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Real leaders leave a legacy. They capture the hearts and minds of their teams. Their origin story puts the safety and well-being of their people first. Great companies ubiquitously have safe yet productive operations. For those companies, safety is an investment, not a cost for the C-suite. It’s a real topic of daily focus. This is The Safety Guru with your host, Eric Michrowski, a globally recognized ops and safety guru, public speaker, and author. Are you ready to leave a safety legacy? Your legacy success story begins now. 

Hi and welcome to The Safety Guru. Today I’m very excited to have with me Kylie Long, who is a workplace health and safety and psychosocial risk expert coming from Australia. Kylie, welcome to the show. Very excited to have you with me today.

Good morning from Australia. Thanks, Eric. Thanks for having me.

So, let’s get started with a little bit about your background because you have pretty diverse background that got you in this, into this space.

Yes, I do. So, uh, I’m a registered nurse. I still work as a registered nurse, uh, with over 30 years of experience in that space. But about 20 years ago, I shifted into workplace health and safety, primarily to move away from the shift work point of view, um, and working on a 24/7 schedule availability for the year. Uh, but my focus was always on cardiac where people got better, and then I moved into emergency space where I see the back end of when things go wrong. Um, so I transitioned into workplace health and safety, and I see how workplace systems directly impact people when they’re working under pressure, particularly in the emergency department.

Sure.

So, things that I would often see that really link into the psychosocial space that I work in are things like, I see staff with burnout or chronic stress or fatigue.

Sure.

Bullying, poor leadership behaviors and practices as well, as well as sometimes unclear roles within organizations, and also things around unmanaged workloads, which is particularly a hot topic within the nursing profession here.

I’m sure. I think in Australia, but also pretty much worldwide. I’ve heard a lot of it in NHS in the UK, pretty much every, every part. And same as the shifts, the burnout, very, very common. You touch on psychosocial risk. It’s something that Australia is really leading in, in that space. Tell me a little bit about what it is and what are some of the risks that it presents.

So psychosocial safety is not anything new inside workplace. Um, people tend to think it’s something new that need— leaders need to be doing, and organizations need to be doing. Uh, it’s just that there’s some more structure around it at the moment, particularly in Australia with the legislative requirement. So, it’s basically the legal requirement to protect your workers from psychosocial harm in the same way that we would protect our workers from a physical injury. It really focuses on identifying controlling aspects, um, of work design and management that can cause damage to the mental health of a worker. So, some key hazards or things that you might see in the workplace from an organizational perspective, you might see things like excessive workloads, and we just spoke about that before. Unrealistic deadlines, poor organizational change management. Change management’s a big one in organizations. Not many organizations I see do it particularly well. There are always learnings from change management processes. Intrusive sort of surveillance or poor physical work environments as well. But as a leader, you might see things from a leadership perspective. There might be poor support for your workers. There might be low job control over the tasks they’re actually doing.

Or it might be continued sustained high job demand. So, you know, that continual like working under pressure and, you know, you know, having high output that you need to be doing within the workplace, or really things around unclear expectations and poor communications, a particular one around then. And then there might be individual behaviors that workers might be displaying towards each other or, you know, displaying towards leaders, things like— the typical ones like bullying and harassment, aggression, and then that sort of toxic workplace relationships within organizations, which ultimately reflect the culture of the business.

Mm-hmm. And some of these are quite self-evident, but what would be some of the business impacts for organizations when they’ve got presence of these psychosocial risks or even on workplace culture?

So, if you’re looking at the business impacts, there’s things that are from a financial perspective, but also from a cultural perspective. So generally, Generally, when we look at sort of the data in Australia particularly, and I’m assuming it would be across, you know, globally as well, the psychological injuries actually cost 4 times than the physical claim injuries. And workers who sustain a psychological injury generally can take 5 times longer to recover, and they might be 5 times longer away from the workplace than physical injuries themselves. So, there’s a huge financial impact to a business there.

Sure.

If it’s not a claim that goes through, it might be things like increased absenteeism, but it also could be presenteeism as well, where we talk about that sort of silent sort of resignation that you’re just going through the motions. You haven’t resigned, but you’re just going through the motions and doing what you need to do on a daily basis, which really impacts the team performance, but also the productivity of the team as well.

Right.

You might have also see if there are people moving away from the business, you might see like high turnover rates, which then would ultimately cost businesses because they have to go and recruit, onboard, and train people. Or they might need to look at their succession planning when people leave. Like someone’s got to— if they haven’t got good succession planning in place, then there’s a gap there for a period of time. Um, there’s— if you’ve got burnout and disengagement from your workers, that can lead to things like slower decision-making and increased errors. So, I know that particularly from a nursing perspective, you know, when you do have that burnout, that there is increased risk of errors, particularly, you know, medication errors, those kinds of things. And I guess if you’re fatigued or you’re at, you know, stress levels increase, you are more prone to make mistakes, and you might need to rework things as well, which obviously costs businesses as well due to that time delay. And then if you do have that toxic sort of work culture, you might have an increase in conflicts or complaints coming in, or there might be things like blame behaviors and that disengagement again.

Yeah, so generally people feel like they can’t speak up because if they do speak up, they’re like, they’ll be sort of targeted, I guess, is the concern that they had, that the workers do have. 

Sure.

And then I guess from a leadership perspective, leaders might feel burnt out, or they might feel like they’re just doing firefighting decision-making, where they’re just doing that sort of reactive decision-making. And then it’s, you know, disruptive to the organization as a whole. So there’s lots of different things that sort of can come in, even if someone doesn’t put in a psycho— psychological claim. There’s sort of the other flow-on effects for the business.

Sure.

I guess a team that sort of functions in that sort of survival mode, they’re not sort of looking— they’re not sort of functioning in that sort of innovation and continuous improvement model which businesses want to focus on. So, it really does have There’s lots of impacts that it has on a business from not only an organizational perspective, but it flows down to leaders and workers as well.

Yeah, and ultimately the bottom line, if you’re not innovating as what you’re describing, it frequently has a bottom-line impact, but also, it’s an impact on physical safety. Because if you don’t feel comfortable speaking up, you’re also more exposed to one, make mistakes, but also, uh, to get into harm’s way.

Correct. Yeah.

And so, what are some of the best tactics an organization can take on to address and improve on the psychosocial risk?

Uh, so the, so from, from a leadership perspective, they can really start looking at some of those sort of key hazards that particularly in Australia that the legislation focuses on. So, identifying the hazards. So, start looking at the teams and start looking at things like, do we have excessive workloads? Or unrealistic deadlines? Do we have chronic understaffing and constant overtime? Like, are people missing their meal breaks? Are people staying back late on a, you know, regular basis? Right. Are people not sure about what their role actually is, or they might have conflicting priorities and they’re not sure what their priorities are for the week or even for the day? Um, so some things, some practical things like, you know, if you notice that your workers are skipping breaks or they’re staying back on a daily basis or they’re looking constantly exhausted, have a look at your workload and have a look at the staffing issues to see if you need to bring in— particularly during, you know, the peak times in retail that we look at, Christmas time— do we need to bring in more staff to cover that area at Christmas time, or Winter, when it’s the flu season, do we need to bring in more staff to cover sick leave rather than working down in the number of staff for that day?

If teams are confused about what their priorities are during, for example, an organizational change, need to focus in on what the change management tactic is that we’re using within the organization. And communication’s a key one as well during that process. So, when things are communicated clearly and consistently on a regular basis during a change management process, people feel less fear and there’s less rumors that go around. So that’s clear, consistent messaging that’s going out to people, so they don’t feel like that rumor sort of starts that’s not actually substantiated.

Right.

Um, if workers stop speaking up or raising concerns, that’s another red flag for leaders. So, um, often psychological safety is linked to a visibility issue. So, making sure that leaders are visible within the organization so that workers can go and approach them and talk to them.

Sure.

That sort of open-door policy, um, and be, you know, up opportunities for that communication and collaboration within their teams.

Mm-hmm.

And if leaders are feeling like they’re constantly firefighting and emotionally exhausted, um, that might reflect on things like poor systems. So having a look at their psychosocial systems and processes, the workplace health and safety systems and processes as well and have a look at what sort of control they can have over different aspects of that, or if they need additional support for themselves in that leadership role. And also have a look to see if complaints and conflict are actually increasing. So, look at what the workload pressure is, is, um, do we have any unclear expectations? And what kind of behaviors do we tolerate? Because that’s another one, like that, just, you know, that just sort of joking, I was just joking sort of, um, culture that we have. So, some things on a practical also point of view that, um, leaders could do, like those daily check-ins with the teams to see, you know, um, what’s making work difficult at the moment, what’s getting in the way of, you know, being able to do our job. Um, regular workload discussions, that really clear prioritization. So, I often take this with it when I’ve worked in organizations where there’s competing demands.

I’ll have a sit-down and discussion with my supervisor or manager and ask them, you know, what’s the focus for this week? What do you definitely need done this week? What can we slide till next week if we need to?

Sure.

And another one, particularly for those large organizations, is that bureaucracy. So that’s that red tape that, you know, we, you know, the hoops that you need to jump through to get things signed off. Um, trying to remove that unnecessary bureaucracy as much as possible for those leaders as well. Yeah. So, there’s some key things that leaders can actually do.

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And I think a lot of what you describe also seems to touch on the system, the system issues that are occurring. I know when we talked about this initially, you talked about leadership training as an example, which is often missing when somebody becomes a leader. The training doesn’t always follow.

Yeah, that’s correct. So often, um, leaders might wait like up to 7 years to actually get a leadership training in within an organization. So, they might be employed for that role based on their technical skills, but they don’t actually have any of that leadership training, um, in place. So, they’ve been managing things like conflict, or they’ve been managing workloads, or they’ve been managing complaints, but they don’t have any sort of formal systems and processes to get that leadership training and follow through what the practical things that they need to be doing. So, it’s often a missed opportunity. And then you’ve already got things ingrained in the way they’re doing things, systems and processes, and then they have to go back and rework that.

And I think sometimes even the frontline supervision is, is often, I find, one of the worst spots in terms of the availability of training. And these are the ones who are impacting the frontline team members typically the most and typically don’t have a lot of training, a lot of background. They were literally the best at the job before, and now they’re supervising a team.

Yeah, correct. So, you wouldn’t place someone in charge of like a high-risk machinery without training them. So why would you put someone in, you know, to lead a team if you weren’t going to give them that leadership development? So, um, and you know, they often work in those sorts of high-risk environments without, you know, little preparation or they don’t have any understanding of, you know, the people management skills as well. Because obviously it’s a practice that people need to, you know, be supported in because not everyone’s a natural leader.

And that’s, that’s an interesting point because in some cases I’ve seen over the years that the leader gets promoted and they see it as that’s what I need to do to get ahead in this organization. But not everybody’s meant to be a leader and sometimes there’s ways to get promoted in expert roles without necessarily having a team that you support.

Yes, completely agree and relate to that. And I am definitely not a person that likes to lead a team just because of all the, the things that are involved, the complexities of leading a team. So, I prefer to be an expert in the field that I’m working in. Yeah.

Right. And typically, how do organizations get started if they realize that they want to address psychosocial? You talked about some of the signs that organizations should be looking for? What would be some of the first steps, uh, and that you typically see?

So, for, from a, it’s mainly focused on a risk management, uh, framework. So, it’s around identifying the hazards, which we spoke about those hazards before. Yeah. Assessing, um, the hazards that you have within the workplace. So, identifying them on your risk matrix or prioritizing them within the business, where they sit, and then having a look at the controls, um, to see what kind of controls that you can put in place and then to manage those risks. So, prioritizing it, focusing on, you know, don’t focus on the low-level stuff like you do with physical hazards around PPE, which would be the policies and procedures. Look at that sort of engineer, you know, elimination and that sort of engineering sort of space about how we can rework what we’re actually doing, how can we design the work differently, what systems and processes do we need to put in place to manage that risk. And then going back and actually reviewing it as well. So, there’s some— the universities here are doing some work at the moment around, well, let’s have a look at where we’re sitting at the moment from a snapshot in terms of our compliance, but then let’s go through and do the work around the risk management perspective.

And then let’s come back in 6 to 12 months to see what, how, what impact we’ve had as a business, um, when we’ve introduced these new systems and processes to manage psychosocial risk. Um, that’s definitely not my specialty because there’s people that work in that space from there is some statistical analysis that they actually do to look at the change management process that businesses have actually been through to see what impact it’s actually had on them from a positive perspective.

Hmm. Absolutely. So why does the topic of psychosocial risk feel difficult for many leaders?

So many, um, leaders think that psychological safety means that it’s about mental illness management for their workers. Or it might be, they think it might be around therapy or managing personalities, particularly difficult personalities, or around avoiding those difficult conversations with their workers.

Yep.

It, it actually doesn’t, it’s not about that. It’s about psychological health that’s always sat within the workplace health and safety legislation.

Sure.

Um, but it’s just changed in terms of with the guidance for it around clarity around the guidance for managing psychosocial risks, but also now what’s enforceable under the legislation as well. So, the word psychological generally will create a fear within leadership and also individuals and teams. The term often triggers some discomfort amongst leaders. Leaders worry about things like, am I responsible for my employees outside of work?

Sure.

Can I still manage performance? That’s another one as well. They’re still concerned about performance managing people because of the implications of that. And particularly in the Australian space, there’s been a little bit of noise around that with large corporations, banking corporations, where someone has been performance managed and then they’ve gone down the line of self-harm. So, there’s been a bit, a little bit of noise in the media around that at the moment. So, you know, they’re concerned, can I still manage my people, um, you know, under this psycho— psychosocial legislation? And another thing is, will every difficult conversation that I have with my team, um, become a claim? You know, will they put a psychosocial claim in, um, against the organization? So, but in reality, its really around psychosocial safety is simply applying the traditional safety principles that we had to manage psycho— psychological harm.

Sure.

Just the same way as you would manage a physical injury, a, you know, physical incident or injury, we need to manage it the same way with a psychological harm as well.

And how does it differ from wellbeing programs?

So psychological safety isn’t really a wellbeing trend. So, it’s not looking at things like engagement surveys and culture surveys.

Sure.

And it’s not about diagnosing workers when you’re looking at wellbeing programs as well. It’s not that sort of quick fix that we need to be focusing on.

Sure.

And it’s not really around creating any new legal obligations as well. It’s really around moving away from wellbeing. It’s around looking at our workplace systems. Yep. How they influence that psychological health. Not just from a physical perspective, but also from that psychological perspective as well.

Sure. And I think to wrap up, what are some of the key takeaways you would have for leaders on this whole topic of psychosocial risk?

Really need to consider it as a core business risk management process. It’s not anything different than what you’ve already been doing. It’s not a new term or new trend that’s come around. And that leadership behavior is one of the strongest psychosocial controls in any organization.

Sure.

And your prevention really lives in amongst how you design your work, what your leadership capability is like within your organization, and we spoke about that in terms of that leadership development, what your communication style is with your workers, and that open-door policy and visibility within the organization. Is getting really clear about the role of the workers within each organization. And particularly, we didn’t touch on it, but around position descriptions, making sure they match what the workers are actually doing, um, and going back and having a look at those and really having a look around, is the workload manageable?

Right.

Um, and do we have respectful behavior that gone are the days of that sort of just joking kind of behavior, um, that we have had in workplaces. Because at the end of the day, when you focus on good psychosocial safety, it will create better performance within your business, a stronger culture. We spoke about the impacts, the negative impacts of psychosocial risk, safer workplaces and healthier workplaces, which ultimately lead to healthier organizations.

Right. And if somebody wants to get in touch with you, Kylie, to learn more about psychosocial risk or, or to explore how to drive improvements, how can they do that?

The best place to find me is actually on LinkedIn where I’ve got good visibility. So, if you just type in Kylie Long, um, and the other place is my website, which is, um, www.support supportandsafetysolutions.com.au. So, if you Google search, yes, Support and Safety Solutions, or LinkedIn for Kylie Long, you’ll find me on that platform as well.

Excellent. Thank you so much for joining me today, Kylie.

Thanks, Eric.

Thank you for listening to The Safety Guru on C-suite Radio. Leave a legacy. Distinguish yourself from the past. Grow your success. Capture the hearts and minds of your teams. Elevate your safety. Like every successful athlete, top leaders continuously invest in their safety leadership with an expert coach to boost safety performance. Begin your journey at execsafetycoach.com. Come back in two weeks for the next episode with your host, Eric Michrowski. This podcast is powered by Propulo Consulting.