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how to promote psychosocial safety in your organisation: a guide for board directors

Given that for almost 70% of people, their manager has more of an impact on their mental health than their therapist or doctor, the moral (and in Australia, legal,) responsibility on Directors to ensure that the organisation's they're responsible for are adequately addressing mental health and psychosocial safety has never been higher.


I am continually blown away by the stories from leaders and HR professionals of times when they’ve personally felt a great big ‘ick’ with the way #mentalhealthmonth is commodified and turned into a ‘social media / marketing’ day rather than genuine effort being made to improve the psychosocial safety of employees in the workplace.



Having led many HR / leadership functions, I am often surprised at what information gets shared with the Board and what doesn’t - particularly when it comes to mental health initiatives, their effectiveness and to psychosocial safety (and thus - the bottom line) when the efforts are - subpar. Great care is taken in organisations to present the ‘right’ KPIs to the Board (especially in organisations with high scores on hierarchy, authoritative leadership, often masquerading as transformational leadership - at least if the LinkedIn posts are anything to go by) - so how do you know what you're getting?


You could focus on the following areas:


feedback


Reflective questions to ask yourself/the organisation may include:

  1. How do employees give genuine, unfiltered feedback?

  2. What all-employee engagement survey is completed?

  3. How comprehensive is it - are all employees surveyed or just permanent staff, what are the completion rates.

  4. What teams don’t participate?

  5. Why?

  6. How regularly does this happen?

  7. Are the results benchmarked against similar organisations?

  8. Are they actually similar organisations or do they just make your organisation’s score look a little better?

  9. Are the full results shared with employees or do they just receive the ‘top 3 things you love about working here’ in a generic email?

  10. What 360 feedback processes are completed with leaders?

  11. Does the Board get access to aggregate or detailed results?

  12. What investigation is completed when consistently low scores are feedback to leaders?


If the pushback from organisational leaders is any version of “we don’t have time/money/expertise etc for that” - I would suggest that unless your staff costs are the smallest outgoing in your organisation, regular data on employee sentiment, perceptions of psychosocial safety and leadership ‘truth telling’ are the most important regular data input the Board could receive.


approach to non-disclosure agreements


Consider a thorough review of how/when nondisclosure/confidentiality agreements are suggested or offered to staff (historically and in current process).


This shouldn’t be limited to when agreements are signed, but should investigate each instance one is suggested by a leader/HR to an employee as when employees have declined to sign a nondisclosure agreement - as there is nearly always a story there that the Board should be across highlighting current business practices.



You will likely want to ensure that this review pays particular attention to:

  • When nondisclosure agreements are suggested during the course or at the outcome of an investigation (extra points if they’re bullying or harassment complaints).

  • When non disclosure agreements are suggested during the course of a redundancy process - what about a genuine redundancy process could trigger a nondisclosure agreement?

  • Why?

  • When are non disclosure agreements suggested on the condition of payment for additional hours/weekends worked or other ‘stick’ incentives?

  • When have managers involved have acted unethically (eg, been instructed to lie/deceive staff in any way, engaged in actions that would be seen by Fair Work as not in ‘good faith’ etc) - here I’d be looking at if nondisclosure agreements are primarily concerned with reputational damage and similar patterns of formal or informal complaints/issues with those employees.


Nondisclosure agreements are a canary in the mine - and discovery of HR practices that regularly suggest/use them as a matter of course to ‘smooth over’ poor behaviour or ‘bad faith’ actions by the employee certainly should be considered as a high priority area for Health & Safety reviews.


If there is a trend or concerning practices by leaders/HR teams resulting in high numbers of nondisclosure agreements being suggested or offered in lieu of the organisation addressing poor practices it is certainly worth deeper (likely external) investigation. This could point to inadequate actions being taken to address harassment and bullying in the workplace, poor leadership, ineffective change practices etc.


This may be one area where is almost always advisable to contract in outside expertise, given the likelihood that if these practices are found wanting, the review of HR policies, practices and implementation and management of them is likely to be the first point of investigation in a systemic or cultural leadership review.


organisational bullying + harassment approach


Some organisations love to loudly proclaim their trauma-informed or person-centred practices externally citing a commitment to values - but the real test of whether trauma-informed principles have been remotely understood is the internal structures, systems and processes governing decision making internally.


A great yardstick for whether being ‘trauma-informed’ is simply a buzzword or marketing slogan is how an organisation manages bullying and harassment complaints internally (especially if those complaints are after months of ‘low level’ interventions by management/HR).


Some potential questions for your reflective practice/questioning:

  • How often do employees who make complaints either resign or get made redundant post-complaint?

  • Are interviews completed or are ‘desktop investigations’ completed (that’s a furphy - ‘desktop investigations’ aren’t a thing)?

  • Is information provided throughout the course of an investigation validated?

  • Are leaders asked to disclose any relevant information (should they not feel an obligation to be honest themselves) or is a ‘traditional’ ‘only ask what you must’ approach taken?

  • How often is an independent review of investigations completed?

  • Is feedback sought or is the process a risk-mitigation one only?

  • Are employees protected from re-victimisation or further retribution by the perpetrator?


Of course these are the bare minimums to expect, however in my career I’ve seen a wide and varied approach by HR teams to investigations, and an assumption of good faith (and competence) simply can’t be assumed.


While the vast majority of HR team and organisational leaders go out of their way to act in an ethical way, not everyone does and often those issues simmering below the surface are intentionally kept from the Board. However, these are the very issues that paint an accurate picture of the organisational culture and the real commitment to psychosocial safety and mental wellbeing in an organisation.


Mental Health policies shouldn’t be window dressing. So often poor leadership and HR practices are undoing genuine attempts to improve organisational culture, psychosocial safety and mental well being of employees. It’s often not by design (they’re not intentionally lying - well mostly) - but understanding the propensity for organisational leaders to downplay the negative impact on employees when feeling pressure in other areas is a critical one for Directors to keep in mind.




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