Psychosocial risk management

Step four: How to review control measures

Understanding how to measure the effectiveness of your controls, and pinpointing what success looks like at your organisation, is a key part of psychosocial risk management. Check out our effectiveness matrix and question checklist to help you with this step.

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The four steps to managing psychosocial risk

Step one: Identify hazards

Understanding the risks that exist within your organisation is the first step towards managing them and creating a safer environment for your workers. This step often involves reviewing existing data and seeking new information, by talking and listening to your employees. Take me to this step.

Step two: Risk assessment

Next, you will consider the severity and likelihood of harm from exposure to the hazards you have identified in step one. This will help you assess the risk. Often this is achieved via a risk matrix. Take me to this step.

Step three: Control risks

In this step, you will either eliminate the risk, or put every possible measure in place to minimise the risk. This can be done through a mix of planning and preventive controls, which all should be measurable. Take me to this step.

Step four: Review control measures

It's important to maintain, monitor and review control measures periodically. This step ensures your efforts in psychosocial risk management remain effective, and allows employees to provide feedback.

Regularly review risk controls

Psychosocial risk management isn't just about identifying hazards and implementing strategies to mitigate these risks. In fact, monitoring and assessing the effectiveness of your controls is arguably the most crucial part of the risk mitigation process.

Leaders need to establish mechanisms to continuously monitor the effectiveness of control measures and provide channels for employees to share feedback.

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Reviews shouldn't just happen periodically

There may be situations where an immediate review of control effectiveness may be necessary. Examples include a complaint of bullying or harassment,  the identification of a new hazard (for example a new system that requires additional training and increased responsibilities), significant organisational changes, or requests for review from employees, teams, or inspectors.

"Regulators are sophisticated. They are very active and they will ask about the effectiveness of controls.  They will require information that reveals their effectiveness… so the legal risk in this area is high."

Katherine Morris

Katherine Morris

Health and Safety Specialist and Partner at Norton Rose Fulbright

Try our risk control review tools and templates

Fast-track your psychosocial risk management process with our free-to-use resources.

Factsheet

Control effectiveness matrix

An easy-to-use framework to help leaders objectively measure the effectiveness of their controls, so they can assign them a rating.

Template

Risk control examples

If your psychosocial hazard risk controls aren't working as intended, here are ten questions to consider to help you understand why.

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