The problem

Last week, I attended the Workplace Health and Safety Expo at Jeff’s Shed along with thousands of others working in or interested in what’s new in workplace health and safety.

Many of the presentations were in or around d the subjects of psychosocial hazards and psychological safety.

And a majority of the exhibitors were selling tech solutions, many of which were said to help you to meet your positive duties re psychosocial hazards.

We know that the regulators have opted to apply the risk management model that has been used for decades as the foundation for control of psychosocial hazards.  

The reality is that one of the reasons that the positive duties have been introduced has been that the traditional risk management model hasn’t worked in management of risks from psychosocial hazards.

Why is this so?

There are good reasons for that. We need to do it differently because you can’t create psychological safety and meet the positive duty with deficit thinking.

That’s what the traditional risk management approach is – what’s wrong, who and what caused it and how do we fix it. 

If people think that they will be blamed or disciplined if they put their hand up, they won’t feel psychologically safe …… and that means that you can’t actually meet the [positive duty obligation.

So are you going to get out the compliance hammer and do it the old way or are you going to turn the light on for everyone to see what good looks like?

How can we help?

We saw this problem coming over a decade ago and we went looking for and found a stack of tools that can help you meet your compliance obligations for real and build great employee engagement and psychological safety.