Where theory meets practice – Australian Positive Organisational Scholarship (POS) Community of Practice
On 11 October 2023, the Australian POS CoP held our fourth virtual event on Positive Organisational Scholarship and Positive Psychology, with a lively discussion on the history of the ESG movement, the role of psychological health and positive CSR in industry.
Collectively we face the largest challenge of our generation: transitioning to a more sustainable world. The emerging “ESG” (environment, social and governance) movement aims to enable this in an increasingly regulated and urgent environment.
The theories and practice of Positive Psychology (PP) and Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) are poised to make an important and timely contribution to the ESG agenda.
From addressing the “S” risks of psychological health and safety to the building of positive organisations that foster resilience and the optimal functioning of their people. Such organisations will be well placed to tackle the sustainability agenda, providing meaning, purpose and impact.
From the field of practice
- Lisa Skovron, Director, Global Culture and Engagement, Cochlear Ltd
- Jason Van Schie, Managing Director / Psychologist, FlourishDx
From academia
- Dr Austin Chia, Fellow, Centre for Wellbeing Science at the University of Melbourne and Associate Director with the Consulting division at KPMG
The conversation was facilitated by Dr Rosemary Sainty, UTS Business School founding Australian representative to the UN Global Compact and Dr Suzy Green, Founder & CEO, The Positivity Institute. The event was hosted by UTS Business School.
Watch the webinar recording
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Rosemary Sainty: Good morning, everyone just watching as participants. So joining our webinar, I'll just give it 1 min with action packed agenda. So
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Rosemary Sainty: welcome.
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Rosemary Sainty: Okay, I think we might get started, given the agenda. So again welcome everybody. Welcome to our fourth annual pos cop, which is the Australian positive, organizational scholarship, positive psychology, community practice.
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Rosemary Sainty: and your host myself, Dr. Formerly the Australian representative to the UN Global Compact, and now Uts business school, and my colleague, Dr. Suzy Green, clinical and coaching psychologists and founder and CEO of the Positivity Institute. So welcome everybody.
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Rosemary Sainty: First, a timely acknowledgement of country. So the Uts business School respectfully acknowledges that we're located on the land of the Gadigal people of the Eora nation. The Gadigal people have cared for their community land and waters for thousands of generations, based on their deep knowledge of their country. We pay respects, pay our respects to their ancestors, their elders, and acknowledge their ongoing status
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Rosemary Sainty: as the first peoples of this land, particularly at this very important time. And just a little word that I'm in my own teaching practice here at Uni. I use India, Mara, it's a widget raggery word. And it's really about mutual respect giving honor and taking responsibility.
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Okay.
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Rosemary Sainty: what is our Poscop. This is really about where theory meets practice. So we've got over 200 people that have Rsvp, some of you are from Academia. Some of you are practitioners, researchers, teachers, and it's really about fostering a conversation and and learning together as a community of practice. So welcome again.
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Rosemary Sainty: bit of webinar housekeeping, we're keen to have a a lively chat, and we give this a a long tail if you like. So we are recording the lecture. The webinar. Sorry. We'll post all that on a web page, including the slides, and you all get a link to that information. Whilst we're talking today, the chat is open for your comments.
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Rosemary Sainty: And we're keen to get those, including the land that you're meeting us on. And then, when it comes to questions and answers that's saved over till towards the end. Of the speakers talking, and we have the QA. Function for you to post your questions to the panel which we will address.
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Rosemary Sainty: I just wanna say briefly about today. Given the enormity of the transition that we're all having to go through, largely driven by climate change today really is about a collective effort. So it's a multi-disciplinary piece, essentially
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Rosemary Sainty: so that we can all play a role in building a more sustainable world. So from the sciences, engineering, design, law, and and in particular, today from the humanities we really want to explore and extend the role that positive psychology, positive organizational scholarship can play in this space. Today, I really want to acknowledge the founders of positive organizational scholarship. A number of
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Rosemary Sainty: have been supporting our poscop, including Jane Dutton, Monica Warline, Kim Cameron, and of course, history of sustainability. Csi.
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Rosemary Sainty: Esg, that's from me. 5 min I've given myself and Susie has 5 min to cover a brief history of positive psych and positive organizational scholarship.
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Rosemary Sainty: We'll then hear from Jason Van She, the managing director and psychologist at flourish. Dx. Jason is going to be looking at the S. In Esg. Followed by Dr. Austin sheer from this, a fellow from the center for well being science at the University of Melbourne, and associate director with the consulting division at Kpmg. And Austin's going to be looking at the integration of
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Rosemary Sainty: the positive, positive, positive psych. And Csr positive. Csr, following that back to Susie and myself, I'm going to be looking at the role of purpose in building positive organizations and the the shifting or transitioning purpose of the corporation. And Susie is going to be differentiating purpose and meaning, and looking into the the linkages here between meaning and our agenda today. And finally, Lisa, from
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Rosemary Sainty: who's the director of global culture and engagement at Cochlear?
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Rosemary Sainty: It's going to be providing having heard all of us speaking a corporate leadership perspective, and we be looking at sort of threading some of the pieces of that conversation together. So it should be an interesting morning. So once again, yeah, we're keen for an active chat. So please jump in. Tell us where your meeting is from. Tell us your disciplinary background. And we'll get the conversation going.
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Rosemary Sainty: Okay?
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Rosemary Sainty: So
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Rosemary Sainty: 5 min on the history of Csr Esg, etc., I've worked in this space, for I guess it's about 20 years, and probably the biggest point to say is just the rapid, rapid development that we are seeing now. So a number of us have been kind of working away over the years, but really, in the last 2 years, one year, even last 6 months
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Rosemary Sainty: so much has been happening. I really important milestone is the 1987 Broadland Report, and most of you would be familiar with that quote. That sustainable development is the development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs. And that was beautifully crafted, and is actually really sort of stayed with us. As so.
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Rosemary Sainty: the definitive way of considering sustainability and sustainable development. If you're looking at the timeline now, we're probably mostly familiar with the Ipcc scientific reports that have been providing us globally with updates on what's happening in terms of climate change. Unfortunately, things have again been moving more quickly than
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Rosemary Sainty: than even scientists had thought would happen. Are really important to development was back before the turn of the century. The creation of the UN Framework Convention on climate change. And so they th that's instigated approximately yearly. Communication of the parties or cops sessions and so you may have noticed.
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Rosemary Sainty: we had a cop session in Glasgow. We have one coming up in Doha later this year, and this is where governments come together to negotiate around climate change.
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Rosemary Sainty: sometimes more successfully than other times, also really important in this space around the turn of the century, a lot of unrest around globalisation, and and particularly with multinational corporations, quite a violent demonstration. Seattle, you may or may not remember. And and this really helped push along. A recognition by the UN. And by the private sector that they needed each other. In other words, in order to have flourishing economies.
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Rosemary Sainty: business needs peace and stability, and and in order for the UN. To meet it, meet its its aims of peace and prosperity for people. They also need flourishing economies. So this actually led to the development of the world's largest corporate citizenship initiative, the UN global compact. So this is about really bringing business on board, together with the U
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Rosemary Sainty: when under the banner of sustainable development, and including things like human rights, anticorruption.
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Rosemary Sainty: labor law, and also, of course, the environment. So that was around the turn of the century. We had the UN Millennium Development Goals. Really trying to address global poverty infant mortality.
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Rosemary Sainty: internal education, etc. And then we see the involvement of the investors. That become very important. Now, how are we going for time? Really, I think around 2,015 very important time, the launch of the Sustainable Development Goals people probably know about those that's really coming together of private sector governments, not for profits.
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Rosemary Sainty: very colourful, 17 goals, something for everyone, and really pushing the sustainable development agenda ahead across sectors. Also that year the Paris Climate Agreement as part of that UN. Fcc. Framework. Although not everything was agreed to, it still was a line in the sand for particularly investors to build off
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Rosemary Sainty: right now we're seeing a convergence of sustainability. Reporting standards looks very much like alphabet soup, and in particular from the investor community, particularly institutional investors
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Rosemary Sainty: via the and Mark Carney and Michael Bloomberg. We have this task force on climate related financial disclosure. So now it's the markets pushing for change with all this push for change. Really, wanna point out. As Mark Carney has said, we need hope, resilience, compassion, humanity, to tackle this huge and interconnected challenges before us.
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Rosemary Sainty: So today, we really want to make a point that
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Rosemary Sainty: although things have moved more into a regulatory coercive space, we need to hang on to what what an academic would call the normative piece about the humanity. And we know that it's not just about surviving. It's also about thriving. So we do really see a role here to move from a kind of risk position to something more than risk. With that I'll hand over to Susie.
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Suzy Green: Thanks. So much. Rosary did a brilliant job well done and welcome to everyone. Thanks for joining us again for our fourth pos cop. And I have to say, this is a new, relatively new area to me, and I've been madly researching, and Austin very kindly shared some papers with me. So feel like I'm on a State learning curve, but very keen
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Suzy Green: very interesting area. So for those of you that are new to the field. And even though positive psych's been going, think around 24 years now. There are still people that haven't heard of it. So just very briefly, there are many definitions. But the one that is my preference is the scientific study of the conditions and processes that lead to optimal human functioning. And what we have seen and just wanna make a quick point for those that
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Suzy Green: still think the positive psychology may be about being happy all the time. We certainly moved on. We're up to
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Suzy Green: positive psychology. 2 point O, which is the recognition of the full range of human emotions and the contribution that positive site can make. And we've moved on to 3 point O, which is looking at systems informed positive psychology. So this is where I believe we can start to see how this can affect not just us at the individual level, but at the group systemic and the planetary. So puzzle scholarship is a complementary science to positive side.
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Suzy Green: Positive psych really emerged out of psychology. And for those that know a bit of history, Marty Seligman, and before him the humanistic psychologist like Maslow and Rogers, and then puzzle scholarship really grew out of business and management. And you can see some of the key questions. If you go to the website you could spend days on there, Rosemary, couldn't you? There's so much wonderful research and practice. And over the years there's really been a strong focus to practice.
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Suzy Green: Thanks, Max.
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Suzy Green: I wanted to just reiterate again that despite I have another slide that's gonna be focusing on what's been happening in terms of pause psych and and the climate and climate change
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Suzy Green: through Covid. It really gave us an opportunity to showcase in many ways that there's so many different constructs that sit under the umbrella of positive psychology that can be used through adversity. And so again, I think it takes us out of this happyology space into a much broader conceptualization of wellbeing. And, as Rosemary said, moving
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Suzy Green: from surviving to thriving
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Suzy Green: next slide. Thanks, Max and I did a brief search in the last few days. There's not a lot that I can see. I didn't do. A very rigorous lit review. But from what I could see, there's not a lot of publications that are looking at the combinations of
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Suzy Green: positive psychology, well-being, and sustainability. There was one other paper. I will try and put that. I think it's an open access one, Rosemary, on when we do make all this information available, and it was calling it. I think the term was
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Suzy Green: positive sustainability, or some some word combining. I can't actually can't express it now. But this focus again on promoting sustainable well-being. And it's really wonderful to see that there's such a strong movement within education. And I just listen to the Dean's lecture from University of Melbourne. I'm not sure, Austin, if you've had a chance to listen to that one yet.
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Suzy Green: And it was a wonderful presentation on the the role of schools and what's happening in schools in terms of climate change? And I'm also presenting at the Pisa Conference the Posed Schools Association on Saturday at Nox Grammar, and I'll certainly be making reference to that.
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Suzy Green: So the carrot and the stick and I'm not gonna steal Jason thunder, because I know he's gonna talk quite a bit about this. I've spent most of my career, despite coming from a clinical background where I was very reactive. And and the whole field is is largely reactive in terms of treatment. I moved pretty quickly into coaching, and so I've been more focused on the proactive and in terms of promotion rather than prevention.
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Suzy Green: And you can see, certainly Peter Drucker, as a thought leader, was onto it and Gretchen Sprite. So who's also part of the center for positive organizations, has been doing some great work on thriving has recently worked with Microsoft, and they've moved their metrics from traditional engagement to a broader conceptualization of thriving
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Suzy Green: next slide. Thank you. And again, Jason's gonna talk to this. But I know this is one of Jason's and my own pet hates is the continued you know, confusion between the term psych psychological health and safety which you can see the definition there. It's a much broader understanding of the workplace and how they, how it promotes psychological health and safety. This is not psychological safety
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Suzy Green: which is primarily based on the work of Amy Edmondson, primarily based at the team level, puts a lot of emphasis on the role of the leader
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Suzy Green: next slide.
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Suzy Green: Love this quote by Monica and Jane. And if you're on the call, or if you're listening to the recording, we love your work. To bring about flourishing, we must pay attention to the seed
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Suzy Green: as well as the soil. So the people as well as the organizational context. And I can say, coming from a clean site background, we didn't have much
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Suzy Green: time. And this is quite a while ago, but I believe it hasn't changed much. It was very individually focused. We didn't get the full understanding of the social or the organizational context. And it's only been through my my work with organizational psychologists over the last 20 years that I've really come to fully understand that this is one of the best papers I've ever come across, and again it's a favorite of Jason's, and he'll speak to that. Anthony Lamont.
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Suzy Green: Tanya published this article. It's a must read 2,014 where he spoke about the integrated approach to workplace mental health. So we certainly need to prevent harm. And there's a big focus on that clearly. And what we're speaking about today from climate change. And also Esg, we need to manage illness once it occurs. But I loved it. You can imagine, as the CEO of the Positivity Institute, how happy I was when I saw promote the
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Suzy Green: positive. Now that's been turned a little bit more into promote flourishing now and again Jason will speak to that next slide, Max, please. So a lot of this does rely on leadership, and often one of my close colleagues talks about leaders as believers. I do know right now, leaders really are the sandwich the meat and the sandwich. In many ways. There's a lot of pressure on them on their own well being and managing those around us.
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Suzy Green: I just wanna reference. Kim Cameron's wonderful work on positive leadership, particularly his model that focuses on the 4 key components of positive leadership fostering a positive climate relationships, communication and meaning.
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Suzy Green: Next slide. Thanks. Max
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Suzy Green: and Kim says that there are 3 factors that enable a positive climate fostering compassion. And I'm I'm going to really stretch this here because there's a lot of research around self compassion, certainly compassion for others. But I would say in terms of our topic today, compassion for the planet. And next slide, thanks, Max.
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Suzy Green: and again highlighting a must-read book by Monica Warline and Jane Dutton.
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Suzy Green: just quoting them briefly, a new science of compassion, based on extensive research, helps us to see that suffering and the compassion that helps us address suffering directly is one of the most important ideas for business today. So we're really trying to bring these strings together. These multifaceted approaches today and over 2.
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Suzy Green: Jason, Jason, I'm gonna introduce Jason. I've made reference to Jason already. Jason and I have known each other, I think possibly nearly 2 or so years, Jason, and I hope you will acknowledge that I was certainly one of the earlier doctors in reaching out to you and trying to learn as much as I could from you. Given that. That wasn't my background historically. And I really appreciate the support that you've given me and the ongoing collaboration. So over to you
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Suzy Green: is he frozen
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Suzy Green: and we lost Jason?
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Suzy Green: Jason has frozen.
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Rosemary Sainty: Maybe.
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Rosemary Sainty: We should jump ahead should jump ahead.
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Suzy Green: He's jumped out. He'll probably jump back in in 2 s. Yeah.
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Rosemary Sainty: So we're just whizzing through to Austin.
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Suzy Green: Yes, to use Suzie.
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Suzy Green: Okay, Austin. Austin is a fellow fellow of the Center for well, being science, where I'm also a fellow. So, as I said, I've been reading Austin's papers. Loving them hadn't come across them so very, very keen to make them more visible, Austin, and very keen to hear what you have to say today.
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Austin Chia: Alright, thank you very much, Suzie, and thank you. Everyone for jumping on the call today. Really excited to be presenting this work on positive Csr with all you today. And
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Austin Chia: as Suzy mentioned the research that brings together positive psychology with concepts related to corporate social responsibility, sustainability. Sdjs has actually been, it's actually quite limited but before I go into the detail about the proposition of what positive Csr is I just wanna give a bit of background around what's led to the stream of research.
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Austin Chia: And really it stems from the acknowledgement that over the last 15 to 20 years, actually, there's been an increasing focus on policy right across the world at, you know, with governments and intergovernmental agencies. So what we've really seen is real advancements. And the way we look at national and global measures of well being. There's greater attention in public policy discourse.
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Austin Chia: On on well, being and resulting from that has been some real pivots in the way we've looked at. The impact of public policy on
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Austin Chia: on the well-being of society. So I guess this backdrop of what we're seeing in in public policy, really, what's led to the stream of research around positives are
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Austin Chia: has been the acknowledgement that while governments and policymakers.
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Austin Chia: Have the potential to impact on societal well-being. The missing piece of the discussion has been what has been the role of business and corporations. And this was quite a important gap in, in in my view. Given that increasingly, we're seeing that the power and influence of businesses and corporations
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Austin Chia: across many economies is increasing a lot of services that have historically been provided by governments are increasingly being privatized and provided by by business. And what comes with that is an evolving sense of responsibility that must be taken up by by organizations.
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Austin Chia: So really, the the motivation for positive is, is this push to shine a lot more on the impacts that businesses and corporations have on well, being on the well-being of society. The second part of this question is around, what can positive psychology add?
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Austin Chia: To extent literature that we have on corporate social responsibility? And this was the burning question in my mind while I was
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Austin Chia: doing my my studies and positive psychology. I'm a management scholar by by training. And then so did further study in positive psychology. And the big question mark for me is that there is a huge body of knowledge and advancements in theorizing and empirical work around social responsibility. But the question is.
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Austin Chia: what can positive site or positive organisational scholarship add over and above what we already know in in in the existing literature.
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Austin Chia: So this is really then, so frames up what the contribution of positive Csr is, and this is a bit of a cheeky term. To say we we did a paper along with my my co-author, Peggy Kern. We we wrote the paper a couple of years ago. That coined the system of positive. Csr. The reason we use this term is more the provocation. To try and bring the 2 fields
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Austin Chia: closer together. But really the focus of
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Austin Chia: positive Csr is to give primacy to the understanding of well-being outcomes and those well-being outcomes, maybe subjective, objective and interactions between the 2 as a result of the consequence of business. And this is where I see the great opportunities of positives. Psychology coming in which is giving us a more holistic understanding of what well-being is. When we think about the impacts of business on society.
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Austin Chia: something to call out as well. Sorry. Just previous slide is the graph up below, as
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Austin Chia: before. The intersections of the 2 fields is is actually quite limited. So what you can see from the graph below is we. We did a literature search to see what the
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Austin Chia: influence of positive psychology has been on Csr business ethics, you know, sustainability literature, and is actually quite limited.
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Austin Chia: And what we actually found for our lit review is that much of the literature in our Csr and sustainability self referential. So we you know, research is in this field tend to only refer to research within the the discipline rather than looking widely beyond the the exist
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Austin Chia: the the management literature. So the next slide, Max. So
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Austin Chia: There's another paper in 2,020 that we wrote which was around corporate social responsibility for for happiness. And again using the term, happiness was another provocation. It. It's it's something that really so catches people's attention. But really, when we talk about happiness, it is conceptualized
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Austin Chia: as subjective and objective. Well being, which is consistent. What with what the positive psychology understands well, being today. So the way we approach this idea of corporate social responsibility for for happiness
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Austin Chia: is, we apply the Contract Contractarian lens of Csr, and just a quick background on this. When we talk about contract tearing lens, it is a belief that social responsibilities arise because a social contract exists between society and and businesses, that businesses exist because society and their constituents allow them to exist. A similar term that's been used widely pass more so in practice, this idea of a social license to operate.
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Austin Chia: So the question around corporate social responsibility for happiness then, becomes, what is this contract that exists between society and business when it comes to well-being outcomes
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and this was a theoretical lens that we applied to the research.
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Austin Chia: So then the critical question here is that, suppose that we believe that businesses have a responsibility for well being and happiness.
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Austin Chia: To whom do they have this responsibility? And for what? So we're going, go to organizations and talk about this idea of this notion of a responsibility for well being? Are we clear in terms of what aspects of well being are we talking about? Is it only about things to do with objective conditions of a workplace? Are we talking about how people feel and function in their role?
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Austin Chia: Are we talking about specific stakeholder groups like employees versus other stakeholder groups like suppliers? So there needs to be a lot more nuance and precision around what? Exactly we're asking organizations to do or what they should be giving attention to.
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Austin Chia: So then, this led to to the the research question around, what are the boundaries of this responsibility? So really, what are the terms of the Social Contract
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Austin Chia: so just quickly to touch? We've done some empirical work around this, and this is based on a large scale survey of over 1,300 respondents. Trying to shine a light on the specificity around the terms of this Social Contract. So what we found is that
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Austin Chia: some degree of responsibility does exist for corporations and businesses for well-being. But the responsibility seems to be a lot greater. For those from less privileged segments of society! So when it comes to well-being outcomes that there is a public perception that there is a heightened level of of responsibility that exists for less privileged segments.
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Austin Chia: And the responsibility is greater for those that are high proximity stakeholders, so as stakeholders, like employees and consumers, are probably saved as having a a corporation, have a great responsibility for well being
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Austin Chia: in terms of the specific boundaries, and of that social contract. What the public perceive has been the terms of the Social Contract is that at a minimum, organizations should not harm or impede happiness or well-being. That organizations have a responsibility to enable conditions for happiness or well-being to occur, but not necessarily for well-being and happiness. As an outcome.
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Austin Chia: That there's an expectations that organizations exercise awareness of hackness in decision making. So there's an element of governance and a role that well-being has in governance processes within organizations. And then that that, the scope of responsibility that is limited by what is the declared strategic purpose and the resource availability of of the the organization or entity
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Austin Chia: some other quick insights that I won't later on, but just quickly touch on
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Austin Chia: what we found in the the existing literature in this space as well as in the our work, that there is actually quite low emphasis on other stakeholder groups like suppliers and shareholders. So the impact that businesses have on their well-being. There's been negligible research in this space.
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Austin Chia: that the perceived responsibility varied, depending on with whether we're talking about subjective or objective. Well, being and that the final point is that well, being literacy is is patchy. So what we mean by this is, when we look at public respondents, the understanding of what well being is, is is
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Austin Chia: yeah. As as to suggest patchy, so they can recognise what subjective wellbeing is, and objective wellbeing is. But they don't really see the interconnections and the flow-ons between those 2 different dimensions.
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Austin Chia: so a huge body of our emerging body of work that's taking place in this space. But hopefully, this gives you a bit of an overview as to what the emerging research agenda is around the intersections of these these 2 fields.
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Austin Chia: So I might wrap up to you, Suzie.
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Suzy Green: Thanks so much, Austin, and very interesting, but I think we'll quickly jump back to Jason.
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Suzy Green: and if we can take the slides back, Max, that'd be great.
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Suzy Green: Thank you, Jason, you're all good.
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Jason van Schie: Yes, I just see my video will
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Suzy Green: alive and well. Max.
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Jason van Schie: yeah. Apologies about that. It's always fun doing things live. And your computer decides to do a restart just as I'm being introduced couldn't have been better and any better timing, really.
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Suzy Green: not a problem, thank you.
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Jason van Schie: But ceci allowed me to do some research, and, in fact, we actually met in 2,018 at the Pisa Conference. That's a long grammar school, so has been more than a couple of years. It's been more like 5 or 6 by now, but time for time flights.
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Jason van Schie: But I can introduce myself. So Jason Banshee, I'm managing victor and psychologist at Flourish. Dx, my background is in organizational psychology.
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Jason van Schie: I've definitely dabbled in positive psychology, and I really enjoy working in the area. But I guess where most of my work these days is is in psychological health and safety. So it's really about applying a risk based framework to understanding and addressing the the causes of mental health or mental ill health in the workplace.
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Jason van Schie: So what I wanna really talk about is the S and Esg, and it's the part that is largely overlooked. There's a lot of focus when we're talking about sustainability around environmental sustainability. There's a lot around governance. But we're not really looking so much at social sustainability. And it's definitely an area that we need to.
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Jason van Schie: And we can look at social sustainability in a number of different ways. Right? If you look at the
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Jason van Schie: fundamental worker rights that the international labor organization focuses on things like abolition of child labour and modern slavery, and and all the rest. Those are all you know, where the pursuits.
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Jason van Schie: Interestingly, last year they also introduced a fifth fundamental worker right, which is occupational health and safety.
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Jason van Schie: And so that actually gives us an opportunity to position mental health through a health and safety lens as a fundamental worker, right?
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Jason van Schie: But I would say we're not performing well at all when it comes to creating workplaces that are mentally healthy. Probably the best and most damning evidence is probably a better way to say it is looking at workers. Compensation statistics here in Australia. So the latest statistics have just been released by safe work, Australia, just in the last couple of weeks. So it's quite timely given this webinar.
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Jason van Schie: but the the number of claims is down overall. So it went from just over 12,000 claims last year to 11,700
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Jason van Schie: but the complexity of these claims so how long people are taking off. And the cost of these claims is continuing to escalate.
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Jason van Schie: And it's a trend that we've seen over the last 7 years where you know, the 69% increase in total claims, but the working weeks loss continues to to escalate quite a bit. So you can see here, for example, the Median claim for a mental health condition, and someone has something that is work related and leads to time off work is 34.2 weeks
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Jason van Schie: huge. It's well over half a year now.
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Jason van Schie: and about 7 times greater than the median amount of time loss due to all other claims the cost also is far greater, given that complexity almost 5 times higher than all other claims.
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Jason van Schie: But I guess when you take into account both the complexity of these claims and the number of claims. The best way to look at the true
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Jason van Schie: impact of mental injuries on the health and safety of working Australians is looking at the the weeks lost due to mental injuries versus all other claims.
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Jason van Schie: So whilst all mental injury claims account for less than 10%. Now you're on the right slide there, Max. While all mental injury claims account for less than 10% of all claims. If you looked at the weeks lost, which, remember again, is about 6 to 7 times greater than all other claims. We're actually talking about almost 40% of the time lost, due to any illness or injury being due to mental injuries.
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Jason van Schie: So just let that sink in. It's a huge amount, so we can look at musculoskeletal disorder. We can look at you know, slips, trips, and falls. All the rest. Mental injuries account for a huge amount, and the trend is over the last 7 years. The amount of time that we're losing due to mental injuries is up 304%.
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Jason van Schie: So, despite all we know about, you know, the the benefits of having flourishing organizations. And, you know, teaching people to be more resilient or using positive psychology type tools.
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Jason van Schie: Knowing what we know about job demands and resources and applying these sorts of theories as well. There's lots of carrots.
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Jason van Schie: but unfortunately, we've not seen enough organisations really thinking about what they're doing in order to protect people from these mental injuries. In the first place, by creating safe systems of work.
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Jason van Schie: So that's where regulations come in. And we've been in a period of regulation reform here in Australia since 2,018, when Marie Boland did a review of the Workplace, Health and Safety Act, and out of 34 recommendations. The second recommendation was, Hey, we need regulations dealing specifically with psychosocial risk.
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Jason van Schie: because under the 2011 Act, which all of Australia, except for Victoria, subscribe to Victoria have their own similar legislation in place, but under the 2011 Act there is a duty of care that employers must ensure that the work they get people to do, and the working environment does cause doesn't cause them up.
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Jason van Schie: And that was always supposed to be both physical and mental harm, but employees didn't read that into it, and and Regulators didn't feel it was strong enough to enforce.
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Jason van Schie: So now, as you can see, most of Australia now have these regulations in force. South Australia and Act will be joining in November and December and Victoria this still unknown, but we believe it's likely in the next 3 to 6 months, and that will mean that all of Australia has specific regulations in in place.
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Jason van Schie: And what does that mean? Well, there's 3 high level obligations that all Pcbus or persons conducting business or undertakings need to abide by
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Jason van Schie: one is they actually need to identify psychosocial hazards. They need to consult with Staff to determine what are the things that potentially might cause you.
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Jason van Schie: The psychosocial hazard is anything in the design, management, or social aspects of work that have that potential to course. Be that psychological or physical.
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Jason van Schie: So things like work overload or lack of role clarity or lack of autonomy. You know, bullying harassment, these sorts of things all have the potential to cause harm.
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Jason van Schie: We must consider the duration, frequency, and severity of that hazard exposure because we are talking about an exposure issue here and then make sure that we're putting controls that either eliminate those hazards at the source rather than just trying to make people better able to manage the stress associated with being exposed to these hazards. So actually addressing the design and management of work?
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Jason van Schie: And then, if we can't eliminate those hazards, then we need to look at how we reduce the risk of those hazards causing harm.
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Jason van Schie: and then we need to maintain these control measures through cycles of continuous improvement. What's really great about this is it's actually auxili 101. What companies now need to do is they need to assess the baseline and what is contributing to mental ill health? All the potential, for
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Jason van Schie: they need to put in controls, and then they need to measure again to make sure their controls are actually working as intended. So it's great to see that this is actually now formalised in in regulations.
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Jason van Schie: But this isn't
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Jason van Schie: anything that's going to replace all of the mountains of work that we've been doing over decades in workplace mental health. As Susie referenced before it actually falls as falls into the integrated model of of workplace mental health.
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Jason van Schie: Like Susie, I'm a fan of Tony Lamontanya, Angela Martin and Dr. Kat Page also contributed to this foundational research almost 10 years ago. And, in fact, I'm really excited that, you know, we are actually going to be running our first two-day conference in Sydney in June next year.
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Jason van Schie: We've got the 3 authors of that paper doing a panel for the 10 Year Anniversary as part of that conference so really excited to have Tony Cat and hinge participating in that.
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Jason van Schie: But what we know is that there's 3 levels of intervention when we talk about their integrated model. What are we doing to support workers with ill health? And we know that's where most workplace mental health interventions start. You know, what are we doing to help people identify when they do have symptoms of ill health? And how do we get them access to support?
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Jason van Schie: What are we doing to prevent harm? So this is where that risk management focus actually fits in. And maybe our systems inform positive psychology as well. How do we create working environments that make that that don't
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Jason van Schie: cause people do come unwell.
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Jason van Schie: And then what are we also doing to promote flourishing? How are we optimizing the design of work to give people more autonomy to make sure they've got tolerable work demands to allow them to leverage their strengths and suitably challenging activities and teaching them, you know, self-care habits to make them more resilient and and assist them to flourish.
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Jason van Schie: So what we're talking about is is not something that, you know, is in competition with anything else. Really, because mental health is a continuum, we need to be having a holistic approach to mental health. And there's multiple prongs to that
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Jason van Schie: and whilst this integrated approach really started back in in 2,014, with that foundational paper.
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Jason van Schie: it has been taken on as recently as September last year by the World Health Organization and the international labor organization. Internationally, as this is best practice as work, placement of health.
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Jason van Schie: we don't just, you know, attack everything with the one hammer that we have in, say, positive psychology. What can we apply from clinical psychology? What can we apply from organisational psychology. What can we apply from the the disciplines of occupational hygiene and and health and occupational health and safety?
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Jason van Schie: There's all of these different disciplines that can combine together to help us to achieve the goal which is, let's kind of meet people where they're at in relation to the mental health, to either support, prevent harm, or promote flourishing
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Jason van Schie: so
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Jason van Schie: nationally in Australia. And and look, we work with with many multinationals, several of them that we're aware of have done legal reviews around the world, and have settled on the fact that Australia actually now has the strongest legislation in place for psychological health and safety at work. And so many multinationals are actually starting in Australia. With, what are we doing here? And then what can we learn and apply in other markets that we work in.
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Jason van Schie: But there is also a voluntary standard with an international best practice standard that's put out by Iso 45,003.
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Jason van Schie: It's it's a child standard of Iso, 45,001, which is the international management system standard for occupational health and safety management systems.
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Jason van Schie: But essentially, it gives specific guidance on how do you actually address psychological health and safety at work? Under the broader banner of occupational health and safety?
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Jason van Schie: Now on the website, it talks about the sustainable sustainability development goals. That it it aligns to. And it actually, if we can just see the next little bit of this slide. Yeah. It actually reckons it. Helps with a number of the sustainable development goals. I reckon it probably aligns better to good health and good jobs and economic growth. Can we, you know, promote workplaces that promote good health and don't cause people to become ill?
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Jason van Schie: And can we create good jobs for people right there it is. It should be a fundamental worker, right? That it's not just
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Jason van Schie: say from a physical perspective, but also say, from a mental health perspective. So internationally, that is kind of the main driver as well as the guidelines. Now from the World Health Organization and International Labour organisation.
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Jason van Schie: And then also, when we take a psychological health and safety approach, it actually fits in really well into existing reporting frameworks for sustainability.
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Jason van Schie: So the most
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Jason van Schie: commonly used standard by large organisations in particular, for reporting against sustainability is the gri standards and gri 4, 3 deals with occupational health and safety.
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Jason van Schie: So if you were just to take a wellness approach, or a traditional approach to workplace mental health, you might be able to take one disclosure statement out of the 10 when it comes to Gri 4, 3.
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Jason van Schie: But if you were to take a psychological health and safety approach you could actually take 7 of the 10 disclosure statements. There's actually a lot more to talk about as an organization, what you're doing to really protect those workers that are in your care and ensuring that you've got those broader societal impacts on on positive mental health as well.
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Jason van Schie: So we don't need to reinvent the wheel. I know some people are pushing for an H to be included in esg, so esg plus H. But I feel you know, social sustainability if we use it well. And we use existing reporting standards like this, then it actually really makes sense. And we can actually fit this in. If we if we put that health and safety lens on what we're doing in relation to workplace mental health.
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Jason van Schie: But that's me.
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Suzy Green: Thanks so much, Jason Rosemary, over to you. Now
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Rosemary Sainty: let me unmute myself. Thanks so much, Jason. Just I guess, for our audience. You know, we what we're doing here is showing you some different lenses that the positive site positive organizational scholarship approaches can contribute to the sustainability agenda. And it's quite interesting to me that
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Rosemary Sainty: with the kind of rise of the term Esg has has. There's been very much that kind of risk focused agenda. But but the full conversation is really one about risk and opportunity. And so is the case with the presentation that both Austin's and Jason's presentations that we can see that we can move from something that's more around survive to something that's more around. Thrive. And so I think, in a in a general sense, that's that's one kind of key contribution here.
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Rosemary Sainty: But let's continue the exploration in my own research, my doctoral research here at Uts, I became really interested in the intersection of corporate governance and corporate responsibility. I think it's really important. Susie and I now really want to look at how we can embed the Esgs, the Sdgs and sustainability into organizations through purpose and through meaning, I'm tackling purpose. So really, over the past decade
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Rosemary Sainty: more, there's been a real push to look at, reassessing the role of business in society broadly put.
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Rosemary Sainty: And it's led to real questioning around shareholder primacy, and that it's not just about maximizing shareholder value at the expense of other stakeholders. And I think most of us would be now getting used to that expression that that businesses can be purpose led organizations can be purpose led. So it's not just about the economic.
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Rosemary Sainty: but also about social and environmental value, creation or impact. As as a term that's often used to a broader range of stakeholders. So the community customers, workers, suppliers.
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Rosemary Sainty: And of course, the environment. This has become increasingly urgent, driven by climate change.
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Rosemary Sainty: And it's quite interesting to sort of see
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Rosemary Sainty: again with the investor community. I've got a quote here from Larry Fink from Blackroff, and it's actually reflecting the shift in the purpose of the corporation. So you can see from this quote, it's also part of a big
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Rosemary Sainty: purpose of the corporation movement based in the Us. With their business round table. That the the you can pick bits of this out where it shows that. You know, making a positive contribution to society which links into what Austin was talking about is part of this, that companies must benefit all of this stakeholders, shareholders, community employees, etc. The point below that comes from the
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Rosemary Sainty: Be corpor benefit corporation movement. And this, is a growing movement where businesses actually adapt their constitution to include this purpose statement, the purpose of the companies to deliver returns to shareholders whilst having an overall positive impact on society and the environment. This is really staring down that the role of business is just to make business. Milton Friedman's expression.
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Rosemary Sainty: And I think we all understand the value and importance of this linking this back to what's our contribution here from the positive side? Pause. Point of view. I've got a couple of really important quotes, I think, a pivotal. So here are the founders, Cameron, Dutton, and Quinn, saying in 2,003, imagine a world in which all organizations are typified by appreciation, collaboration, virtuous vitality and meaningfulness. And when we think of the top performing organizations.
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Rosemary Sainty: that is how we think of them. So we're wanting to readdress what the role of
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Rosemary Sainty: of the organization is in terms of this idea of purpose and the role of business in society, so that the quite big things to consider, and this lovely quote from Felicia Huber. In a book that she's part of that Susie will mention. Feeling empowered by taking positive action to protect our environment increases well, being a sense of agency, competence, meaning, and connectedness. So seeing some of these
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Rosemary Sainty: concepts now sort of, we're threading these together to give a sense of just what the contribution can be from the positive side in moving towards a more sustainable world. So I'm gonna hand over now to Susie. Having looked at this shifting focus of what the purpose of the corporation or the purpose of organizations actually is.
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Suzy Green: Susie. Thanks so much rosary. I'll try and stick to time, because I'm really looking forward to Lisa's presentation and just a little bit of background to the research literature. When I first came into this field, showing age, but nearly 20 years ago. Now there was hardly any research on meaning. And it's just really taken off over the last 20 years. One of my close colleagues, Professor Michael Steiger has done a lot of work, but there are others in that.
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Suzy Green: The terms are often used interchangeably, meaning and purpose. Although most scholars agree, they're not exactly quite the same. Mike suggests that meaning might be seen as a superordinate term that encompasses 2 main dimensions.
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Suzy Green: One is comprehension, making sense of one's own life and world. And to me that's more about having a sense of meaning in life. And then purpose is often defined as an overarching life aim, so that long term aspirations. And I know for some people that's they're more interested in determining what's the meaning of my life. And this paper. I think Jason might have shared this paper, Rosemary. I'm not sure but it was a great one. I've read it this way
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Suzy Green: as well. And it spoke about differentiating, but also looking at the interactions between decent work and meaningful work and decent work really being the basic workplace conditions and coming from the Ilo and Jason's, made some reference to this, and I think that prevent harm spaces really.
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Suzy Green: definitely supporting the opportunity to have decent work, although in the paper it notes that majority of the world do not have decent work, which is alarming and then this is really the space where positive, psychic and pos is played in terms of understanding what is meaningful work. And this paper suggests that decent work is a precursor to meaningful work, and that often this is through
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Suzy Green: the need, satisfaction, and those that are familiar with self determination. Theory will know that they are. The key needs key psychological needs of competence, autonomy and relatedness. And we'll see if we can provide a link to this paper because it's a really great one. It acknowledges that complex intersection intersection between those macro level which Jason's been talking a lot about, and also the psychological factors at the individual level. Next slide. Thank you.
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Suzy Green: So lots of research. I won't. you know. Read it. Read it out, but I'm often quoting this research the the rationale for why you try and make work as meaningful as possible. Although the disclaimer is here. Not that everybody's work has to be a calling as such. But the key here is that we have meaning in our lives in some form or another next slide
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Suzy Green: a. And is having meaningful work. Good. Yes, it has a range of positive outcomes, as you can see, listed there, and if we go to the next slide it's also good for organizations. Hence why, there's a there's an interest in this area. I did do a presentation to a a bank a number of years ago now on meaning in the workplace. And
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Suzy Green: one fellow, when I asked who he has a calling, he! He! He! Yelled out, Susie, this is a bank! And everyone had a good laugh, and then we had a really lively conversation, because some people said I came in to change the banking industry, you know, and so I think it's not necessarily, as the research suggests, not necessarily the role that we have. It's the way that we view the role and also linking our own
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Suzy Green: personal values to the organizational values. We also know. And I think this speaks a lot to Austin's work is that with the younger generations younger generations want to see organizations that are doing good. You know, what's the impact that they're having on society. But also the planet. It's becoming increasingly an important question that the younger generation are asking next term.
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Suzy Green: I do wanna quote. I think Felicia may be on the call with us today. Felicia is a very humble, incredibly inspiring woman that I've learned a lot from over many, many years, and Felicia is one of the key experts in the study of well-being globally and just you can read the quote there. In in. There's a whole chapter in the book
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Suzy Green: creating the world we want to live in on the interplay of positive psych and the environment, and, like Rosemary, had suggested, Felicia suggests that one of the core capabilities that we need is compassion. And again, I would come back to not just compassion for others, compassion for ourselves, but compassion for the planet.
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Suzy Green: Next slide. This is another interesting piece of research. It's been around for a little while, Mcgregor, and Little, I think Felicia is a close colleague of Brian Little, and I found this particularly interesting because it found that highly successful executives had habituated to this their success, leaving integrity as the primary source of their wellbeing, and that concerns with efficacy had been supplemented by developmental
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Suzy Green: concerns with generativity, just leaving a legacy and guiding future generations. And the work that I do, I maintain a handful of very senior clients that certainly often. First and foremost, the conversations that we're having at that point of their careers.
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Suzy Green: So thank you. I'm gonna pass over to Lisa now. I've only recently met the the delightful Lisa. We were on a panel looking at the wellbeing of Dei professionals, and Lisa comes to us with significant experience and knowledge of both, working internally in organizations, but also having worked as a consultant. So over to you, Lisa, thanks for joining us.
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Lisa Skovron: Thanks, Susie, and thanks. Rosemary, Jason and Austin as well. You've all shared some really thought provoking information and research. I'm gonna do my best to try and translate some of those ideas into practice.
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Lisa Skovron: In in a corporate context. both from obviously my observations of and experiences of working in
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Lisa Skovron: within organisations, and as a consultant and where appropriate, I'll obviously share some things that we're doing at cochlear around it.
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Lisa Skovron: So you know, I think 100% support the the premise that, you know, we're moving towards putting humanity fronts and center in organizations, and that we are really striving to help people shift from surviving and flourishing. And I think
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Lisa Skovron: that's that's a really interesting and challenging proposition off the back of you know the last period, whether it be you know, Covid, the Metoo movement. Black lives. Matter? You know the the the political Unrest war in Ukraine, and more recently, obviously currently in in Israel. But nonetheless, you know, we absolutely need to. And by people II absolutely mean the people within the organization. So the leaders and and team members.
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Lisa Skovron: but also all the other stakeholder groups which you know, Rosemary, you certainly were talking to before, and I think, like many things, it's maturing over time. So there is progress that we've made. But there's obviously work to be done.
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Lisa Skovron: So you know, I know that Jason has talked to some of the taking a risk based approach to the work. And that's obviously really important. It's equally important to balance it with the the lens of positive psychology.
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Lisa Skovron: you know. And I think that what it starts with is really organizations being clear about what they value and what they prioritize. And how do they demonstrate that to all of their stakeholders? So part of that is through what they publish as their strategic a a agenda, if you like, whether that be on the website through their annual reports, and so forth.
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Lisa Skovron: But that is the anchor point at, from which I think all of the key stakeholders refer and align. So it's really important to to be clear in the the message. About what they value and prioritize from a sustainability perspective. Both.
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Lisa Skovron: you know, from a financial or commercial lens, legal lens, but equally from a an impact in a societal lens.
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Lisa Skovron: And and I think you are seeing organizations take a much more balanced view when they're writing that, and that is flowing through to organizations. So even if you just go and look up various annual reports or websites of Asx listed companies. You'll see. You'll see that evident there.
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Lisa Skovron: And I think that you know many members of the panel today have talked to the stick approach, and whilst it's really important that we have the legislation that we have the regulatory bodies, and that we have the frameworks to benchmark against.
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Lisa Skovron: they are important to hold organizations accountable and to make sure that they're accountable for mitigation or preventing harm, you know, and also making sure that they keep
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Lisa Skovron: progressing things. And so, you know, you've seen legislative change. Originally the Eo legislation was introduced in Australia. Obviously, that's that was really to to shift focus on more equality between genders, but that has evolved and shifting sentiments between equality and equity
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Lisa Skovron: in in a lot of angles when it comes to human flourishing. So you'll see respect at work. Report the more recent Wigio Bill, which is really
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Lisa Skovron: articulated expectations of positive duty, of organizations which talk to the preventing harm. And and really thinking about how you address it when it exists in organizations. And at the end of the day it's about really identifying the systemic
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Lisa Skovron: issues and opportunities that exist. So you know, spotlighting the need for safety at work, because that also is important for impacting the safety for people
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Lisa Skovron: in our society, making sure that people have fair and equitable access to money, to employment, you know, to the products and services that might be critical, I mean Covid really honed in on what was viewed as mission critical versus optional search services and products and and and
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Lisa Skovron: therefore, who had who could go to work or not? And at the end of the day it's also about equitable treatment and outcome for everyone. So whether you're looking at it from a
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Lisa Skovron: an employee perspective and their opportunity to grow and learn the pay that they get the career progression. But equally when you look at it from a a customer's perspective? What access do they get? What is their experience of the products and services, and then further, to to shareholders? So.
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Lisa Skovron: whilst all of that's really important, it doesn't really address what what you know. Suzie was talking to around helping people flourish and and at the end of the day. This is not about dealing with dysfunction. This is what Jason talked to at the the far end of the the spectrum about them flourishing. And that is absolutely where we can draw on the social sciences.
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Lisa Skovron: Psychology, positive psychology. And that's why you've seen organizations have an increased focus on inclusion, on well-being and belonging, and and by that, you know, it starts with at an enterprise wide level, thinking about the policies that you have in place. So policies around flexible work
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Lisa Skovron: policies around care responsibilities and the support that's available around around that the type of care that you can take leave for. You know. Obviously
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Lisa Skovron: there was a strong focus on parental leave. But with an aging population there's an increasing need to consider. You, you know, a broader lens of that equally first nations people. Their view of of caring isn't just, you know, my own children. It's the the mob that you care for. So really thinking about the policies that you have from a much more
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Lisa Skovron: holistic lens thinking about your multiple stakeholders around those things, and also the impact. So recognising that what you put in place today might not
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Lisa Skovron: meet our needs, you know, in 5 years or 10 years time. So what are the checks and balances you have in place to make sure that that those things are sustainable and delivering the outcomes you want. If I if I just touch on some of the environmental sustainability piece, I think what you'll you'll see happening more and more in organizations is obviously looking at how to reduce carbon emissions, you know. So that has a direct impact on
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Lisa Skovron: on work travel. You know whether that be domestic or global. It has a direct impact on people's expecting people to come into work.
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Lisa Skovron: You know, the the
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Lisa Skovron: focus on waste of resources is really important in the energy use. So how do we we adopt more sustainable energy sources as well. And
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Lisa Skovron: whilst all of that's really important, when you start to remove travel and you start to. And people start to think. Well, I'm not. Gonna I'm not gonna drive into work or catch the bus or the train, because it costs more money, or I'm trying to to reduce my my footprint carbon footprint
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Lisa Skovron: that has a direct impact on on their interactions with people, their collaboration and their relationships with people at work
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Lisa Skovron: and connection to other people and community and communication is really important for flourishing. So if organizations are taking that away, it's really important to supplement that with the right education skills, resources, tools for collaborating and connecting in a different way to other people, you know, across the globe or across
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Lisa Skovron: across the country.
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Lisa Skovron: You know, I think that from a a I often focus on leadership and culture, and I think some of what's been talked to today has kind of touched at the surfaces of that. I know. Susie talked about leaders kind of being the the meat in the sandwich. I think there is a lot of pressure being put on leaders.
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Lisa Skovron: but I think there's that's also because there's a lot of pressure being put on organizations. And I think that you know, II think that with that pressure we've got to recognize the human experience of that, and that
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Lisa Skovron: that people don't come into the organization
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Lisa Skovron: with a full tool kit of resources and capability and strategies, to deal with all of that complexity and uncertainty, and so teaching them to be more self aware, to be more aware of others and people's reactions to be more curious and and be open to exploring it.
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Lisa Skovron: To be open to adapting how they're working with people to referring them on to other services, whether it be employee assistance programs for psychological services
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Lisa Skovron: or giving them a day off for mental health, just so that they can recover, or looking at what other support that might might need to flourish in a certain context is really important.
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Lisa Skovron: and so often people are promoted in organizations for technical expertise, and it's assumed that they will grasp or learn by osmosis all these other things. So what you're starting to see is when it comes to leadership and management, education and training. There's a lot more focus on the human element. So whether that be about teaching the art of conversations.
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Lisa Skovron: teaching them to really understand mental health and well-being. And the inclusion element is really important, because.
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Lisa Skovron: you know, there's a lot of things that people cover when they come into a work context, they are not necessarily fully transparent. Of all the the things that are concerning or impacting them in any given day or week, whether that be
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Lisa Skovron: you know their sexual orientation, whether that be religious concerns, whether that be racism that they've experienced, you know, on, on routes. All of that has an impact on how they show up their ability to really flourish in a work context. So
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Lisa Skovron: raising awareness of individuals and leaders about this and and creating a safe environment to be vulnerable, to share that, to ask for what you need and for for being open to responding to that is really important.
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Lisa Skovron: But I think one of the biggest pieces because we are in in operating in such a pressure cooker environment where everyone is expected to do more with less.
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Lisa Skovron: How do we hardwire some rituals, some practices, and some nudges in our day to day ways of working so that we flourish. And so it is little things like showing gratitude. Encouraging self reflection, and focusing on what you can, you can influence, and you can control acknowledging the progress and the impact you've made and can continue to make rather than focusing on all the things that don't didn't go well, or that you didn't get to
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Lisa Skovron: you know, being thoughtful about your all the basics like sleep, nutrition, exercise, and relationships, they are really the foundation for well-being and flourishing.
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Lisa Skovron: you know. Suzie also talked to meaningful work, and I think that that's increasingly where things are shifting as well. I think there's this pressure of moving from delegating work that just needs to get done
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Lisa Skovron: to doing it in a much more conscious, thoughtful way and aligning it to people's personal motivators and strengths, and sometimes that might mean saying, No, we're not going to do some piece of work.
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Lisa Skovron: and that's not always easy for leaders to to stand up to
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Lisa Skovron: I think I might just leave it there because we wanna allow time for people to ask some QA. So over over to you.
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Lisa Skovron: Susie and Rosemary.
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Suzy Green: Thanks so much, Lisa. What a wonderful example of everything that we've been talking about in so many ways! I really loved your
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Suzy Green: recognition that people don't come into organizations with tool kits on how to deal with complexity. And that's really the realm or the domain that I work in is equipping people, not just with purely self care strategies, but broader psychological capabilities. Unfortunately, we're we're not learning this at school. It's not in all schools. Yet my hope is that it will be into the future. But we certainly do need greater levels of perspective,
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Suzy Green: taking capacity, curiosity, compassion definitely communication skills. A lot of this speaks to me from a maturity perspective. And so how do we
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Suzy Green: rapidly advance leadership, maturity and maturity more broadly? Self actualization, as I would have said. Anyway, there's a lot to be said there. And thank you so much for your contribution, Lisa.
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Rosemary Sainty: Okay, thank you? Well, lots of really wonderful perspectives. We've got a couple of questions in the Q&A. So please jump on and pop the question in there. We're sort of ready, willing and able to respond. And one kind of lengthy question from Sam Wren in the chat which I'm just gonna kind of condense right down to what is Asg 4,
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Rosemary Sainty: and and it's actually quite an important question. And I think there is actually someone that's on the is participating. Gordon Noble, if you're still there, was involved with the people that kind of came up with the term Esg. Noting that S was put into the middle for safekeeping. And certainly for me. It's about the interconnections
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Rosemary Sainty: between the environment.
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Rosemary Sainty: everything that encapsulate social which we're hearing about this morning. And then the G, of course, is about good governance. So leadership and we've talk heard about the importance of integrity there. So so that that's definitely my take on that. And that's a big. It's a big piece, isn't it, that all of these things actually thread together, care of the environment, care of people with largely workers, community customers, etc., and and the governance
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Rosemary Sainty: pace. Sam has come back, so I'll have a look at that. But let's go to the first question. From Anne Mclean. Thank you. The workplace. Safety statistics were really interesting. Were there any industry sector trends that you're able to comment on sounds like one for you, Jason.
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Jason van Schie: I have not looked that closely into industry trends from the latest data, but we do know that if we look at industries where we have disproportionate amounts of mental injury claims is usually goes first responders first.
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Jason van Schie: healthcare. So nurses you can imagine particularly and even before Covid, right? Like they're on the front line and education and I know Suzy, like myself, has a heart for education and positive psychology. And well, being in schools, and teachers needed. So th, they're typically the ones that you find the highest proportion.
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Rosemary Sainty: Hmm.
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Suzy Green: thank you. I'm looking at Sam's question. That's a big one, Sam. Have you thought about doing a Phd. Could I speak to that briefly? Is that okay? Some of the other panelists as well. Yeah, I'm I'm definitely saying, a move to, I guess more
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Suzy Green: participatory approaches when it comes to values rather than just saying, these are our company values, and you see, people will pass them on the wall and completely habituate to them. Then, you know, historically, never really been brought to life. So I'm definitely saying, a move to greater levels, I guess, of autonomy in terms of people having a voice being able to voice what the values are and that inclusion in there
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Suzy Green: that whole values crystallization process. And I think there's also I presented yesterday to a company for World Mental health day and
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Suzy Green: we spoke about. It's an opportunity for individuals to reflect on their own personal values. Now, that can be an area that can be quite sensitive. Some people don't want to talk about that at work. So that's something we certainly need to keep in mind. But I do think there's a wonderful opportunity in terms of creating greater levels of meaning. If you can see the connection or the alignment of your own personal values to the values of the organization and
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Suzy Green: ideally knowing that the organization is genuine about it. And there's evidence that they do really care. Can certainly have a big impact on people's wellbeing.
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Lisa Skovron: Can I just add, add, add to that? Sorry I was. Gonna say, Suzy, that you know, 100% agree. And I think that you've got to remember that
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Lisa Skovron: people don't connect the dots naturally themselves. And so organizations and I certainly have done this and will continue to do this is you need to take people through a process or processes and experiences that allow them to make those connections and draw their own
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Lisa Skovron: have their own. Aha! Moments as II kind of call them, but you curate it with the intent
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Lisa Skovron: of getting them to safely reflect and understand to what's important to them, and then connect that to balancing that with what's important to the organizations, and there are going to be trade offs. But that's for them to to make a judgment call off, and and I think when you treat them more with respect and inclusion around, that you actually get much more engagement and participation in in the organizational intent.
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Rosemary Sainty: Oh, thanks, Lisa, but my back to my doctoral research. It was really focused on boards and the trade-offs and tensions experienced that, you know, most senior level of organizational governance. And none of these issues are easy, like some of the decisions that have to be made in terms of climate change, at least as sort of highlighted some of those operationally challenging. And so it's actually really important to acknowledge
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Rosemary Sainty: the tensions and the trade-offs that happen and to involve staff in that conversation. And it's it's interesting that there's kind of the rise and rise of greenwashing now is part of that where, where, if you, if those trade-offs intentions aren't acknowledged and organizations don't say, Look, we're we're trying to tackle this, and we're doing that
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Rosemary Sainty: if there's an issue which there often is. Then then it's a problem. So I it's important to acknowledge the complexity of it. Just further, also to that question on sectors. It's just worth saying that in the broad sustainability area some sectors have been more front footed on the A. S. And G, and I tend to be the ones that have been more exposed. So mining companies
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Rosemary Sainty: financial services, sector, etc. you know, if you actually look at their reporting and and what they're doing sort of broadly rich. It gives them an advantage.
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Rosemary Sainty: so let's go back to the questions again.
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Rosemary Sainty: And I might just jump down to the bottom. How do you find the responsiveness of organizations to developing competence of compassion versus more technical based skills? I actually just did my own little quick response, a typed response there
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Suzy Green: Rosemary. But I was just going to suggest that. If you're looking for a really strong business case, Rationale. I think it's at least one chapter, if not 2, that Monica and Jane have in their book, awakening compassion. Very compelling. Even if you're yeah, you know, cynic, it's hard to argue with the research.
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Rosemary Sainty: Yes, thanks, Susie, I guess. Felicia. Hubert's chapter for me around compassion
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Rosemary Sainty: actually really draws the environmental dimension of sustainability.
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Rosemary Sainty: to
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Rosemary Sainty: to the social dimension. Because it's it's a it's almost like a competency, isn't it? It's like emotional intelligence. It's a environmental intelligence and and compassion and empathy. As Mark Carney said.
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Rosemary Sainty: enable engaging with the complexities of this all
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Rosemary Sainty: back to the questions from Diane Voules. I currently work as a current. I work currently as a well-being and policy adviser at an independent policy. Think, Tank, I'm curious to understand what the group thinks about moving to a well-being economy and the ways that we can collaborate.
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Austin Chia: Very that that's a great question. And you know, I think in part the the disconnect, I think, between you know, organizations and the the broad, evolving economy is in part which is led me to sort of look at this question a bit more. You know. I think a a practical level, I think. I think businesses perhaps need to have
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Austin Chia: a seat at the table and some of these discussions, and and be held to account around the impact that they do have on society. I think a lot of movements that we've seen around. Well, being you know, at a national level has often put the onus of well being on governments and policy makers
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Austin Chia: when, in fact, that probably needs to be a a broader recognition that businesses are part of the well being equation at at a macro level and a sizable level.
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Austin Chia: So quite a few years back, actually, I I attended a conference in in Bhutan.
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Austin Chia: which, you know the the idea of that conference was really to broaden out the concept of Jane Haitian. I talked to the conference of Jan Hait, of business, and the the critical question there was actually again, you're shining this lot on th what? What is emerging as a gap in in policy discourse, which is what that role of of business is. So
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Austin Chia: so I think that just needs to be broader engagement with with business. I think that needs to be broader awareness and well, being literacy on the side to level, I think, from that social Contractarian perspective. If
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Austin Chia: I think society recognizes that well being masses, then you know the expectations and the social movements around that will put it more so on the agenda of of corporations which, will align with that idea of a well being a economy?
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Great?
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Rosemary Sainty: Any cases in public health care?
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Rosemary Sainty: Does anyone have
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Austin Chia: job crafting is
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Austin Chia: relational crafting the cognitive framing that was actually through the study of of healthcare workers.
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Austin Chia: around how they actually create meaning in their work day to day. So where you where they did a study on Genesis. And they interviewed. Why, why, they they work in the hospital. It wasn't necessarily that the task that will perform that really the impact that they were having on patients.
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Austin Chia: So you know, the emergence and and some of the very important studies and theories and impulse. Cycles actually come from. You know the the healthcare sector?
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Rosemary Sainty: good point. And actually, we'll put a link up to some job crafting resources when we create the webpage, because I think that's quite pertinent in this area.
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Rosemary Sainty: We're coming up to getting close to time. There's just a couple of other areas that I think, W. We haven't necessarily touched on that, that the positive side pause, approach can contribute around things like hope.
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Rosemary Sainty: optimism, resilience. So this is talked about a lot when it comes to the climate change dilemma. But of course, all the other. The other challenges that we've sort of been buffering our way through. Would anyone like to make any any comments about that particular angle?
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Suzy Green: I'll briefly make one, Rosemary. I did my doctoral research on coaching, underpinned by the theory of hope. Theory. So I usually say, hope is not a thing with feathers on it. The purchasing the soul, as Emily Dickinson once suggested, it's actually a hard core psychological construct
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Suzy Green: and it's made up of 3 cognitive components of goals, agency, and pathways. But in Felicia's book, too, and I know Felicia's a fan. I can't actually think of the author's name now. She quotes some additional research on active and, I think active versus passive hope. So we're certainly not.
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Suzy Green: you know, wanting to build people up with that sense of false hope. Hope theory that I'm more familiar with is definitely very active. So for me, when I talk about positivity, and of course, positivity is had a bit of a bashing lately, because it's one toxic positivity, which is certainly not what I'm talking about. For me, positivity is developing hopeful and optimistic thinking. Because.
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Suzy Green: however on earth are we ever gonna address these we could problems. If we don't have a level of hopefulness, or I'll stop there for the moment. Yeah, that that's actually is a big point from Mark Carney, and quite an important individual here in terms of
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Rosemary Sainty: the massive adaptation to climate change that that all of us have to particularly business. Undertake that. And he actually uses words, hope and resilience. I, because it's not enough to just be worrying about the metrics here. People have to be taken along with this.
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Rosemary Sainty: and there is yet there is still an opportunity for optimism and interconnectedness. Ii think, to Kpmg, do a an annual look at sustainability reporting. And they have noticed noted in the Asg area that S is under developed.
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Rosemary Sainty: Anyone like to make a comment around what they would like to see, and this might be a good way of rounding up our our discussion, what they would like to see under that S. When it comes to organizations reporting in Asg areas.
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Rosemary Sainty: Lisa, would you like to go first?
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Lisa Skovron: Just gotta unmute look, I think we have to think much more about the human experience. So when Suzy was talking earlier about I think with Susie talking of earlier, about shifting away from engagement and thinking, you know, M much more holistically and systemically about the human experience. We need to look at that, you know. So what are the right metrics?
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Lisa Skovron: To help
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Lisa Skovron: help organizations focus and prioritize on that and so you know, I think often, we're looking at lag indicators. But we need to look at lead indicators. And enable us more.
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Rosemary Sainty: Yeah, yep.
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Rosemary Sainty: good and suzy little thing there about the negative bias might come in. What do you think
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Suzy Green: in. Well, starting to look at the positives. Yes, that's right. I mean, yeah. We see the negative bias play out a lot. And certainly. And Felicia's book. And in some of the research I read on positive climate change, there's been a strong focus on you know, the drive, the the driving emotional forces being guilt and shame which actually don't lead to
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Suzy Green: quite successful attempts. To make behavioral change in regard to being pro environmental. And the research. And Felicia quoted some. He, too, in her book. It's it needs to be paired. In fact, it needs to be a stronger focus on the positive emotions that we experience by doing good. And that's a key part of Kim Cameron's work. Positive leadership is about fostering virt.
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Rosemary Sainty: And and we know from research. When we do good, we feel good as well. Yeah, yeah. I mean, there's a kind of moral mutinous of quoting another academic when it comes to
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Rosemary Sainty: the changes that that organizations that are are undergoing. A. A. Again. Particularly, I'm thinking here the Asg agenda, that that there is a kind of moral dimension. And it's a nice slide of yours about integrity and and leaders in that.
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Austin Chia: Austin. What what would you like to say under that? If? Esg, yeah, look III think a bit of a catch, all I think dimension of of Asg, and you know II from my perspective. I think this great opportunity to have those measures around psycho emotional outcomes. You know, effective outcomes, emotional outcomes.
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Austin Chia: You know, I think we're really far off in terms of how we actually you know, monitor and report on those in a in a meaningful way in the context of organizations. But we do know that things like emotions, whether they be things like guilt, to whether they be a positive emotions, they are actually great leading and indicators for range of different behaviors within organizations.
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Austin Chia: You know, II think today, we haven't been great in terms of how we monitor that that emotion side and feed that into the border conversation around Esg, and particularly that that is dimension.
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Rosemary Sainty: So
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Rosemary Sainty: okay, yes. Jason, what would you like to see
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Jason van Schie: definitely differentiation between decent work and meaningful work as what Susie had had brought up before. So I don't think we should just be focusing on affect measures. II think that that would be good. I think that is a bridge too far for most organizations. 99.9 of them at the moment.
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Jason van Schie: But let's first foundationally make sure that work isn't harming people. We companies already, are required to report on health and safety statistics. So it is actually isn't actually very difficult to then extend that out to mental health statistics. How many mental injury claims are being made?
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Jason van Schie: You could do a net promoter score, like how willing word people who work here actually recommend working here to other people. So that could give an indication of like the the working conditions.
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Jason van Schie: But yeah, first of all, I mean. we're we're fortunate to be living in Australia, where we kind of take health and safety for granted. Most of the world. You can go to work and not know whether you're gonna come home alive.
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Jason van Schie: had ended the day. And mental health is even worse, right? Like it's not even thought of like it is in in Australia. So I think, for those
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Jason van Schie: countries like Australia. If we are looking at reporting in this area. Hey? Let's first of all go. Let's raise the bar and show the world what's possible
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Jason van Schie: around. Let's make work decent. First of all, and then we can look at also incorporating. You know things that align more to meaning and and flourishing indicators as well.
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Rosemary Sainty: thank you. Yeah, it's definitely a continuum there, isn't it?
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Rosemary Sainty: So? Any other comments from anyone before we do our final wrap up?
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Rosemary Sainty: Okay? Oh, no. I think. It's been a rich, really rich discussion, and certainly lots of different perspectives on on what is really complex area affecting all of us. And certainly we'll pull together a recording slides. I'll be asking everyone for links to the resources that they've mentioned, so that that we can continue the conversation. Thank you to all of the panelists for joining today. Everyone's got really busy schedules, and it's involved.
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Rosemary Sainty: as this things always do, and what we may even pull an article together out of this as well. I like to thank Max White House from ucs business School, who has done all the technicals which are always
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Rosemary Sainty: so challenging. But thank you, everybody for joining us today and thank you again to the panelists.
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Suzy Green: Thanks so much, Rosemary, for doing a wonderful job posting also.
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Suzy Green: Okay, bye, everybody. Thank you.
The event covered:
- A brief history of positive psychology (PP) and positive organizational scholarship (POS) and the emerging “ESG” (environment, social and governance) movement
- The “S” in ESG – psychosocial hazards as a material ESG risk. Indicators for investors concerned with the “S” performance of an organisation
- “Positive CSR” - the intersection of positive psychology/POS and corporate responsibility and sustainability
- The role of purpose and meaning in the workplace –organisational governance, sustainability and positive psychology
- The corporate leadership perspective
- Open forum
Resources
Speakers presentations
- Jason Van Schie - The S in ESG Social Sustainability (PDF, 1 MB)
- Austin Chia - Positive CSR (PDF, <1 MB)
- Suzy Green and Rosemary Sainty - Combined presentation (2MB)
References
- Blustein, D. L., Lysova, E. I., & Duffy, R. D. (2023). Understanding decent work and meaningful work. Annual Review of Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior, 10, 289-314.
- Carney, M. (2021). Values: Building a better world for all. Signal.
- Chia, A., Kern, M. L., & Neville, B. A. (2020). CSR for Happiness: Corporate determinants of societal happiness as social responsibility. Business Ethics: A European Review, 29(3), 422-437. https://doi.org/10.1111/beer.12274
- Chia, A., & Kern, M. L. (2021). Subjective wellbeing and the social responsibilities of business: an exploratory investigation of Australian perspectives. Applied Research in Quality of Life, 16(5), 1881-1908. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11482-020-09846-x
- Chia, A., Doyle, K., & Kern, M. L. (2023). Community construals of CSR for happiness: a mixed-method study using natural language. Society and Business Review, 18(2), 296-320. https://doi.org/10.1108/sbr-05-2022-0149
- Chia, A., & Kern, M. L. (2021). When positive psychology and CSR collide: emerging and prospective research in positive CSR. In Business with a Conscience (pp. 395-407). Routledge. https://doi.org/10.4324/9781003139461-33
- Grant, L., Reid, C., Buesseler, H., & Addiss, D. (2022). A compassion narrative for the sustainable development goals: conscious and connected action. The Lancet, 400(10345), 7-8
- Huppert, F. (2021). Environment. In B. Grenville-Cleave et al. (Eds.), Creating the world we want to live in: How positive psychology can build a brighter future (pp ). Routledge.
- LaMontagne, A.D., Martin, A., Page, K.M. et al. Workplace mental health: developing an integrated intervention approach. BMC Psychiatry 14, 131 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-244X-14-131
- Wrzesniewski, A., & Dutton, J. E. (2001). Crafting a job: Revisioning employees as active crafters of their work. Academy of management review, 26(2), 179-201. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2001.4378011
Acknowledgements
This event supports UN Sustainable Development Goals 3 and 17.
This event is organised by The Positivity Institute and UTS Business School, as part of our commitment to the Principles of Responsible Management Education (PRME).