Originally published by the Australian Institute of Health & Safety
When it comes to psychosocial safety, many organisations are still looking at it primarily from a mental health/resilience perspective, but there are other elements they need to consider, according to an expert.
“What we see when we’re talking to organisations is that they’ll have some form of strategy that targets physical safety, and then they’ll have some sort of wellbeing strategy or mental health framework,” said Ben Carnell, head of client solutions for Sentis.
“Often the integration between the two isn’t strong, or certainly not clear. For us, when we talk about positive safety, what we’re looking at is the physical, psychological and social experience of work.
“There’s a pretty good focus on the physical experience, a relatively good focus on psychological experience, but not as much focus on the social experience.”
The challenge here is that social experience has a significant impact on the physical and psychological experience, but it also has a very significant impact on the interplay between those elements, he said.
Carnell, who was speaking ahead of an AIHS webinar on “unpacking social dynamics – a guide to strengthening your workplace safety culture”, which will be held on Thursday 21 March from 2:30-3:30pm AEDT, said that the challenge for a lot of organisations is that they can only get so far in shifting their safety performance, in whatever way they might be measured, without considering the social dynamics at play as well.
“For example, if an organisation wants to shift their reporting culture; if people don’t feel that that they can speak up or that they can share their views, then they’re not going to report,” he said.
“That impacts on reporting, which then obviously has a significant impact on the organisation’s understanding of the safety of their work.”
Social safety is a commonly overlooked factor in workplace safety culture, and Carnell explained that social safety is really about ‘what is this social experience like for people in our workforce and the interactions with other people in their workplace?’ This includes a sense of community, mutual respect and collaborative problem-solving among employees,” he said.
There are three common gaps and challenges around the social experience, according to Carnell, who said that Sentis research found the first challenge is how fairly mistakes are managed, particularly during high-risk activities.
“Often, we see organisations manage mistakes inconsistently or not fairly across different instances,” he said.
Secondly, a lack of opportunity to contribute to organisational decisions is another common challenge, while a third relates to recognition and reward of helpful and values-aligned behaviours, which “is done quite poorly – often inconsistently or in a way that is perceived as tokenistic”, said Carnell.
“The other opportunity that we find is around change communication as well. Often, that’s done either poorly or inconsistently.”
Organisations often do things that they think will work, but not necessarily with consideration for what response it might evoke from the workforce, and Carnell said this is an important consideration.
Adrianna Loveday, executive lead psychosocial safety & transformation for Sentis, also said that when it comes to understanding the social experience, it is key that everyone sees the importance of creating a culture of safety – one that views safety as a positive force that can improve the quality of life for individuals, rather than simply the absence of harm.
“In practice, this could be through supercharging cross-team collaboration, genuinely seeking employee feedback, recognising, and rewarding safe behaviours, and actively working to create a learning culture where mistakes are viewed as opportunities for improvement and growth – in other words, reinvigorating your employee value proposition to emphasise purpose, community building, continuous support, innovation, and learning,” said Carnell, who was also speaking ahead of the AIHS webinar.
Similarly, Carnell noted that interventions or activities are often targeted at the frontline or worker level.
However, organisations need to look more at what needs to be done at a systematic level, but also what needs to be done to equip leaders with the capability to then drive that out across their teams.
“Once that happens, there’s a greater sense of alignment and likelihood of being able to make a meaningful and sustainable change for their people,” he said.
Carnell also said it is important to understand how the brain interprets social threats, and the potential implications of this process.
Organisations often need to think about what the experience of their people is or will be like, he said.
“I’d invite all organisations and leaders to continually look at how their actions impact their workforce. Consider if your people are having a positive or negative experience,” said Carnell.
“It’s the accumulation of these positive and negative experiences that really contributes to the impact work has on our own safety and wellbeing.”
In terms of how the brain interprets social threats, Carnell said humans are very social beings and get things done in groups and as teams.
“This means we’re continually on the lookout for – and not necessarily consciously, it happens subconsciously – ‘how well am I received’ or ‘how well am I integrated into the group or team environment that I’m in’?” he said.
“Our brain picks up on any subtle cues that may suggest we’re not part of the group, we’re not as valued as what we might think we are, or that our input isn’t as valued as what we might think it is.”
This triggers a threat response in the brain, which is very similar to the stress response.
However, the challenge is that the brain is not good at differentiating between real and perceived threats, and Carnell said the brain just sees threats as threats.
“This then creates a very stressful environment for an individual to operate in,” he said.
“Consider how we can create fewer social threats for people – this, in turn, is going to create a more positive work experience for them in terms of their interpersonal interactions with people and their work as a whole.
“Leaders need to look at what they’re doing and how they’re doing it. Is it even just subtly or just slightly triggering a threat response? And if so, how do we do things differently to avoid or mitigate that negative experience,” he said.
Carnell and Loveday are members of Sentis’ client solutions team and will be speaking at an upcoming AIHS webinar on “unpacking social dynamics – a guide to strengthening your workplace safety culture”. The webinar will be held on Thursday 21 March from 2:30-3:30pm AEDT. For more information call (03) 8336 1995, email events@aihs.org.au or visit the event website.
