Making a Happy Healthy Workplace
Weekly WHS Article 4th July 2023
Your workplace may already be a happy, healthy workplace where the employees are glad to be there and matters such as, social factors, workplace relationships, social interactions, and support from supervisors and managers do not need improvement.
But perhaps you can’t give the above statement a big tick for Yes. Perhaps as you look around your workplace now you can observe that some employees are not happy, but perhaps look bored, disinterested, hostile, angry, glum, sad, fearful or withdrawn. Definitely not happy. It could be because they have problems outside of their workplace.
Or it could be because the manifestations of “not happy” are due to psychosocial hazards in their workplace. Spotting “not happy” manifestations in your workplace can be a fast way into finding psychosocial hazards such as;
Role overload (high workloads or job demands)
Role underload (low workloads or job demands)
Exposure to traumatic events
Role conflict or lack of role clarity
Low job control
Conflict or poor workplace relationships between workers and their supervisors and managers and co-workers
Poor support from supervisors and managers
Poor co-worker support
Workplace violence
Bullying
Harassment including sexual harassment
Inadequate reward and recognition
Hazardous physical working environments
Remote or isolated work
Poor procedural justice (processes for making decisions)
Poor organisational change consultation
If you go to pages 7 and 8 of the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice, Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, you will find a detailed description of each of the hazards listed above.
There are other ways of finding psychosocial hazards and we will address those in future articles.
Note
The quotations in the above article that are from the SafeWork NSW Code of Practice Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work, which is owned by the NSW Department of Customer Service, and this publication is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 licence. For more information, visit www.nsw.gov.au/copyright.
4th July 2023
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