Dr Dougal Sutherland: Giving the mental health and safety of your business a warrant of fitness

The start of a new year is often a good time to check in on how your business is going. Just like we’d take our car in for a WOF, it’s just as important to get a WOF done on the mental health and safety of your business. 

Recent court case highlights that workplaces can be held liable for the mental distress and injury their workers suffer. 

At its most basic level, mental health and safety at work means making sure that workers aren’t being mentally harmed by the work they’re doing. Mental harm can occur through things such as exposure to traumatic material (e.g., a first responder), having way too much work for one person, or from things like bullying.

Workplaces are legally obliged to identify risks to health (including mental health) and take steps to prevent or reduce these risks. This can involve things like providing EAP counselling to staff, training for managers about how to spot signs of distress in their people and support them, through to modifying workflows so it doesn’t all fall on one person. 

Some workplaces are really proactive in this area, and others are only just becoming aware of their responsibilities. For this latter group it might be helpful to get some outside support for this from an organisational psychologist. But can also start by actively engaging with staff around their experiences of mental stress and ideas they may have to reduce this. Often the best solutions come out of talking to people at the coalface. 

 

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