Governance

To create a culture of psychological health and safety, all levels of an organisation need to have the necessary commitment and resources in place.

It begins with governance.

Governance refers to how an organisation exercises authority to ensure professionalism, accountability, and openness. This includes oversight of work health and safety. Appropriate governance ensures that your policies, procedures, and systems enhance the psychological wellbeing of your employees. Through these, the organisation defines roles and responsibilities in relation to workplace mental health.

These include

• Identification and prevention of risk
• Relevant controls and
• The availability of support to both leaders and employees

Often this will be included in non-discrimination, fitness for work and health and safety policies.

It is the organisation’s responsibility to meet governance requirements in terms of policies and procedures. However, all leaders need to be aware of how policies and procedures affect their roles. If you’re not familiar with how your organisation currently approaches mental health issues from a governance perspective, speak with your policy, HR or safety teams.

Your organisation needs to be committed to embedding preventative and responsive mental health strategies in governance processes throughout your operations, including in relevant policies and procedures.

RISK REGISTER

Ensure that your risk register, within your safety management system, includes psychosocial risks and appropriate controls, with the elimination of risk as the primary objective. Risks need to be formally reviewed whenever significant changes in processes are being considered, identifying any potential elevation of risk and the controls that are relevant and/or required.

This is an excerpt from The Ecosystem of Work by Tasha Broomhall. For a more comprehensive overview, you can purchase it here.