Navigating the Mindfield: Understanding and Mitigating Psychosocial Hazards at Work

Karlie Cremin [00:00:00] Thank you all so much for joining our session today. And as I say, for being so prompt, when we all have fairly busy lives going on today, we're talking about psychosocial hazards at work and really looking at some of those elements around how you can effectively manage them within your workplaces. So what we'll cover, we've got the key psychosocial hazards, which a lot of you will will be quite familiar with, we've got quite a few people on the call, as I say, so I'm going to cast quite a wide net in terms of the content and then we'll do q&a At the end. We'll look at strategies for identification and assessment of those hazards and subsequently risks, intervention and management techniques that you might be able to use within your organization as well. As I said, we'll have a q&a section at the end. Depending how active you're are with those questions. I'll get through as many quote, I'm not quite sure what that bounce Sorry, I'll get through as many as I can. And if there's any additional ones, then I'm happy to answer them offline as well. So my name is Karlie, I am the Managing Director at DLPA. We are a leadership consultancy company. And increasingly, we're working with organizations around the identification and management of psychosocial hazards and risks within a workplace and really spending a lot of time on those intervention strategies. Excuse me, I'm not sure why that keeps jumping. We were joking about technical issues at the commencement of this. So there you go. We should never talk about digital gremlins. Perfect. So with we're on zoom here today, obviously, if you have any questions as we're going through, I'm just going to whip through the slide deck talk about a few things that we're seeing on market work and and potentially not work. If you have questions as we go just pop them in the q&a. And as I say, I'll look to them at the end of the session. Just starting at a very high level of what what psychosis, psychosocial hazards, and why do we care about them. So this is a really hot topic at the moment. It has been for kind of the last 18 months. And it's looking like it's going to be for for quite a while and I'll talk about some of the reasons for why the trigger for this becoming a hot topic has really been a lot of the legislative changes that we saw in 2022. And so for most of us, we now have a legal obligation to be considering and managing these risks within our workplace. So when we talk about psychosocial hazards, it's anything that can cause psychological harm, recognizing here. So that definition comes from Safe Work, recognizing that psychological harm can have physical manifestation. And so that that's where people get can get a little bit hung up on the definition, but psychological harm, which is really anything to do with your mental health. It can have physical manifestation. And obviously, we're talking here about this. These are risks that do exist everywhere within our world. And here we're talking about specifically in the context of work. Now, the legislative changes that we've had, they come from a few different places depending on your jurisdiction, but we have at federal level the WHS Act has changed and confers now a positive GD on most workplaces in Australia to engage with psychosocial hazards and subsequently their risks. We also have a requirement coming in if you're accredited against ISO, with the international standards on the 45,001 specifically talks about psychosocial, psychosocial hazards and how you manage them as an organization. We also then within this the individual states in different jurisdictions have some new ones things around ministerial directives and codes of practice and things specific to our industries as well. And so all of this is conferring a requirement to identify, assess and mitigate those social psychosocial risks which are present within our workplaces. And why I think whenever we talk about these things, we have such high engagement and high registration numbers is because even though these are changes that really came in to Bing in 2022, but had been discussed for probably the five years prior, why we still have such a high level of engagement is because it's a really nuanced area. And it's much more complex, then I think people appreciate it a few years ago in terms of its implementation and what it means for organizations across the, across the spectrum. And it can be really challenging for people to get to a meaningful place of what to actually do about this positive duty. To reference in terms of positive or positive duty, I think this is a term that potentially people people didn't necessarily engage with a lot a few years ago. So just to clarify, positive duty is a requirement to actively do something. And negative duty is a requirement actively not do something. And so that that all that, that's all that that means is that we as organizations now have an obligation to more proactively do something within our workplaces. This is a lease again, from Safe Work. So safe work gives us a lot of a lot, a lot of information. And depending on your workplace that will have a varying degree of impact in terms of what you do. This is, this is the list from the code of practice, of what psychosocial hazards are typically in these buckets. Bearing in mind, not all of these are present in every workplace. Equally, this isn't an exhaustive list. So there are probably some psychosocial hazards in your organization and workplaces, which are not listed here. But when we talk about these types of hazards and risks, we'd be looking at things like job demands. Having said that, that is things like excessive requirements, so asking more of people that couldn't possibly be done. Low job control, so having minimal agency over what you do and how you do it, poor support. So not having that support, either from your your supervisor or the more senior representatives of your organization, lack of role clarity, we see an awful lot, which is where there isn't very clear definition of what a role is, or its purpose or what's actually required. This has become much more prevalent with where the marketplace is at at the moment because of how the talent landscape has been that that ad hoc line in most of our PDS has just expanded to cover really quite quite a lot of ground. And that can be that gives rise to these types of risks. That can be a stressful thing, depending on the rest of the mechanisms within your organization around that how that's handled. Poor organizational change management, there is a lot of change within organizations and likely to be a lot of a high pace of change going going forward for a variety of reasons. And so where that is not managed very well or proactively by an organization in terms of engaging with your with your workforce that can give rise to these types of hazards. Inadequate reward or recognition setting there is also unfair or inequitable reward and recognition. Poor pour organizational justice. So that's things like procedural fairness, and equity within within your organization. little nuance 2.2 within within that particular hazard, is that the difference between equality and equity, and so a quality is kind of that everyone gets the same things. And that is something that most organizations do pretty well there. So equity is not that equity is actually recognizing that different level and type of resources will be required for different individuals to get them to the same outcome. And so equity is really focused on that outcome. And when we talk about organizational justice, that we're talking about equity, not not equality. 

Karlie Cremin [00:09:33] That's a nuanced difference, but an important one when you're assessing that as as a risk or hazard within your organization, traumatic events or material. We work with some court services or in health settings where they're just by virtue of the of the job they areas, a lot of continual exposure to trauma and related materials. But that can also be, you know, post incident and construction or engineering environment, it can be where there's been, you know, prolonged bullying, for example, that the events that go on within the workplace can actually be impacting the broader organization and work group, remote and isolated work is a big one. And one that is present to some level now, in most organizations, particularly around hybrid working, poor physical environment that's usually around ergonomics, but you have things like hot work, high work, dusty work, confined work, they these types of things as well. But also that ergonomics of saying office work environment, levels of noise, levels of light, pink, things like that. violence and aggression. Quite unfortunately, we're seeing that arise in a lot of workplaces in in some non traditional spaces as well. I had a client earlier, not earlier this week, last week with have having, you know, significant issues with their client and how their client was interacting with this stuff. So that can be a tricky one. Bullying and harassment, I think we're probably more conversant in it as as a country because we've we've had the very requirements around that for a while, and conflict or poor or poor workplace relationships. And so that's really looking at the interpersonal dynamics within within your work group. So these requirements extend beyond your direct staff. By the way there anyone who's classed as worker in, in your organization. Now, why we care about these and why we're seeing this push with the legislation, which my view is, is likely to continue to become more prescriptive in terms of what we're, we're looking at here is because when people sustain this period reasons, one reason is that when people sustain workplace injuries in relation to these types of hazards, and particularly looking at psychological harm, first of all, we've seen a huge rise in these types of claims. And there's different reasons for why but nonetheless, we've definitely seen the rise. When these types of injuries are sustained, the impact tends tends to be great at the time of work tends to be longer. And so the return to work tends to be more complex and less effective. And so that is why we've seen this push with the legislation to have people more organizations more proactively manage these risks to try to prevent these types of industry injuries. That said, a lot of the intervention techniques actually have some really great other impacts on your organization, which is where we're excited to really work with organizations is that when you proactively manage these, you tend to have uptake on other things like productivity, lowering stuff, and cost churn things that of that nature, so that there is a compliance element undeniably. But there is also some some upside with with taking a more proactive role as well. Now, I'm going to go through the kind of stages of managing or engaging with these types of hazards and risks. So we're going to do looking at the identification and then the assessment and then some of the mitigation measures that you might like to look at. I want to be quite clear here because as I've said, we have a lot of a lot of different people on on the call and it is very nuanced. This is very high level broad. You will have specific things in your awards in your abs and your policies and procedures in directions from your union, sometimes in your contracts with your clients with your requirements and your ISO accreditations and your IMS or, you know if you have the standard loan systems, you will have other requirements and specific requirements in your workplace. So this is quite broad, to give you kind of an idea around some of the things that you can do. If you want to talk specifically about your organization into the presentation, I'll have a QR code where you can book in with myself or one of our consultants to have a bit of a chat around the specifics. Or really encourage you to engage rather with your in house counsel or your external counsel. But taking that that really specific use case, approach because it it is, it is highly nuanced, and highly charged as, as we all know, which is why why we're here, I suppose. So when we look at the identification, when we talk about risks, the identification section is probably the most neglected section that that we see. In that you get that assumption creep around, well, we are a construction company. And so these are the risks that are present, or we are a professional services companies. So they said the risks that are present, and we don't kind of really interrogate the current environment. And so we're quite slow generally, to recognize that change, and to identify emerging risks. And so that's where I would encourage you to put a good bit of oxygen on to the identification process. So these are some of the things that you can do in in the identification stage, we can engage in audit really encourage you to engage with your workforce to understand their lived experience of your work environment. You can do that through anonymous surveys, you can do that through named surveys, you can do that through, you know, more commonly now, where we're coming in and doing behavioral assessment and review. And doing interviews so that people, you know, have an ever external third party to talk to, there's a lot of or if you have a relatively small workforce, I mean, you can just sit down and talk to people. But document it, and pull that data somewhere so that you can have a look at what the trends are and kind of get you your your risks and bottlenecks into some buckets. Reviewing systems of work, so how do you do what you do? You'd look at processes, procedures, work instructions of how you tell people what to do and how to do it. consistency across your organization have is the lived experience of a process quite different to the official or the documenting version of a process? And if so, why? Because it's not people, generally speaking, don't go out of their way just to do the wrong thing. There will be a barrier, that that's generating that difference. And really having a critical review of how you do what you do and where these risks therefore might might come up reviewing safety performance data, including complaints and injuries, but potentially looking at other other data within there as well of the more proactive things. So safety briefings or whatever your consultation mechanisms are of how often you do that, what feedback is around it, what you're communicating from that from that platform. And that in teasing out from there, where some of your risks might be. Staffing behavior is another good one to look at the character rosters breaks, resourcing levels, absenteeism and churn. There's different reasons, obviously, for those last two, in particular, but really looking at, you know, how much overtime? Are we asking of people? Or because bearing in mind with it, that workload that varies a risk in too much or too little work as well. So how are tasks actually spread? How do people know when they'll be on looking at, if you have, for example, a very lumpy requirement of work which we often see with people where, you know, there'll be a rush, and it needs to be done yesterday, but then they'll be low when there's nothing to do of just looking at what is that staffing behavior? 

Karlie Cremin [00:19:28] Now, one thing that I do see people trip a little bit on the on the identification phase, is that they're kind of jumping ahead to solving it. And so there can be kind of this reticence about identifying a risk that you're not really sure how to mitigate or that you think will be really expensive to mitigate. And so it's important in the identification phase to really just be looking at identifying that don't be be jumping ahead. It's not to say that just because Once something is identified here that you have to magically solve that, you know, the requirement is to eliminate or mitigate to the, to the extent that it's reasonably practicable. And so identifying the risk, and then talking through those elements will actually go a long way to meeting meeting that requirement. And people can be organizations can be a little bit afraid of what? What can come out of some of these activities. And so that's why, first of all, I'd encourage you to do it in quite a structured and methodical way, even if it's in terms of consultation. It's more informal, but just having quite a structured backbone to what's directing what you do. But I think you need to balance the fear of what's going to come out of it, versus what happens if we have an incident in relation to that, and we haven't asked us the questions, I think that there, you do need to balance those things. I've said here, don't dismiss anecdotal information. So again, I see a lot of clients. And other people that we talk to reference that are well, that's anecdotal, there's not data behind it. That's not to say it doesn't matter. And the code of practice actually gives us the pointer that work observations are valid. So we can we, as managers, or senior leaders can actually undertake task observations or work observations and see how people are working. And really take in some of, you know, anecdotal information that they may not be, there may not be a very good way to capture some of that data. And so don't don't just dismiss that, that it is something that we have a right to consider. Critically, appraising reporting behavior is important in in this stage, because if you have a culture where people don't engage with risk, and they don't report things that are happening for a variety of reasons, you know, it can be that, you know, the one that people always point to is that they this kind of punitive response, if if, if you do report something, you know, we miss those KPIs around zero harm and things that can, that can be a tricky spot. But we're going again, do Yeah, it's got its own life. But where people are not reporting, it can also be, you know, assumptions around. But it's always been that way, or, but nothing can change. This is just how we do things, and it's necessary and required. And so people don't report. And so really looking at that reporting behavior, and what you can do to start the conversation, that's not to say form an expectation that it's all going to be solved, and that there's this magical thing that we've not thought of, but just start the conversation around, getting back to that information about what's going on. So that then you can think about what you might want to do differently. And if indeed, it is just an inherent risk that can't, can't be mitigated down. And finally, I've said Pay attention to the language used. Often, it would be a relatively rare thing, other than for bullying and harassment for a worker to express these hazards in the language of the legislation or inland in the language of the standards. To say, you know, I'm I'm experiencing a psychosocial hazard, for example. But moreover, to really say, I have poor job design, relatively rare for people to express it that way, the language is more likely to pay, I feel overloaded. I don't know what to focus on. I'm really confused and anxious about this. I don't know if I'm doing a good job. Or you know, other things around like, I think it sounds fair that Bob got promoted or the the monthly award or whatever it is for you. But really pay attention to the language that's used because it's unlikely to mirror the language of the standards and other mechanisms. 

Karlie Cremin [00:24:31] Fabulous. So looking at the assessment. This is again, somewhere where where people can trip a little bit now the Code of Practice says that we don't have to do a risk assessment for every risk. We identify. If you're coming, kind of from a standing start. I would probably recommend that you you do a version of a risk assessment for each of the ones identified. But we, we really would be looking at at least doing a proper in depth risk assessment and then mitigation for anything that is ranking highly in these categories. So we, when we look at the risks, we'd say duration. So how long does is that risk present for it? Or is it you know, present all the time? Is it four or five minute bursts? Is it for two hours? And then frequency of how often is that happening? So how long? How often in the severity of the consequence, so looking at, if we have aggressive behavior from patients in a healthcare setting, is when it happens, it lasts for about half an hour, it's happening two to three times a day, and when it happens, it's catastrophic, or it can be catastrophic, or it's medium. We then classify each of each of those risks. So we look at what is terrible, tend to the low hanging fruit, what what the quick wins, and what the urgent areas of action actually are. That assessment, I would encourage you to do in consultation with a multidisciplinary team so that you don't have that kind of assumption creep, and that you aren't getting real, real assessment, particularly of the frequency, because if it's happening to you, you'll think it's happening all the time. And if it's not happening to you, you'll think it's fairly infrequent. So having, having that robust discussion around what that actually looks like, is really important here. And then we come into the controls. 

Karlie Cremin [00:27:01] When we're, once we've assessed our risks, and we're looking at how then we're going to control the risks, and we end up with what's called residual risk. Once we've once we've put these controls in, so what the legislation is calling for us to do in our organizations, is to do what is reasonably practicable to eliminate or elimination is not possible, mitigate the risk. Now, that means that it's not just cause something is possible, that you're obligated to do it. It's what is reasonably practicable. And you can have business reasons for not doing things. And this is where you really need to have specific legal advice around what that what that looks like in your organization, because there'll be different elements of a few different instruments in your environment, which is telling you what is reasonable, and also quite a curling case history as well. Consider all the possible control mechanisms and then refined to what makes sense for your, your business. That again, with the controls, I often see organizations go straight into feasibility before really saying, Well, if we did X, Y and Zed, that risk would be eliminated or it'd be mitigated. But there might be reasons why we can't actually do that, because it's when you actually map out all the possibilities, that you can come up with the really tailored intervention strategies for your organization that will make sense. I do want to emphasize that something being cost prohibitive can be a valid reason for for not implementing it that I see a lot of organizations frightened that going through this will mean that because it's possible, you have to do it. It is okay. And there are ways to be saying this business reason and that is that, you know, it'd be too expensive to move forward with that particular option. And going through this in a structured way is how you protect yourself against that type of pushback. So examples of control can include additional resources, providing additional training, job or task redesign. So looking at how people are doing what they're doing, and designing it a little bit differently. Ensuring procedural fairness, so that includes a review of your policies, processes, and so forth, and really looking at how people engage with them, and what some of the barriers to engaging with them might be. refining policies as you go. So providing extra clarity, providing support systems as well, such as apes or wellness frameworks. And then finally, on the controls, remember to review and document the effectiveness of the control. So the legislation requires us to do it, the 45,000 on one more explicitly requires us to do it. But it's not kind of enough to get to I put the controls in, move on, you are obligated to review the effectiveness often. So does that control work? Is that control behaving as we thought aboard? Is it managing the risk as we thought it would? Or is it generating other risks? Or is it not effective? It's not is that not the root cause of what we thought. But having that robust and regular review of their effectiveness, and documented now, the if it's a little more rubbery around the requirement to document, but I would say if you've done the work, you may as well documented because it's the easiest way to evidence what you did. And also, ideally refine, refine and show how you took that information and refined. So last slide before I open for questions, which hopefully we have have a few intervention strategies that you can you can look at. So really encourage you to have ongoing consultation and pulse checks with your workforce. Now, the easiest way to do that is obviously a survey. But your team may not be engaging with it, particularly well, they may not being be upfront, or you know, questionnaire designed goes a long way in those as well. So you probably want to have a few different mechanisms in here, which will be different depending on your organization, size of workforce, nature of workforce, background, so forth. But just having that ongoing consultation is really important for making sure that you're you're doing this in a meaningful way that is cost effective, and actually kicking goals as well. Proactive work design just impacts everything. So it goes a long way in this realm. But this is one of the key areas where you'll see a lot of other benefits by really engaging with this really looking at your processes and understanding that lumpiness of peak times and troughs and the impact on people looking at how people do what they do, if there's, there's an easier way to do it, if there's a less physically demanding way to do it, if there's, you know, better ways for information to flow and to use people skills and to understand what's the people's skills are, and the way that we, you know, engage in relationships, communication, and so forth in in an organization. Really, proactively designing work around the human element of your organization will take most of the boxes of the legislation, but it'll give you some really great outcomes as well. Generally speaking, training and development programs are really important that specifically equipping your supervisors and anyone who is supervising a team, whether that's staff or workers, or whatever it is for you, really needs to be quite conversant in psychosocial risks, and what that is in your organization and what to look for. In in the workforce, but having generally the training and development programs is important around these risks as well, because where people have that development and ongoing growth, they're better equipped to engage in in their tasks, but also tend to have a higher level of resilience. So some of these risks, minimize through that as well. developing policies to clearly articulate systems and company approach, making sure that you are actually communicating to people what, what you want done and how you want it done. Having enough room in that so that people can have a little bit of agency and a little bit of control around what they're doing, but having that governance structure around these at the gates. Again, some of the pushback that we see on market is particularly around those psychosocial hazards has to do with job control. And so within the code of practice, we do have a lot of language around, you know, perceived micromanagement, or people not having custody to, to make certain decisions or not, you know, down to not being able to send group emails is specifically referenced in there as well. And needing permission for a lot of things. And people can kind of push back on that and say, but there's reasons for us not allowing people to do that there's reasons for people not being allowed to make those decisions. They're not having that level of agency. And so this is really important of articulating a new governance framework. Why because there are really valid reasons why you're not going to allow, you know, someone who has maybe a degree, but no experience, might immediately make decisions that can bankrupt a business, you know, there are reasons so it's just having that governance structure that articulates it so that people understand the ecosystem that they're working in. And then it's consistently applied. Working on your communication channels, as well, one of the key areas where people trip is around people being surprised by change or not understanding the context of actions that are happening, people being surprised by redundancies, for example, or complete, you know, systems change and things like that, working on your communication channels, so that you find the right balance between communication and over communication. 

Karlie Cremin [00:36:42] And in a way that your your workforce can engage with as well. So you know, teams in Slack and things of this nature are really great, but not every workforce engages with that. And if you put too much information on it, people get overwhelmed and don't see the messages. So really looking at making communication effective thing within within your organization. Strong support programs that are utilized are also really important. So most organizations have a version of an app. So a third party support program that can provide usually counseling, but some other things come in there now as well. But really educating your workforce and dealing with any stigma that might be in the workforce, around how you engage with that and that it is confidential and that it's perfectly acceptable to engage is really important. Stress management frameworks and or training is also a great thing to be bringing in here. And wellness programs, we're seeing a real rise on on that. Now, that said, you know, your wellness programs, it's not that you need to be paying for gym memberships for everybody or, you know, some of the other things we see a few of the additional Flexi days into things that are quite expensive for organizations. wellness programs don't need to be that they can be quite low cost but effective if you design them in in a way that that keeps that human experience of your organization front of mind. In the final one here is active management of an engagement with your psychosocial risk register, I would really encourage you to have it as depending on the structure of your corporate risk register, which hopefully has that as a line item, I would really encourage you to have a explicit psychosocial hazard risk register, so that you can have quite a detailed assessment and mitigation data capturing there is as well. So that is a broad abroad bit of information, that QR code there if if you want to feel free to book a session with SSM itself, or one of our consultants who can talk through some of the specifics of your organization. But other than that, if you have questions if you want to throw them into the q&a Now, I will have a bit of a look how we're going 

Karlie Cremin [00:39:37] I feel it's okay. So I'm sorry. I know that's really annoying to watch me read questions. So the question that that we have is around sexual harassment. So aside from the legislation that I've referenced in the tail end of 2022 we also have the respected work framework in Act come in I, which is complimentary to these frameworks that I've spoken to, but also has has its own set of, of requirements. So in terms of how to put things in place so that sexual harassment doesn't happen in in your workplace. It's a little bit just gone to sleep. So I'll stop my sharing. There's, it's a little bit fraught into terms of what can what can actually be done. So basically, what I would recommend that you do is, first of all, look at the risk assessment model. So how is it that this this behavior and I assume I assume that questions coming from this, there's been kind of a larger incident which, which I'm sorry, to, to hear? Look at the risk assessment of how did that that come to happen in the first place? And you can, there's different ways you can do that to make it legally privileged as well? Because I know, I know, there can be challenges around that if you have a live incident. But then look at your culture. So what what can you proactively do within in your culture, so that there is reporting of earlier signs that there was going to be an incident the training and development is an important one as well, particularly with your supervisors, as I say, of equipping people to understand that sexual harassment can look really different in different contexts. And that there are there are kind of earlier signs and symptoms that you might like to, it's easier if you intervene at that point, then obviously, the providing support to people to really be implementing any of the controls that you've put in place. Now, why I say it's a little bit fraught, is because it's, it's not that they don't work. But you need to be quite careful when we talk about bias training, or empathy training. And I know that for some people, that's a controversial thing to say. But it remains my point of view. And I've not been dissuaded yet. There is a way that it works. And it's particular to your organization. But if you do kind of this blanket e-learning staff that that's been on market since this legislation was started, you know, being talked about and we went to a transition phase, you kind of backed people into a corner, and you can either just do like a tick a box, and you actually get nothing at all. Or you are putting people in a position where they have to where they feel like they have to defend themselves in their beliefs that they feel like they're being made wrong. And so there is you just need to be a little bit careful with, with how you go around that we in terms of empathy would be more encouraging, you know, leadership programs that have leadership of self that they're called and leadership of others leadership of organization, and I kind of think empathy comes with that rather than explicit empathy training. But really, in terms of preventing those things happening, I think it comes down to a culture of social norms, a governance structure around reporting and early intervention, recognition of those earlier, earlier times, vocal leadership commitment, as well, to looking at, you know, behavioral norms and taking a stand against what's acceptable in your organization and core values and so forth. And then finally, just when, when things are having happening, giving support to people within within that process, so that there is a chance for behavior to change. And as I said, the earlier the earlier that you can do that the better and outcome generally speaking, you'll you'll hands Fabulous, thank you, hopefully, hopefully that covered at a level of an answer. How often do you suggest strategies risk mitigations are reviewed, I would do quarterly, it depends on on your organization structure and how You report so myself, I, whenever you do or do a report on your safety KPIs, I would at that time be looking at your risk register as well. Or when something happens. So if there's a legislative change, if you have a work observation that says, Oh, hey, these risks are changing, or, you know, materially changing the work flow or position mix, or, you know, huge levels of staff or shedding of staff. Any sorts of these events, you do it at that time, I would do quarterly. But the absolute maximum interval, I would say, six months. But if you do it annually, that's better than nothing. 

Karlie Cremin [00:45:54] Yeah, great. So in terms of the returning from these types of injuries, that can be more complex and longer. So the question is around what are the things we should consider when underperformance has also been affected with the returning employee. And it often is, I'm not saying always I'm just saying frequently, there's there is that in the mix, and that is where articulation of your processes in procedural fairness, will really provide you a lot of safety, but also a lot of clarity for everyone involved, because they're those particular examples can be quite stressful for the manager as well as the employee, because I think people get very afraid about saying or doing the wrong thing and kind of generate saying or doing the wrong thing. So which is unfortunate. None of this, none of this takes away your right, or indeed your obligation to effectively manage performance within your organization. And so where that underperformance is managed within, in line with your processes and procedures, where you are providing that procedural fairness, so you're giving people you know, option for a support person, you're giving people time to consider and respond that you are putting in some form of performance improvement plan, you can still do that. It's obviously and I would argue you're obligated to do that. But the you do then have to factor in factor in the requirements of the injury that that's been been sustained and the return to work. But it is it is complex, and really having that review of your return to work processes and also your performance management processes is is really important and then following them in a procedurally fair way is what is what I would recommend you do in that example what are the wellness program options that are not expensive so it depends on what your workforce want. But it can be something as simple as on your on your LMS having some bite size learning things around there's a lot in wellness at the room at the moment around personal financial literacy for example. And there's a lot of of if not free, very close to free materials out there that you can give to people and I was reading something the other day around the pressure that young people have on them now which is a little a little bit I find anyway a little bit hard to fully fully engage with what what it must be like to have all of these pressures on you at that time in your in your life and you know, cost of living as it is and and career progression as it is and you know, young young people have a lot of a lot of pressures on them. So having things like financial literacy, personal financial literacy, training or a version of that. Having you know, social club, depending on your culture, or something of that nature can be can be great. tacking it on to a lot of depending on what HRIS system you use a lot actually have like an online wellness module that often actually doesn't have doesn't have additional costs. You just need to switch it on and and pick pick, you know what, what options, what options you'd like it and really just consulting with people and finding out what you know what they'd like, even if it's, you know, just an articulation of you can take a five minute break to standard stretch, which you know for for sedentary jobs we we know that has such an impact on on wellness, but also on productivity of just saying, okay, in every 90 minute period, you're gonna stand up and stretch for two minutes. Having that articulation it really isn't that, that there's a direct cost, certainly, but there's also significant benefits. But often, if you engage with your workforce, you'll you'll find things that they think particularly will value as well. We had two questions on on low cost wellness programs. So I might, I might actually send out we have a informational on this topic. So I might send that out to to registrants so that you can can see some of those options as well and see it see if that worked for you. 

Karlie Cremin [00:51:11] So we've got, could you elaborate a bit more on proactive work design? So that's really looking at how do you do? How do you do what you do so and not just kind of an individual it's in that in the organism, that the end of the full network of where you are so looking at? How does your production line work, which can be a bit tricky, because we don't, you know, most of us don't kind of have that traditional production line in play. If and when we do, it can be quite complex, to be honest, but looking at things like so if your your risk is working environment, for example. And so with construction companies, we do base a lot of looking at, you know, exposure to loud noise, exposure to dust exposure to, you know, light and vibrations and things of this nature of looking at, well, how can we change the workflow so that either the duration, or the frequency or ideally both? Reduced, so that the consequences less likely? And so really looking at, well, you know, does that jackhammering needs to happen in in a 40 minute burst? For example, could we change that. But you can also do that for like more office based rooms of looking at, you know, lighting, for example, the ergonomics. Also looking at, like I said, most organizations we see have that lumpiness, so it's really, really busy. And then it's quiet, and it's really busy. And that's quite a lot. A lot of organizations kind of have overlapping workflows. So it's just kind of perpetually in that top bit of that. But looking at how do you smooth it? You know, is there some technology tools that you can put in there that lesson? Or is there some redundant tasks that are happening that you can change things is there maybe a prioritization matrix around so that your task, shoot whatever that looks like for you that the more urgent things will come to the top, and the less urgent ones will come down and fill in fill in the troughs so that people don't feel quite so overwhelmed by what they have to do and focusing on what doesn't matter? If you have a risk around interpersonal relationships, and that you're having, you know, conflict at certain certain points, looking at what is driving those, those conflicts? Is it you know, that there's missing information? Is it that there's misaligned timing, if it's, you know, just personality issues, and you can train that to a certain point or just structure the interactions differently, but really looking at how do you design work within within your workflow so that it's efficient, but also so that these risks are minimized for your workers within within the work environment? It's one? That's a good question. What would I do a risk assessment for each role within an organization? I mean, it's a great question and the annoying consultant answer to that is it kind of depends. I would start an organization level of data, the risks that are present, but in terms of how you get your data, I would consider the avatars of, of, if not each role, at least each job family. So that you're you're really looking through the lens of lived experience. Because you'll you'll pick risks that way that you won't just kind of from the top down traditional way of risk assessment. So I don't think you need to do a full risk assessment usually, for each role. But if you start with your, as I said, the avatars of at least job families that will tell you whether or not you actually have this super high risk role that you need that is, is nuanced. And they're having a very different experience to other people, that you need to then be drilling into a little bit more and having a more specific targeted response for Beth, that particular profile. 

Karlie Cremin [00:56:13] I avoid, I avoid selling, I really do avoid selling in these sessions, because it's about information. But there's a couple of there are a couple of questions in there around. If we come into organizations and to do reviews and assists with VCs 100% We do, recognizing that a lot of SMEs do not have resource to do this, recognizing that a lot of larger companies that we've seen actually don't have discrete results, or necessarily experience in doing in doing it. So yes, we can come in and do work with you. So we don't do it for you. But we will facilitate a risk identification strategy. We can make recommendations, we can do work at consultation and engagement, and we can do training. So 100%, we can but we're certainly not the only people on market that do that. And there's a lot of a lot of really quality operators out there as well. And a few not so quality 

Karlie Cremin [00:57:20] Yeah. The there is one question in there, which is quite specific and has it has a legal consequence. I don't want you to think I'm not answering it. But the question is around incorporating psychosocial hazards into a wellness policy and having it be separate to a standard WHS policy. So my recommendation and it's not legal advice, but my recommendation would be that you take psychosocial hazards up and you look at in terms of policy review, you map out everything that it touches, so it will touch wellness policy, it'll touch WHS policy, it'll touch performance management, and HR generally, it'll touch recruitment, position design, it'll touch a lot of things. So whenever you're doing that policy review, and particularly where it's driven by a particular piece of legislation, or a particular hazard, I would pull it up above the organization and just say, what does it touch? And therefore what do I need to add or exclude from from that policy and then down to procedures? 

Karlie Cremin [00:58:56] They are washed, then thank you all so much, by the way for for all of these questions. And I'm just, I'm aware that they have a clock dinging be telling me I'm out of time. So the ones that so there's, there's quite a few questions that I haven't covered what I'll do, because I don't I don't want you to kind of feel missed out. What I'll do is I'll collate these questions and I'll provide an an answer as best I can. And I'll send it around to everyone who registered along with them. We as we had a few questions around the low cost wellness activities. I'll send that round to everyone, if not, by the end of this week, early next week. Fabulous, thank you all so much for for jumping on and for all those wonderful questions. I know that it's a tricky area. It's very nuanced area and it's very charged area that it's important organizations get on the front On foot to the extent that they can on if you would like to just have a short session with with myself or one of our consultants, as I said, there's no cost. I'll send a link to that as well actually if if you want to book in, you're more than welcome to and we can talk through some of the more specific things of your use cases. Otherwise, thank you so much for your time for your engagement. I wish you all the very best and I hope to speak to you all soon.