In a perfect world, every workplace is safe, every employee is well, every person is engaged and productive, every organisation fulfills its moral and financial objectives, and everyone involved ‘does the right thing’. There are no risks to brand reputation, no workplace harassment claims, no compensation costs, no litigations, no retention issues, and no lives lost to suicide.
In reality, we know that in Australia alone, $543 million/year is paid in compensation for work-related mental health conditions, at least 65,000 suicide attempts are made over the same period, and news feeds are full of #MeToo, burnout, boreout, bullying, harassment and headlines such as, “a quarter of Australian employees are seeking a new job”.
In the past 12 months, CEOs, board members, People and Culture Directors and WHS managers have anxiously watched as:
- In an Australian first, the Administrative Appeals Tribunal of Australia found in favour of a worker’s compensation claim from an Australian Tax Office employee who suffered a psychological injury due to his excessive workload;
- BHP suffered potentially irreparable reputation damage after the media exposed the Australian mining giant’s “culture of cover up” and termination of nearly 50 workers for sexual assaults and harassment at its Western Australian mining camps;
- The federal government – suffering similarly damaging sexual harassment allegations at Parliament House – reviewed the Respect@Work Sexual Harassment National Inquiry Report (2020) and agreed to introduce significant changes to the Fair Work Act and the Sex Discrimination Act, including the confirmation of sexual harassment as grounds for dismissal and the voiding of the get-out-of-jail-free card for members of parliament, judges, and state public servants;
- Burnout stole the limelight at Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, Bumble and Nike, prompting them to give their employees one day, three days, or for the latter three, one week to recover; and
- New Zealand’s Humphries Construction officially sanctioned the use of sick leave for mental health days and gave employees an extra five days of sick leave to recharge.
The launch of ISO 45003 is a timely reminder that organisations have both a responsibility and an incentive to create safe and healthy workplaces if they care about employee wellbeing, recruitment, retention, productivity, innovation, reputation fallout, and organisational resilience.
TNS (2014). State of Workplace Mental Health in Australia.
PwC (2014). Creating a mentally healthy workplace. Return on investment analysis p iv.
