Overview

Psychosocial hazard is the name most commonly used for those hazards that can have an impact on the psychological health or mental or emotional wellbeing of a person.

Under the WHS Act, health is defined as both physical and psychological health. This means that the duty to ensure, as far as reasonably practicable, health and safety extends to ensuring the emotional and mental health of workers.

As part of the risk management process, we need to ensure that the psychosocial hazards are given the same weight as physical hazards such as manual handling, chemicals or electricity.

What are psychosocial hazards?

Some of the psychosocial hazards that may exist at UTS and that all staff have an obligation under section 19 of the WHS Act to manage as far as reasonably practicable include:

Stress

Risk management

Risks to psychological health at work may arise from organisational (i.e. work) or personal factors (i.e. outside of work), with the most common factors being the poor design of work and jobs, poor communication and interpersonal relationships, bullying, occupational violence and fatigue. Risks to psychological health due to work should be viewed in the same way as other health and safety risks.

UTS has a number of risk management processes that are used for managing health and safety risks such as the UTS HSW Risk Register, local risk managment procedures and health and safety plans.

In conducting risk assessments, due consideration must be given to the psychosocial hazards that exist in the workplace and the activity. Risk assessment for psychosocial risks involves the same basic principles and processes as for other workplace hazards. Including workers and their representatives in the process is crucial to success. For example, when considering a noisy environment it is important to not only consider the effects that the noise levels may have from a physical extent (e.g. potential damage to hearing/reduced ability to communicate) but also what psychological effects that noise may have (e.g. anxiety and increased stress levels).  The risk of psychological injury must be considered as part of any risk assessment.

The effect of psychosocial hazards may vary from person to person and individual differences may mean that some workers are more susceptible to harm than others, for example new and young workers, and workers with an illness. Including workers and their representatives in the risk management process is crucial to success. 

Resources

UTS resources

External resources