerning psychosocial risk issues and also standing up specialist teams focused on psychosocial risk. At a legislative level, I've mentioned the development of regulations and we certainly are seeing them introduced on a state and territory basis. There are some variations between the different states and territories, but what is common and what is critical is that this is an area that specifically must be considered by employers and must be managed. And to the extent that the regulator in your particular sector or state or territory has developed guidelines or codes, it's worthwhile looking at them and considering them because the regulator will expect that you are aware of them and that you are adopting them as far as you consider reasonably practical for your business. As an example, in the WA mining sector, there has been a series of codes concerning this particular field and that includes specific codes on workplace aggression and harassment.

Lauren Brignull:
Thanks, Trent. I think it's really important that when people are listening to this, they do think about their local context, but there are definitely things that our listeners can be doing across organizations, whether that's across states or different locations. Anthony, in the last episode we talked about what you've seen organizations do as a first step, but from your perspective, where do executives actually need to be placing their focus to get the most out of their time and effort, considerate of that there are those different environments even within Australia?

Anthony Gibbs:
Yeah. Thanks, Lauren. It's an old saying in psychology, if you're waiting for someone else to change, you're going to be waiting a long time. We would be encouraging executives to look inwards initially as a response to this legislation, what's going on for us with this legislation being rolled out and how do we want to respond and align in a coordinated fashion? Because in the last episode, Amy mentioned micro responses or micro interactions with people. People have a really good BS detector so people will sense if there's not authenticity coming out of the executive group.

Our encouragement would be, first of all, spend some time with the executive group getting an aligned and common vision for what you're trying to achieve in this space and agree on values and behaviors from that executive group as the anchoring point for wherever you take things from here. Then it's a process of gathering the data that you need to make informed decisions and strategy. And if you've set the vision and you've set the mindset right from the get-go for that executive team, the way that information will be responded to will be much more helpful and much more proactive to inform a better outcome within the organization.

Tony Morris:
I agree, Anthony. I'll add another perspective and that is we all accept how many issues that execs need to deal with both internal and external threats, so many competing priorities. But one of my recommendations having done safety for over 25 years now, is that they need to make this a priority to deal with. This is a leadership issue as we all mentioned in the first episode. And to that end, one thing that I would say that executives and officers need to do is they need to ask the right questions for their reporting. How are we proactively managing this risk to psychosocial hazards? What reporting are we getting? Then making decisions about what we're going to do, about what you're seeing. Making good decisions in consultation with your people and your management about how to control those risks and improve the controls. Amy?

Amy Hawkes:
Yeah, the thought that comes to mind listening to you there, Tony, is how important it is not just to manage the risks that might come up and become apparent to you, but actually to also have a plan. I know there's a lot in the legislation, there's a lot of different psychosocial hazards, but as an organization we do need a plan for what to do if any of those also were to come up. And therefore, as an executive, as a board, we feel like regardless of what's going to happen in six months' time, we've actually thought about the potential for all of these risks. We've thought about how we should respond if any of these things come up. Then we've gone and taken that proactive view that we talked about in the last podcast around what are we doing to prevent those things from happening in six months as well? We've got to look at it from both angle.

Trent Sebbens:
I think in addition to that, for executives, there is a couple of bottom lines in relation to this area and that is that failing to focus on this means that you won't necessarily be getting the best out of your workers and from your business because there will be a cost impost to the business if you don't actually deal with some of these psychosocial risks. And that includes replacing employees who will burn out or replacing disgruntled employees who don't think that their complaints in relation to workplace harassment or aggression have been appropriately dealt with, but perhaps on a day by day basis just the cost of lack of productivity from disharmony in the workplace, from disengaged employees and just not getting the best out of them. And at this sharper end of things, also, the cost of just getting this completely wrong and being on the end of an investigation by a regulator and possibly being prosecuted or facing an individual claim for an employee.

And in one of the legislative performs that we haven't touched on so far includes the new positive duty under the Sex Discrimination Act at the federal level, which is an overlay to these matters that we're talking about, which also places a positive duty on putting in place systems to ensure that the risk of sexually charged workplaces or sexually hostile workplaces is dealt with. In that particular context, facing litigation from a regulator or an individual is also going to be a significant distraction, will have a cultural impact, but will also be a great cost impost on the hip pocket as well.

Anthony Gibbs:
I imagine in a market that's tight to get top talent in, the reputational impact of future employment and getting the best people in would also be affected by that sort of action, Trent and Tony.

Trent Sebbens:
That's definitely right.

Anthony Gibbs:
Big opportunity for organizations to really again, be proactive and differentiate themselves by getting this right by the sounds of it.

Lauren Brignull:
That's a really neat lead in Anthony, to my next question, which is about the fact that, as Amy said, there's a really broad range of issues that we're talking about here. As Trent mentioned, sexual harassment, bullying, those areas have had a lot of focus within some industries, but Tony, what do you see as the sleeper risks in this area? What controls should organizations be putting on the table if they're really serious about taking reasonably practicable steps to manage this risk?

Tony Morris:
That's a big question Lauren. Thank you for that one.

Lauren Brignull:
That's what we're here for, Tony, the big ones.

Tony Morris:
Look, it's challenging because each organization has nuances when it faces this psychosocial risk. They're all different. There's no one size fits all. If I think about a perhaps well known one in this area of bullying and harassment, it's well known and it's critical that we address it, but to me it's not a sleeper. To me, there's been a lot already done in that space, albeit that there might be improvement. In my experience and having really worked with clients closely around this, one of the sleeper risks here is the design and management of work. That is how work is done. The examples given in by Safe Work Australia, they're the things like job demands, job control, support. What support do we give our people when they do their job? And a really big one is change management.

If we think about organizational change, it is everywhere at the moment for good reason, but not very often do we consider the psychosocial risk during change management and needs to be part of the change program. Look, there's another sleeper hazard in my opinion, and that is it's very new for a lot of employees to think about the work environment, plant and equipment. For example, remote or isolated workers. That's always been a safety issue, but probably more of a physical focus than the mental one. Fatigue is another one. I think these two issues, if I can call them that in psychosocial risk to me are sleeper risks. I don't know what the other members of the team think.

Amy Hawkes:
I agree, Tony. I think that job demands, workload element and the fatigue that's associated with that, it's a huge issue. And I think you can't think of many industries where that's not an issue. That's not something that you might see in the news or have friends that'll talk to you about it. And addressing that in a lot of industries where it's been really normal for people to work weekends, for people to work 18 hour shifts in a hospital or something like that. I think we're going to see a really big change in a lot of industries when those sorts of issues start to come to the fore.

Anthony Gibbs:
And Amy, what I think potentially emphasizes that challenge around workload and work hours and things is flexible working arrangements, people working from home. What are my obligations if I choose to work in an evening because that suits me for my own personal circumstances and I'm sending emails, how does an organization deal with that so that other people who've just worked the full workday aren't put in a position where they feel that they have to respond at 10 o'clock at night because that's someone else's preference>? There's a whole lot of unpicking and understanding for leaders to do, I think, to make sense of all of this.

Amy Hawkes:
Yep. My first tip there is a delay send on your email. Set up all your emails to send out tomorrow morning and you've done your work at 8:00 PM or 9:00 PM but nobody else really has been bothered by it because we know that opportunity to disconnect from work is what builds our personal resources to deal with the next day's pressures. And so if we're not giving our team and our people that opportunity to disconnect from their work in their evenings, they're not coming back the next day with the best mindset and ready to work.

Trent Sebbens:
I think there's also a cultural aspect to, as well as some systems that might drive some of those things that employers might need to also examine, which includes the systems around incentive and reward systems that deal with effectively being seen to work hard, being a hero worker. And that is the way in which you obviously get ahead, but also you may be expected to present in the workplace. That may well lead to a psychosocial risk. Those systems that might drive those behaviors where effectively choice is being removed for certain workers perhaps need to also be considered. I think one of the other areas that could well be a sleeper risk, although certainly came to wake over the last two years, is how we deal with the psychosocial risks that come from dealing with the unexpected and the unpredicted or crises, COVID being an obvious one, and how we deal with the psychosocial risk that came from that.

We're all doing that effectively on the fly. I think most of us dealt with it well, but we are starting to see sort of the fallout of some of that as well as the positives that Anthony's mentioned, including the sort of enhanced flexibility of working from home and flexible working arrangements more generally. But I think the lessons that can be learned from that about how do we deal with, how do we put in place systems to deal with crises and the unexpected for the future so that we can both be agile, but we can also manage psychosocial risk at the same time.

Lauren Brignull:
Amy, to change tact a little, you bring such an important perspective as a psychologist to this particular subject. And from your view, could you let us know what are the key aspects of this risk which are built into how Sentis supports clients in regards to understanding and acting appropriately?

Amy Hawkes:
I think it's really important to keep the whole organizational system in mind. It's easy in this space to look at the individual, to roll out a wellbeing program, a mindfulness program or resilience program, mental health first aid, really individual intervention focused, feel like you've ticked your box, feel like you can move on. There is absolutely a place for all of those programs, but you need to put them within the system. You need to think about more than just the individual. You need to think about their team. We've talked a lot in the podcast about the role of leaders in this process, and you also need to think about the culture. What Trent was just describing there with that, responding to the unexpected situations that might arise, that's where our culture and our climate and what it's like, the norms and expectations around our work is going to be the thing that's going to help us deal with those unexpected situations.

We have a culture of competition, working really long shifts, fighting for resources. When that unexpected thing comes in, how much support are people going to give each other? If we have a collaborative culture, one that's there to look after each other, one that's there to perform, to achieve, to work hard, to do it in a way that cares for our people, when that unexpected thing comes in, we respond to it in the right frame, we respond to it with the right mindset. Thinking about all those levels, that cultural element, the leadership element, the team element, and the individual, which I think is really the things that Sentis does really well. We have those great diagnostics we've mentioned before to help unpack some of those elements. But we're also focused on shifting the attitudes that help change the behavior of individuals and helping leaders understand how they can have the right conversations to help build those right attitudes and help shift those behaviors as well.

Together we come at it from a number of different angles, and I think that's one of the really great things about organizational psychology. It's one of the great reasons that the psychosocial risk is getting so much attention is we get the opportunity to think about this from that system and unpack it properly, and it gives a great opportunity to really understand the way our vision influences and cascades through the organization and how we can use that really effectively to influence those underlying norms and those standards for our organization. And it might be a slow change process, and that's okay, but something that you can keep working on, keep building, keep improving.

Lauren Brignull:
Tony, would you be able to add to that? What do you use that information from Sentis to do in terms of the system? We have previously talked about the fact that a lot of systems are currently set up perhaps just in a HR space and the work health safety space maybe needs to catch up. You might need to make some complementary procedures, for example, around those really intense investigations that we've talked about. But what are you seeing in terms of how information can create a better system for our listeners?

Tony Morris:
Yeah, absolutely. My experiences to date when we've been working with clients is that the HR system and the information is kept in the separate area too. And some of it, as Trent said, I think in the first episode is confidential and needs to be kept that way. But there is generally speaking a lack of sharing of information between HR and safety, and it's a generalization I'm giving there. I think every organization would probably put its hand up and say that HR and work health and safety could always continually improve and work better. Feeding the themes coming out of the HR matters into work health and safety to allow the work health and safety professionals that look at the risk from a different perspective, a different lens would be fantastic.

And this is where it's so important. We recommend that there needs to be that sharing of the proper information, not the personal information or specific facts which might be confidential given the nature of some of these investigations and facts. For safety to be able to do their job, they need to be able to know the themes, to be able to assess the risk properly and improve controls. I like the system bit because the system means you come back, you assess what controls you put in their effectiveness and you continually improve. And that's a continually improvement model, which always comes back to assess through your reporting. It's crucial that the systems need to speak together.

Lauren Brignull:
And Trent, following from that, maybe a bit of a tricky one because it is still an emerging space, but we've talked about what needs to be shared between HR and safety, but the critical group here and the people we're ultimately doing all of this for is the workers and health and safety representatives also as an example there. How can organizations determine what information workers and HSRs need to be given in order for them to contribute to addressing these risks?

Trent Sebbens:
Yeah, look, I think in relation to incidents or events, that is a challenging space because of the potential trauma inducing issues that arise and also confidentiality around some of the more sensitive types of incidents that may be examined or investigated. While HSRs might normally participate in a root cause analysis or investigation, that may need to just be assessed from time to time, but I think most critically consultation in relation to the identification of psychosocial hazards and risks and then considering control measures obviously is an obligation under work health and safety legislation that needs to be complied with.

But it's also the key way in which workers and HSRs and their representatives can be involved in dealing with these matters. And that might start from an education session with workers and HSRs, really just to get their minds focused on these issues and do also start thinking about them in the way that we've been describing today so that they can then be engaged in that way and be starting to think critically about what might be psychosocial hazards and risks in their workplace and their ideas about how that might be dealt with.

Anthony Gibbs:
Trent, I agree. Consultation's crucial. The one thing I'd probably add to that or the one layer I'd ask organizations to consider adding to that is how do you leverage things like the vision that we spoke about earlier and the values that exist within the organization to create anchoring points around the way we want things to be at work? I mean, people will know the difference between what feels good and what doesn't feel good when they're at work. There is an opportunity through that consultation process to have a positive conversation around what does it look like to live our values in a positive way to create an organization that reflects our vision?

Through that process, you can create dissidents within a work group. You can have those conversations and you can normalize, "All right, well, this is where we want things to be. This is what we want things to look like. These are the behaviors we expect of one another, and this is how it feels when we don't act in line with those behaviors." Facilitating an environment and conditions around having a robust conversation around those values can be a great way to tackle that.

Lauren Brignull:
Before we close out our discussion, I'd now love to hear from each of you about the critical steps that executives should take this week to address this risk. And I say executives because we have already talked about what organizations should be doing. This is really a message to senior leadership. Trent, I'll throw to you first.

Trent Sebbens:
Yeah, look, I think Lauren, a very simple and immediate step is just put this on the agenda of your next leadership team meeting, senior management team meeting. There are a lot of issues that we've been talking about today. They include from the legislative to cultural to practical ones, but perhaps even before any of that is for executives and the leadership team to consider their own psychological health and how they're working together, the stresses that they face and what systems they have to deal with those risks that are posed to them. Because as they will know, they are placed under all strain, they're making some very significant decisions and their own cognitive endurance and health is critical to the business, and that might be a very good starting point after putting in a public agenda and then talking about it internally within that team.

Anthony Gibbs:
Thanks, Trent. I'll add to that because I think that's a really good starting point, getting leaders to reflect on themselves and starting that change internally. And once you've sort of checked in with those leaders and made sure that they're feeling okay and they've got the endurance to take this challenge on, I think there's an opportunity to create a safe environment, to have a conversation about what have this change are people perhaps viewing as a cost versus a currency? There will be frames that pop up, threat responses from a social brain perspective where there'll be elements of this legislation that are seen as a cost, it's going to cost money, it's going to cost time, it's going to cost effort, it's going to cost energy.

There's all these negatives that are potentially tied to this. I think it's actually really healthy and really useful to get all those feelings and thoughts out on the table and go through a group reframing exercise. How do we see this as a currency? How do we see this as an investment in our business and investment in our people, investment in productivity and investment and culture, an investment and attraction, retention? And go through a reframing process which is going to help to support and anchor a different attitude or a helpful attitude around where we attack things from here. Because if we get the attitude right, the behaviors and the results will naturally flow from there would be my suggestion. Amy, what do you think?

Amy Hawkes:
Completely agree with everything Trent and yourself have just described, and I think my suggestion probably is the next step. Maybe week three in your question, Lauren there, and I'd encourage, once you've got those things done, it's on your agenda. You've got all your concerns out on the table, you've committed to your direction, my advice is to start having the discussions, start seeking that information, listening to what people around you are talking about, asking questions, potentially gathering information in a formal way. But you can also do it really informally. Just start understanding, start educating yourself, start connecting some of these dots. Tony, I'll throw to you.

Tony Morris:
Yeah, look, one step for me and it's perfect because it's off the back of what you said, Amy, and that is for executives to book in the risk assessment workshops and to do that properly, you need to make sure you've got enough time to properly prepare and have those discussions, gather the data to bring along to those workshops, but book them in. It's like your goal and once the goal's booked in, where you're going to make sure that you're prepared for it. The only one thing I'd say about those workshops is make sure you've got some representation of experts in the field that know this area of psychosocial risk.

Lauren Brignull:
Thanks, team. What a helpful set of suggestions and definitely can launch people onto the right foot. To finish up today, Tony and Anthony, obviously the Sentis and Ashurst partnership is much broader than psychosocial risk. What we've talked about in these podcasts is just an example of the expertise that's being brought to the table. Can you talk to us a little bit more about why this partnership can be such an important combination for our clients?

Tony Morris:
Yeah, I can start, Anthony, if you don't mind. And look, we are very excited about this. We've been talking for a long time, Sentis are no doubt the best in the field at what they do. At Ashurst here we focus on our clients and we really do put our clients at the center so they always have a seat at the table. And it's through that lens that we realized that we had to go and get the best in market at safety culture. We already, as I said in the very first episode, we already have a compelling go to market with our legal and risk consulting capability, and that's been very successful for us and great for our clients, but we were missing something in the safety space, and that is Sentis and they are the safety culture experts and the best in the country, and that's why we partnered with them.

Anthony Gibbs:
Oh, thanks Tony. Very complimentary there. And look, we for a long time have been seeking out a partner in the legal and risk space who not only is very good at what they do, but genuinely cares about getting a great result for the organization and for workers everywhere, making that change across industries. That values alignment, as I mentioned in the first episode, is a crucial part of this. The opportunity that organizations have in engaging with either Ashurst or Sentis and using us in partnership and in unison is you've got that continuity as you go through the process, that aligned set of values and expectations, which are going to help to fast track outcomes across the organization. Really proud of the partnership and the opportunity that's coming forward and really pleased to be a guest on this podcast. Thank you again.

Lauren Brignull:
Thank you to all of our guests for joining in with these podcasts. We've listened today about the regulatory complexity across Australia and the importance of organizations, really considering the context in which they operate as well as the need to look inwards and be authentic, making sure that the actions that you're taking are going to drive the values and behaviors as an anchoring point for how your organization is going to respond to psychosocial risk. For executives, our guests talked about, are you asking the right questions? Do you have the right information to hand? And we also talked about the cost of getting it wrong, whether that's regulator intervention or individuals who feel that the organization has let them down. There's potential for individuals to think that they haven't been listened to or heard throughout this process and the importance of making sure that consultation and user experience is really at the heart of why we're making these changes.

Some of the things that we talked about for executives to do this week was putting this issue on the agenda. Step one. Prepare yourselves. This isn't going to be an easy or quick task to get started or to keep going. Making sure that you have the cognitive endurance to really make this a reality for your organization. But then also working out what information do you have available? What actions are you going to take? And as Amy said, listening, starting the conversations, and then blocking in those risk assessments so that you have the opportunity to hear from your people, but you also have the best information to be doing that with. Finally, thank you to Tony and Anthony for talking to the Sentis and Ashurst partnership. This is such an exciting opportunity to bring the best in market across legal risk and safety culture, and we look forward to working with our clients across these areas in the future.

Thank you for listening to Ashurst's Business Agenda. This episode has been part of our two-part series on psychosocial risk. To find out more about our partnership with Sentis, visit Ashurst.com and to hear the other episode in this mini-series or indeed any of our other Business Agenda episodes, you'll find us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. While you're there, feel free to subscribe to Ashurst Business Agenda and leave us a rating or review. Until next time, thank you for listening and goodbye for now.