Managing risks in a workplace involves identifying potential hazards, assessing their likelihood and potential impact, and implementing measures to mitigate or eliminate them. This may include but is not limited to; promoting a safety-conscious culture, providing proper training to employees, maintaining equipment and facilities, enforcing safety protocols, regularly reviewing and updating risk assessments, and fostering open communication channels to report and address concerns promptly. Regular monitoring and adaptation of risk management strategies are essential to ensure a safe and productive work environment.
The chnnl psychosocial risk assessment tool allows users to systematically identify and categorise hazards, assign likelihood and impact ratings, and generate risk assessments based on predefined criteria. This tool might offer templates for risk assessment plans, helping leaders outline steps to mitigate identified risks, assign responsibilities, set timelines, and track progress. Using the chnnl platform allows leaders to facilitate communication and collaboration among teams, ensuring that risk assessment findings and mitigation strategies are transparent and accessible to all stakeholders and frontline employees, ensuring ISO45003 compliance.
Rapidly changing and complex work environments have the potential for immense pressure on the wellbeing and mental health of employees. As organisations strive to create and maintain healthier, more productive and more psychologically safe workplaces, psychosocial risk management is a crucial component of success.
Psychosocial risks refer to the potential sources of stress, discomfort, or harm that arise from interactions between the social and psychological aspects of work, which potentially impact employees' mental wellbeing, health, and job performance. These risks are often associated with the organisation's culture, work design, interpersonal relationships, and the balance between work and personal life.
Psychosocial risk management involves identifying, assessing and mitigating these factors within the work environment that have the potential to impact an employee's psychological, emotional, and overall wellbeing.
chnnl has created a psychosocial risk matrix - a structured framework allowing organisations to identify and evaluate psychosocial hazards that employees might encounter in their work. By categorising, prioritising and managing these risks through the evaluation of potential severity and likelihood of occurrence, organisations are aided in developing strategies which are targeted and tailored in order to address and manage them effectively and efficiently.
Psychological harm can be caused in the workplace when psychosocial risks are not effectively identified and managed. More on psychosocial risk next up but it’s worth noting that The Health and Safety at Work Act 2015 says businesses must take reasonably practicable steps to protect health and prevent harm at work, including psychological harm. Workplaces can be subject to some hefty fines if they aren’t identifying & minimizing potential harm to their employers but from a more humanistic perspective, preventing harm to your most valuable assets (your people) is a worthy and ethical cause that has far-reaching benefits across the communities you operate in.
Various countries have recognised the significance of psychosocial risk management and have introduced legislation to ensure the well-being of employees. These countries include the United Kingdom, United States and Australia, which now have legislation for mandatory management of psychosocial risks in the workplace.
New Zealand is tracking towards incorporating psychosocial risk management into workplace health and safety legislation. Don’t wait for legislation, be a leader and manage psychosocial risks in your workplace using chnnl’s psychosocial risk matrix.
To learn more about psychosocial risks, click here.
For a 'quick guide to psychological safety terms, click here.
Each category within this psychosocial risk matrix has been strategically chosen to encompass various facets of potential impact on the organisation, its workforce, and its broader stakeholders. The 6 primary categories are: Financial, Reputational, Legal/Compliance, People, Organisational and Safety.
The Psychosocial Risk Matrix is scored through journal theme coding, and survey alongside speak up entries.
Through these metrics, we analyse and interpret the severity and frequency of these risks occurring. Severity is done on a self assessment or chnnl assessment. Frequency is determined based on the number of responses