If you are a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking (PCBU), SafeWork Australia has developed a go-to guide,
Work Related psychological health and safety: A systematic approach to meeting your duties, which provides guidance to anyone who has a WHS duty to prevent and manage harm to a worker's psychological health.
Work-related psychological injury is expensive - it’s estimated that poor psychological health and safety costs Australian organisations $6 billion per annum in lost productivity.
The guide provides a systematic, practical approach to managing work-related psychological health and safety, and focuses on
preventing harm, intervening early and supporting recovery to ensure a worker’s psychological health and safety, and to promote general health and wellbeing.
SafeWork Australia states this three-phase approach can help PCBUs meet their WHS legal duties to implement controls which eliminate or minimise the risk of psychological injuries caused by work.
The purpose of having WHS laws is to eliminate or minimise risks to the health and safety of workers. A PCBU has the primary duty to ensure, so far as is reasonably practicable, workers and other people are not exposed to psychological health and safety risks arising from the business or undertaking. This duty requires risks to psychological health and safety are also managed by eliminating exposure to them or minimising risks, so far as reasonably practicable.
The guide recognises poor psychological WHS can lead to both psychological and physical injuries.
Click here to read SafeWork Australia's
Work Related psychological health and safety: A systematic approach to meeting your duties.
Business SA recently launched its latest discussion paper,
Minds at Work: Is Your Business Mentally Healthy? at a forum which featured Minister for Health and Wellbeing Stephen Wade, SA Mental Health Commissioner Chris Burns, and business owners, managers and industry representatives sharing their personal stories of mental health. The paper also includes the latest statistics on the cost of poor mental health to worksites.
Click here to download our discussion paper, which also includes other useful mental health resources for businesses and organisations.