In this crossover episode co-host Jason van Schie makes a guest appearance on the UK Psych Health and Safety Podcast with Sheila Lord and Peter Kelly. Jason describes the primary, secondary, and tertiary approaches to psych health and safety, and argues that secondary approaches have been largely missing in organisations. He discusses how an organisation can approach psych health and safety when the job is inherently psychologically hazardous. He responds to critics who claim that most psychosocial hazards are outside of the control of organisations, and describes why the popular approaches to psych health and safety don't work. He then provides leaders with some guidance on where to get started implementing psych health and safety for their teams.
Sheila Lord: Hello and welcome to the UK Psych Health and Safety podcast. My name is Sheila from BMR, health, and wellbeing. And my co-host today is Peter Kelly and our special guest from Perth, Western Australia is Jason van Schie from flourishing DX. And I know Pete and Jason are keen to get started. And Pete's got lots of questions for Jason today. So, I'm going to hand it over to Pete and Jason. And I'm going to a let the guys who the most of the talking today. So over to you, Pete and Jason.
Peter Kelly: Thank you very much. Well, Jason, welcome to the UK Psych Health and Safety Podcast. Are you excited?
Jason van Schie: Thanks for the invitation. Hey, I got to say I love the name of the podcast, I have no idea how you came up with that original name.
Peter Kelly: Are you pumped? Are you ready for me to ask you some questions?
Jason van Schie: Always ready mate, always.
Peter Kelly: Alright. Well, let's start with an easy one Jason. So, this is a Psych Health and Safety podcast. But we've also got this other thing called psychosocial risk and hazard. What's the difference between psychological health and safety hazards and risk and psychosocial risks and hazards?
Jason van Schie: I'd say it is the same name, or different names for the same thing if you like. So, psychological health and safety are really about applying a risk management process to the understanding of psychosocial hazards and the assessment of risk and controlling of that risk. So, I guess, psychosocial hazards may be your element of psychological health and safety. But I didn't realize Pete, that it was going to be an assessment of my competence at the top.
Peter Kelly: No, I didn't think it's important isn't it, both of us go into businesses and I said, well, what is it? What are psychosocial hazards? Let's take it back to its core basis. And what is a psychosocial hazard? And what is a psychosocial risk? In your opinion?
Jason van Schie: Yes, so for those, I guess, new to the area, and I agree Pete, even though I'm a bit facetious. That is my middle name according to my wife, a very good judge of character. So, the psychosexual hazard is anything in the design or management of work that contributes to work-related stress. And that stress if it's ongoing, or is extreme, like in the case of exposure, that occupational violence can lead to stress-related illnesses and psychological injuries. So, psych hazard is anything that if not managed properly, can contribute to stress. And then the psychosexual risk is the likelihood and consequence that harm will occur if someone is continued to be exposed to that hazard.
Peter Kelly: So, if I was in a job, let's say I went in the job, and during the day, I was clear on what I was expected to do. But then I had these additional things put on me, are they a hazard? At which point did they become a risk? Is it one day, two days? What do you think?
Jason van Schie: Let's see, the question isn't that Pete, at what point does an amount of stress or exposure to an element of work design become a risk. And if we think about the vitamin model, for example, there are differences for people, some people thrive on autonomy, other people like to just be told this is exactly what you need to do. And so, I guess it's a tough one and I guess in your roleplay, you'd probably be more used to looking at the impact on a collective or a group of people before you would consider something that the regulator be worthwhile investigating if multiple people are getting sick. But I guess at a workplace level, I think this is where line managers are important to understand the different needs of their employees, and making sure that as far as possible, they're designing work for that particular person, or the person who's given enough autonomy or freedom to craft their role so it kind of fits their right levels of stress, or work design if you like.
Peter Kelly: Yes, what if I've got 20 people working with me, but only one of them is not doing it?
Jason van Schie: Yes, that's right. Is what feeling stress because [cross-talking04:28]. Yes, it's a question. And I'm sure as a regulator, you get that question as well. If only one person is affected, is it an issue of work design or is it an individual issue? Is it two people, is it five people, is it 10? I've put the question back on you Pete, at that point, I would be thinking this is an individual issue and we need to talk to that individual about the role and if there are any things that we can do within the role to accommodate their needs for a right the level of autonomy or role clarity or whatever it is. I think the regulator would think it's a hazard myself a psychosocial hazard if it's only one out of 20 that's being affected.
Peter Kelly: But I guess it depends if we found something in the system that was a potential source of future stress. So, in essence, as you know, because I know you've read our website and the management standards, we expect people to put in place a response to individual differences. So, someone in your team isn't functioning well, they report their feeling, we're stressed, you still have a duty of care to do something about that. And you cleverly read our criteria, instigation, which is that we don't investigate individual cases. But we do look collectively at we will look at a collection of cases.
And that's principal because our viewpoint, which I'm sure we'll cover later on, is that you need to see workplace stress as an organizational issue. But you also have a tertiary or responsibility to the individual. And what I'd like to cover later is that the secondary bit? Is that how we train people, and train line managers to do what they're doing. I didn't know that you Jason that, we know the term psychosocial risks and hazards. We know psychological health and safety. But outside of this sphere that we're in, how would you explain to someone what psychological health and safety are in a very practical way? Rather than saying it's about the moderation of risk, etcetera? How would you tell someone what we think psychological health and safety are?
Jason van Schie: Yes, it's a good question. And I guess what I always come back to is to use things that they're familiar with. And obviously, the understanding of physical hazards in the workplace is something that most health and safety practitioners are very familiar with. And then understanding risk managements and hierarchies of controls, and no doubt, we're going to talk about that later today as well. But the examples we like to give are things like manual handling, we know that people could go to the gym and get stronger and be able to lift heavier and not get injured. But we also know that, fundamentally, if we did design work correctly, to begin with, where people are having to lift heavy loads, and some things help them to do that safely, we're going to have fewer people getting injured, regardless of whether they're going to the gym five days a week or not.
So, I think if we can make that equivalent and go well, there's physical hazard exposure, but then there's the psychological hazard exposure and psychological hazards that are anything that causes people to be stressed, ongoing, or high levels. And often when I talk and use the physical health analogy you see people just switch on and go, yes, that makes sense to me. I think in the past, what's put off particularly health and safety practitioners from being involved with mental health or psychological health and safety, is I feel like they have to be a psychologist or a counselor, or they think about psychological health and safety because it's got psychological in the name as like counseling or EAP, or something like that. And they're well, no, that's not what I signed up for I'm involved in risk management.
But as soon as you just start saying, well, look, it's just a different hazard, that can still make people ill and may lead to compensation claims or time off work, we just need to understand that hazard and monitor it and then work with subject matter experts like organizational development people or organizational psychologists to engineer or change the work environment to make sure that people don't get sick. And if possible, improve their well-being, then I think health and safety people get on board and go, okay, I understand that. I do have skills around risk management, and I can apply them it's just a different set of hazards. And then like dealing with an engineer to control physical hazards, I'm just dealing with a different professional to help engineer out the psychological hazards.
Peter Kelly: Yes, if you look over here of the day's loss, only 20% is safety. So, that would suggest, in terms of the issues that we have are health-related and all of that health-related 57% of that is workplace stress and mental health. Now I know that the numbers are broadly equivalent in Australia in terms of distance, because you have a statewide system for managing it is time to act in this area, or do we wait till you get even more.
Jason van Schie: It's so interesting how I use those labor force survey statistics myself in trying to explain the issue. And what was it at 38 point 8 million days last due to non-fatal injuries and illnesses 17 point 9 million days lost due to work-related stress, anxiety, depression? So, that's 46% of all of the day's loss, regardless of whether it was a physical injury or an illness, were because of work-related stress, anxiety, depression, and you talk about Pete, the reporting period was one week into the pandemic. So, this wasn't a COVID issue and obviously, COVID put the spotlight on the mental health of employees, this was an issue and we were at a crisis point, well, before COVID hit. And it wasn't enough to move the needle, people weren't doing anything different about it.
And I don't know what the driver is going to be, I have a lot of optimism over the next three to five years that employers are going to start doing a lot more in this space. And I hope things like the incoming ISO 45,003 standard is one of the drivers, or carrots, at least, to encourage companies to do the right thing and take more of a risk management approach. But I don't know why people haven't done it, maybe it is because of a lack of understanding or competence and like yourself, that's why we're running our podcast, to try and rapidly increase people's understanding of the space and what practices they could be doing in their companies today, I'm not waiting for regulators to be inspecting them and saying, you guys aren't doing a good enough job. Why should you wait to reprimand it to do anything, when there are really good guidance materials out there, whether it's the management standards, whether it's the safe work, Australian guidance, or ISO?
Peter Kelly: You think there are other drivers as well like the insurance industry can be effective in this area?
Jason van Schie: I think big time. We've already had insurance reach out to us, they're the ones that are hurting, in Australia, for example, New South Wales, the regulator they've published some worker's compensation statistics and in the four years preceding 2019. So again, pre-pandemic, there was only a three and a half percent increase in physical injury claims over that period. So, pretty stable, whereas there was a 53% increase in psychological injury claims.
The problem being is that when a psychological injury claim is made, it usually results in about half a year off work, on average, at a cost of about $85,000 Australian, which is about 10 pounds, but it's big in Australian dollars. But it's like $20,000, on average for the physical injury claim. So, they cost more than four times the amount because they're more complex, it’s harder to get people back to work when they're off work for some time. So, insurance is the ones that awarding the cost and we are exploring how we work with insurers, and then through their customers to take more of a systemic approach to the management of work-related stress as compared to the popular approach, which is very much focused on the individual and dealing with symptoms.
Peter Kelly: Yes, it's interesting you say that one in four, because about 18 years ago a figure came out from the Treasury that the cost for mental health is one in four. And I remember sitting down with a group of investment bankers in the City of London in a dark dungeon because there were no windows it's just a darkened room. And asking him about how many people did they have off with work-related stress and one banker's banking organization said they had three people off and they said, well, what's their salary? No, they're extremely well paid. So, I think there was something in that read their salary was around two and a half mil, over the year. So, I said, so you got three people and he said, what do you think you've lost? And when you extrapolate the four times the cost of them being off six months, they just look and went, so you're done and you can't do a project that's going to cost you 100,000 when you're already losing eight and a half a million, just in six months.
Jason van Schie: Yes, there's always an opportunity cost, if you have employees who are bringing in revenue for your company, then it's not just their salary that you're losing, but the opportunity cost as well of losing that potential revenue.
Peter Kelly: Training, loss in support, and stuff like that. So, Jason, the elephant in the room question.
Jason van Schie: We've already done those. Pete. Okay.
Peter Kelly: I don't know they could just like, they weren't elephants or giraffes maybe. So, where do you see in the current research and the current approaches to health and safety, psychological safety, the role of primary, secondary, and tertiary, and also the hierarchy of control? And if you could explain to the audience for those who are not familiar with those terms, what they are, then it'll be useful. And it saves me the opportunity to look embarrassed for getting it wrong.
Jason van Schie: You wouldn't get it wrong. Now we've had this discussion back in Liverpool I think mate when we first met. Yes, so primary, secondary, tertiary is related to the public health model approach to disease prevention. Primary prevention approaches are very much focused on 100% of the population, and it's about how do we keep people well, and assist them in the case of mental health, high levels of well, being. Secondary prevention is, you know, where people are at risk of becoming unwell, what are supports can we provide to make sure they don't deteriorate or become ill and become a cost burden on the system. And then tertiary intervention is when someone is ill, what are we doing to support them? Very similar to that public health model is the integrated model of workplace mental health and it's just different terminology.
So, we say mitigate illness, prevent, harm, and promote flourishing, instead of that primary, secondary, and tertiary. Now, I've always felt that the majority of interventions in the workplace very much focus on Mitigate illness and tertiary prevention. So, how do we identify when someone's not doing well and support them, and that might be through formal things like employee assistance programs, counseling services, it might be through things like mental health, first aid training, so training, upsetting people in the workplace, to identify when people are not doing well, and then direct them to professional support. The other area that is getting a bit more attention is the whole fruit bowls and yoga, which is the primary prevention stuff, how do we keep people healthy, and while fruit bowls and yoga might be good for, you know, physical health and wellness, and there is some impact on mental wellness as well, I think we can do a lot more mental health type activities to promote flourishing.
So, I like the positive psychology model of Perma in looking at some of the key things you could do. So, rather than focusing on nutrition, exercise, and sleep, or not just doing that exclusively, we could also look at things like well, how do we increase positive relationships in the workplace? How do we give people a greater sense of meaning and purpose? How do we give them satisfaction with the accomplishments that they're making day today? How do we get them to leverage their strengths and experience more flowing? How do we get them to experience more positive emotions like joy and love and gratitude in the workplace? So, if we can target interventions, and that primary prevention level like that I think that would be something that would be suitable for 100% of the workforce?
And so even though yes, we are doing primary prevention, I think in health promotion, particularly in the physical sense in workplaces, I think there's more we can do in the mental health thing using that Perma model is helpful. But the bit that's missing is secondary prevention. So, how do we identify when people are at risk, and then put in controls to make sure they don't become ill. And this is actually where I think psychological health and safety and the whole risk management approach fits in, I think it's secondary prevention, rather than being something that sits across a primary, secondary, and tertiary. So, if we can do good hazard identification, prioritize based on risk what are the things that are most likely to cause people harm, and then putting controls that address the root cause of the stress rather than just helping people to deal with the symptoms of stress, I think will go a long way to preventing psychological injuries, at a larger workgroup or population level.
And this is where the hierarchy of controls come in, and I think to understand that when organizations do things like education or giving people access to a mindfulness app, these are akin to PPA, or administration that was the control which health and safety people now are the least effective controls and addressing or controlling risks, and start thinking about higher-level controls, how do we eliminate the source of stress at its core? Or how do we redesign work, so that people aren't getting ill, because of the work that they're doing?
When we start implementing those higher-order controls, I think we'll have a better impact on what the goal is right, which is to prevent, people from having to take so many days off work due to stress, anxiety, and depression. So, even though some people would debate whether the hierarchy of controls is inappropriate, kind of concept to apply to the management of psychological risks, I think in a lot of instances, it does fit quite nicely, and at least give us an idea of thinking about, well, how do we eliminate or redesign first, before putting the responsibility on those poor employees who are stressed to their eyeballs to just be more mindful and accept the conditions of their workplace which are far from ideal.
Peter Kelly: Which if you look at hierarchy control is the very bottom element anyway. But it's interesting, we have had these discussions about hierarchical control, have we not? I think there's almost a necessity for a hybrid model, don't you? It combines elements of upper control, but also with the primary, secondary, and tertiary. But getting back to the secondary, what is the training of managers and organizations in managing people's mental health comes into that?
Jason van Schie: So, that I would say, might sit even aside from it. It can be a risk control, but it's not necessarily addressing a specifically identified risk, it might be something that helps support the management of psychological health and safety as a system if you like, and maybe broader risk control rather than getting at a specific control. So, it's like more organizational-level intervention so, you can have organizational-level workgroup interventions and individual-level interventions. So, it is probably something that would fit in as primary prevention, depending on what the skill development or knowledge development is basic because the line manager training can mean a lot of different things. But it could be something that could be conceived as either primary prevention or secondary prevention.
Peter Kelly: And the reason we ask is, is proliferative training courses to make you a better manager, nor do they necessarily make you a better manager than reduces the stress? Or do they make you just a better manager that delivers on a product? Be, whatever that it is? It's in their title, isn't it and well-being?
Jason van Schie: Even communication training for line managers, that would be something that would address a risk, if you had identified that poor leadership or poor communication was one of your sock hazards, then if you gave training to leadership on that, that would be risk control. And that probably would be like an administration and tight risk, maybe even redesign at that level. However, if you just send generic line manager training that kind of gave line managers a bunch of different skills, not necessarily targeted at addressing a specific risk, then I don't know where that would fit in. And it's maybe just good primary prevention, let's make sure we have good leaders in place, because we know that's a good thing.
Peter Kelly: Jason, music to my ears, primary prevention through that.
Jason van Schie: Yes, you don't have to do job redesign, if you do the work design well, to begin with. If we know, makes good work, let's make it meaningful. Let's give people good opportunities for relationships and high levels of support, you're less likely to have to go and redesign that work.
Peter Kelly: What do you do though Jason, with jobs, inherently has stress built into them? Let's take a simple view of the hierarchy of the control model. If the job is the source of the stress, the primary perspective, sorry, did I say primary? The first point of the interject is the elimination, what if you can't eliminate the job? What's the hybrid version of that? Did you come to take the job away? Let's say if you're a, let's go to the traditional policemen or ambulance, blue light services. So, exactly where you're going into a potentially high level, of stress very quickly. So, you can't take that away from that. So where does everything hierarchy sits in that? Eliminate the job, what else can you do at the hierarchy level?
Jason van Schie: Yes, and I think that's where, we can be over-simplistic and go, well, this job itself is hazardous. I think we need to unpack what the role is. If we think about a first responder, there are going to be times and it can be sitting around and doing nothing. It's not going to be like, the sympathetic nervous system is activated the whole time. We need to think about different elements of the role. And then once we understand when the stress occurs, and to what frequency, who's affected, how long are they affected for, then we can start to develop controls that might address it. And so, you'd be aware Pete, some of the things that people do is making sure that if they're going to be known that they're going to be exposed to stress then we do have to equip these people with some skills and train them up on, knowing what to expect a realistic job preview and training about the traumatic situation before they're put into the traumatic situation. Having a good debriefing in place, making sure that there are good job rotations in normal...
Peter Kelly: Formal debriefing as well, isn't it Jason?
Jason van Schie: Yes, it'd be peer-to-peer yes.
Peter Kelly: The dark humor is, as they call it, the emergency services that go with the job.
Jason van Schie: Yes. So, we've had this conversation before, you can't just eliminate the role of a police officer, but you look at aspects of the role, you understand what aspects of the role are hazardous for their mental health and well-being. And then you look at, well, how would we address that?
Peter Kelly: There's an emerging issue amongst police forces with, particularly in capital cities, where routinely in the past, you'd have a call out to a potential terrorism event, once in a career, we have seen in the past, where police are talking about that there are multiple times they're being called out to potential events, and so the way we train people, for preparation for those things has to change and reflect the fact that it's a different sort of culture and it's a different time and these people need to be but isn't it funny Yerkes-Dobson law 1907, which we've said previously, which talks about this concept of pressure, and then you have too much pressure you burn out, we don't have enough pressure you rust out. Do you think that's a good analogy for where we are at the moment in COVID-19?
Jason van Schie: Yes, well, we've kind of deviated there. The police officer one is still very interesting to me, and what could be done in that space? But yes, so Yerkes Dodson yes, that's the thing, so we know that stress is cumulative, something I hear often from workplaces or line managers is, well, no, stress is a personal thing, I can't help it that he's having a separation from his partner or his child has a disability, or they've got financial pressures, I can't do anything about that, that stress that they're bringing into work. But other stresses within the workplace would be potentially within the remit of the line manager to address the level of support that they're providing to people, the level of role clarity, and that sort of thing.
So, the problem is, when you have all these stresses at home, and then you have stresses at work, that increases the risk that somebody is going to have an adverse reaction to the stresses in their life. Throw in a macro-level event, like a pandemic, there's just another stressor on people. And I know you're also Pete, I've heard you talk about the fact that we've got a global recession on as well, we're getting well here in Australia, thankfully, we've got a great economy at the moment, thanks to the price of oil. But we do have all of these impacts, and we've got to understand, well, it's a cumulative effect of stress that will lead to people becoming ill and having to take time off work.
The workplace can't control the fact that there's a pandemic, the workplace can't control the fact that this poor guy is about to lose his house because of some bad investment decisions that he's made. But they can impact the level of supervisory support that person feels that they have, and the level of role clarity that they have. And I think that's where companies need more guidance. They don't need to control all the stress and pressures and personal issues that people have in their life. But the things that they can control, are the things that they should seek to understand and control.
Peter Kelly: Now, Vince Butler is here. What would Vince say? Where does the responsibility lie?
Jason van Schie: Vince would first say how much he loves Joel? Well, because everyone loves Joel. And he'd say, where is Joel? Why isn't she on this podcast? Why is Jason here nattering on this podcast?
Peter Kelly: Because probably go home, and he's got children childcare responsibility.
Jason van Schie: Yes, that's right. So, Vince would probably say, why are we focusing on mental health when there are so many people dying every day around the world due to not having safe workplaces? Is that we're going, Pete? Because I reckon that's what he'd say, because he says on LinkedIn, commonly, when we put up a post around mental health and psychological health and safety, he's like, why are you focusing on this, Jason when people are still dying around the world?
Peter Kelly: He'd also say, he is the value in keeping people healthy is hugely important because we know we've talked about this, people who are experiencing mental health, work-related stress. They will engage and do things in a different way, which potentially leads to a safety incident coming out. We talked recently about the gentleman who was on your show, Jason Anchor where his head wasn't in it, as you say and he had his fall on the job. And so there you can see a very real practical world example of what happens when we don't manage people's mental health. It's not just the fact that they become depressed and anxious it's the fact they may have periods where their concentration is impaired, etcetera. So, I think Vince would probably be both ways. He certainly would say, what you've said, but I think also, obviously, Enfamil, but it's a fascinating area that we find ourselves in, and we could chat for like an hour, but I think we agree we were going to do half an hour. But how far are we into it, Sheila?
Sheila Lord: We are probably about 35 minutes.
Jason van Schie: This is the difference; we're doing this as a crossover podcast with the original Psych Health and Safety Podcast. We're long format, and you're in a shorter format. So, we can split it.
Peter Kelly: Jason I think we can run this for another 10 minutes and do 45 minutes. Conscious that you look after your health and well-being, what time is it, Jason?
Jason van Schie: It's going on 5:30. But you know what, I've had a Red Bull, honestly, it's in the system, I might as well use it.
Peter Kelly: No, that's brilliant. So, in terms of where do you see the future for this area in the context of the pandemic, and without the pandemic? Do you think that effectively, the pandemic and the recession have brought us to a position where we can push this forward and can make a real difference, which we were doing before, but we can make a real difference at this time? Where does the future lie?
Jason van Schie: Yes, I've said it before, I believe the pandemic has really shone a light on mental health. I saw the trend years ago with that increasing frequency and cost of psychological injuries from work-related factors. And that's obviously why we started to pursue what can we do at scale with a technology platform to address that. But what COVID has done it I think, has brought forward our agenda, a good three to five years with that intense focus now that has been put on the effect of mental health, I’d be interesting, obviously, with your next reporting period is coming out in October, the new labor force survey.
Peter Kelly: Yes, it does yes. It'll either go one of two ways. It'll be under-reporting so that high presenteeism or numbers will be up so, the interesting thing is how people view it well, you say people were impacted by their mental health. If the numbers are low, the issue is we know presenteeism is huge at the moment. We know this because they're a surrogate, that people use, which identify presentation sees them as being there. Every day, I pick up the paper here in the UK, and I don't know the same in Australia, story about mental health, story about wellbeing, story about people's mental health being impacted. And yet, the data that we collect may not necessarily reflect and I think we have to contextualize it, that the data is one way of identifying where we see that is, but also, we have to look at what else is happening around in society in general.
Jason van Schie: I think some drivers are coming online this year, in Australia, on the back of a review of our WHS act, we are expected to have amendments in there that will start using the terminology around psychological health and not just relying on a general definition of health that's supposed to incorporate both psychological and physical. So, that will make a difference we have regulators because we have state regulators versus UK regulators. So, they're starting to draft codes of practices about how companies can, comply with the existing legislation which is already supposed to incorporate both psychological and physical health, but obviously with the increased focus around psychological health in the upcoming amendments, how can they make their obligations under the Act? And then you have the global standards like ISO as well so I think there's a lot of good drivers a lot of carrots are still not enough to stick Pete and I'm not going to put you on the spot about why we're not getting enough stick on this. So, many people are becoming ill.
Peter Kelly: You know me mate, my preferences for the stick but we've used the carrot. I say it very openly and we will use stick in the rights situation in terms of if it meets the criteria, which we've publicly put out on our website for investigation purposes.
Jason van Schie: I think you're on something with insurance. So, I think that's where the pressure has to come if they're the ones that are holding the bill for the psychological injuries, then whether that's through life insurance, whether it's through TPD, whether it's through workers compensation insurance. If people are unable to work because of a work-related illness that has developed because work has been poorly managed, and insurance paying for it. Well, they should have been, pressuring their clients to take more of a risk management systemic approach, and stop thinking that a mindfulness app or a fruit bowl or yoga can do the trick.
Peter Kelly: Which is a very nice plug into the last question, which is, what do you see the role for 45,003? Does it have a role? Or will it just be a standard that sits on a bookcase that you can blow it when you're asked by your inspector whether or not you've read it? Although can I point out, as I'm hoping you will do it's a voluntary standard, but it will be very useful to show that you're doing stuff managing people's mental health, and it would so, what do you see for 45,003? Do see it as a useful building block, do you see it as an extra burden? What? I'm hoping that goes to the second thing.
Jason van Schie: Well, if it's done correctly, it shouldn't be an extra burden. There are activities that a company would need to do that most aren't doing currently around hazard identification and controlling those risks. But if they incorporated under the Occupational Health and Safety Management System, so 45,001, for instance, then it's designed to be a logical extension of that or not be another thing that you're doing. It should be incorporated into how you manage all health and safety risks. But there's just some extra guidance around, what are the specific hazards that we're concerned about? And how would you go about identifying those hazards because they're not directly observable, say, a physical hazard in the workplace?
So, I'm hoping that gives companies a lot more guidance, I believe, last time, Sheila and I had a look, there were about 38,000 certificates that had been issued for 45,001. So, I think there's a lot of companies who value being certified to that standard for their healthcare and safety management system. And I'm hoping a large majority of those organizations at some stage will go well, look, let's also incorporate 45,003 into these activities. So, given the number of companies who have adopted 45,001, hopefully, there'd be a large number that also adopted and start doing more systemic risk management kind of activities versus leaving HR to do all the wellness kind of stuff that we know, it hasn't had an impact has it, Pete, the numbers keep going up. So, what we're doing, all the popular approaches aren't working, we need to do something different.
Peter Kelly: 2.5 million in a year, from the previous day, so yes, the numbers are going up and we are certain we were in the eye of the storm, and the storm came, and it came twice. So, and coming out of the eye of the storm it's going to be different. We know 45,003 there are some conversations about it being that you can get 45,003, 45,001 as a document. There are some benefits from doing 45,001 with 45,003. I think for me 45,003 almost offers a unique opportunity to back up on existing stuff, but it's already happening. So, in Australia, the standards work, each of the individual states and their work around risk assessments that it can sit there for us, it sits on with our approach set from a racial perspective, which is looking at the risks and managing it and etcetera. So, the management standards, and you'll probably find the management standards in there as an example. So, yes, it's ironic, isn't it? Three years of work that one year into a pandemic, and this standard just arrived.
Jason van Schie: It's great that you got sort of that during the pandemic and we're able to get your act together too.
Peter Kelly: Well mostly just work we've done pre-pandemic. Although we have had for just understanding we have had several weeks of zoom calls, which means swapping the timeframes around so that could mean, I've been on zoom calls at five o'clock in the morning so that you guys could go home at a normal time, so it certainly from a health and wellbeing perspective, I did point out. The thing I said, and the thing I'll say is, make it real, make sure that people understand the terminology, remember who the people are that we're trying to talk to. And hopefully, I think that's reflected in 49,003. This takes me back to my original question. This area is complicated by terminology that people don't necessarily understand. And our job through these podcasts is to break that down, isn't it, it's to make it seem. So actually, this is something that you can do to manage people, this is something to do that will help people improve their health. And by doing that you improve your productivity and your company clear relationship between healthy individuals and healthy companies, isn't there?
Jason van Schie: Yes, I think the big message is that the reason that we need standards like 45003, is that the popular approaches to workplace mental health just have not proven effective. And if we are making a dent in, we need to take more of a safety management system approach, I feel and then like the evidence from the Canadian standard, which also is, built on, there is evidence to show, if you take that systemic approach, it is far more effective at reducing outcomes, like burnout, or increasing engagement, or all those sorts of things, versus let's just give people a massage at work.
And then that'll be it, we're done, and that's the easy thing. It's a box, ticking exercise but if the executives, and health and safety people in HR people who are listening to this podcast, get anything out of it, it's to understand the reason that these standards are coming out is that the popular approaches don't work. So, let's have a look at what we can do by applying things like ISO. And if the end goal is to make workplaces better places to be for everyone, and that people don't just get ill by going to work, but come out of work in a better place mentally, which they should if work is designed, well. Then let's start taking a better approach to how we do it.
Peter Kelly: Yes. I like it, which one of us signed a contract said, yes, we made it'll work. Thanks. It's not quite days, is it? Well, I'm going to let Sheila sum up.
Sheila Lord: Okay.
Peter Kelly: It's just like we've just been in the pub together. For the record, this is what we did do. We had a very similar conversation.
Jason van Schie: For the record, Peter had a non-alcoholic drink at the pub, because it wasn't like, [unclear42:42].
Peter Kelly: Yes it was, yes.
Sheila Lord: As always, you guys a wealth of information around the standard. I think one question I just like to ask both of you. One thing I've heard, or I hear a lot is that people don't take these strategic approaches, because it's hard to do. And they don't know where to start. We've said today is a code of Practice out there, there's legislation out there. And we've had the conversation with Jason before that, if leadership is not on board with it, the chances of success are going to be quite poor. And how do we kind of get leaders, what would be your message to leaders in terms of getting them to see the strategic value of doing this?
Jason van Schie: Yes, it's interesting, like you say, when was the stress management standard come out? Was that '94 or 2004?
Peter Kelly: 2004. It's officially a teenager, 17 years old.
Jason van Schie: It's been out for a while, and then the Canadian National Standard right for Social, Health, and Safety at work. It's been around since 2013 that's an excellent document. That was the source of truth, that was originated for all of these things.
Peter Kelly: Now, to be honest, the Canadians, did everything we wanted to do, but couldn't do so, yes, this that the Canadian standard, to me, got elements of it. I would love to, obviously had.
Jason van Schie: Yes, and look, I've spoken to a number of the Canadians behind that standard on our podcast. And they've said that they reckon ISO would be more achievable than the Canadian standard. So, that's a good thing. But I think the place where leaders need to start is, first of all, to understand the gaps. Look at what are they doing as an organization are ready for workplace mental health and look at where the gaps are. And yes, that's why we created a tool for this. We call it the workplace Mental Health Audit tool. So, mentalhealthaudit.com. And it shows you what are the things you should be doing from a health and safety perspective or a compliance kind of angle if you're in places like the UK or Australia with the general duties. And then what are the desirable things like, EAP, or Mental Health First Aid, all those sorts of things.
So, I think hey need to understand where the gaps are and I think a lot of them would be shocked that they're not meeting their legal obligations first. And they're doing all these other nice to have that haven't proven to move the needle to keep people well in optimizing well-being. So, that's generally where I'd start. And then it's about getting your health and safety team to give them resources to work in this space. Often, it's HR that carries the portfolio for workplace mental health. But they typically will do things like employee engagement surveys, or EAP, or do training around competencies or Mental Health First Aid, but they're not the ones with the risk management capabilities or experience. So, giving your health and safety team training on things like the ISO standard, or understanding psych hazards, bringing up their competence to then bring up the rest of the company's competence as well. So, they're probably two places to start, I'd say.
Peter Kelly: Yes, I just agree with what Jason said.
Sheila Lord: Why don't you talk about that then Pete, let's do a slightly different question to you. So, in terms of it strategically...
Peter Kelly: What I would say, to the previous question, though, with me and Jason was going to I'm sure Jason is going to come around to it was the impact of leadership and authentic leadership. The organizations that do this well, I've got leaders that have said, back it up, and say, this is important to it's a keep performance indicator for this company. I'd like to see KPIs, I want KPIs on mental health and the management of mental health as part of a standard reporting for organizations. So, I think that link to make them do it from a board level is important, but usually, you need people that are engaged in that area.
Jason van Schie: Yes, I would, if you're going to measure the performance, not just look at outcomes, like burnout or illness, or EAP. But also look at how many risk assessments have we done? Do all the workgroups that we have, understand what their key hazards are? And do they have a plan in place to address them? So, measuring those sorts of things, which could be assurance against the standard, versus purely looking at outcomes. Because then those things are lagging indicators, whereas, are we doing good risk management at a workgroup level, not just at an organization level, I would be more effective from a measurement perspective on say, and on the whole leadership thing as well Pete. There's a lot of platitudes out there, leaders say mental health is important. And then they'll say work harder.
Peter Kelly: It has to be at the live value in a live situation.
Jason van Schie: But I think there needs to be evidence that leadership is supporting this. So, until they actually have this ingrained in policy, and not just say, we think mental health is important, but committing to we're going to do a risk assessment and risk management, we're going to provide resources for health and safety people in all employees to understand and well. So, commitment in policy, because then it doesn't just become a one-off activity, it's something that has legs and is going to continue. So, that's important to make sure it's ingrained in the policy. And then there are resources provided, not just or you've got to do this now on top of everything else, and we're not going to provide you with training or money or time to do it. That leadership also needs to allocate the time and budget otherwise, it's again, it's just platitudes, it's not going to have an impact.
Sheila Lord: Yes, you just can't pay lip service to this, can they?
Peter Kelly: I butt in on your question. Sorry. As usual, Jason was gone for an hour. This will just be the first long one. And I will say for now, probably, for now, it's such an area that we need to talk about, the fact that we're doing podcasts on these after spending 20 years promoting and pushing mental health and stress at work. Agenda, I think is a great thing. And hopefully, what these podcasts will do is, particularly in the UK one is to help give people a better understanding of what the issues are. And we've got a range of great speakers that we're looking to bring in. Sheila does that just so I'm like, okay, cool. But it's been nice to chat with you, Jason. I put a shirt on just pointing out Jason obviously in Australia, it's warm so they can wear short sleeve shirts. But yes, I think it's been great having you. What about you, Sheila, any more questions?
Sheila Lord: No, no more for me just thanks to both of you guys for kind of bringing your wealth of knowledge and expertise and sharing that with the listeners.
Jason van Schie: Okay, brilliant, cheers.