Exploring psychological health and safety lead indicators

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For psychological health and safety (PHS) to have a real impact, it must begin operating like occupational health and safety, with a clear mandate on what is and is not considered “good.” I coach leaders assigned to PHS that it does not need to be complicated; it needs to be tangible and measurable.

Human emotions that influence thoughts and behaviours predict mental harm risk in a workplace. Regardless of sector, profession, age or gender, an employee’s experience creates both positive and unpleasant emotions that influence their mental state, beliefs and behaviours.

Though many workers aspire to be rational, it is not practical to expect this all the time, especially when workers are tired, stressed, worried about employment or live in fear of being hurt or threatened. The emotional system provides human input on experience, whether favourable or not.

PHS aims to protect employees from mental harm and promote mental health. Employees’ beliefs influence their thinking (e.g., whether the employer cares) and actions (e.g., whether they stay or go).

PHS is not about fixing people. It is about protecting and promoting opportunities to develop psychological protections that help employees regulate and react to their situations under pressure.

Information is only helpful if it creates habit changes that achieve desired outcomes. Many PHS initiatives and workplace mental health strategies overlook this. Humans do not always do what is best for them. I often remind people how hard it is to get someone to drink 3-4 litres of water a day.

A psychologically safe workplace has many moving parts, including work organization, interpersonal interactions, equipment, and the environment. All these factors can impact employees’ emotional systems.

The opportunity for PHS

Employers do not need to be PHS experts or psychologists to facilitate PHS lead practices that predict and protect employees’ emotional well-being. For example, if asked to compare Team A, whose leader yells, plays favourites, and leads by fear, to Team B, which has a firm, fair leader who cares about the employees’ well-being, most CEOs know which team will have better employee engagement. They would pick Team B.

Ample research demonstrates that engaged employees are more innovative, creative, and willing to go above and beyond their job requirements, leading to higher productivity and organizational performance.

PHS or workplace mental health initiatives are often designed as standalone programs with no connection, program evaluation or measurement. If there is some measurement, it is frequently activity-based, such as check-the-box utilization.

A well-designed PHS program has a clear line of sight on what psychosocial factors create positive charges and unpleasant emotional drains in a workforce. A psychosocial factor can positively or negatively impact the employee experience. When factors like work demands become problematic, they can develop into psychosocial hazards, resulting in mental harm, injury and illness.

PHS aims to directly impact the employee experience and an organization’s ability to achieve its full potential.

Company Z: A Case Study

The following lead indicator example demonstrates a process that requires auditing and validating its benefits, as well as the value of a PHS lead indicator.

Company Z decided to focus on PHS and adapted some core elements of the CSA Z1003 Psychological Health and Safety Standard. Once senior leadership buy-in and support were obtained, the PHS champion formed a small committee that included all key stakeholder groups.

The committee defined its roles and scope and completed a full review of all current employee data trends, such as disability and workers’ compensation claims, turnover, and prevention and support programs and policies designed to support employees’ experiences and mental health.

The committee then established a baseline of psychosocial risk factors and employee perceptions of the current programs and policies and set out to understand the risk of incivility, bullying, harassment and workplace violence. When picking a workplace assessment tool, the committee selected an instrument that provided metrics that could be retested to evaluate progress and determine if the tool was valid.

The committee chose the Workplace Psychological Safety Assessment (WPSA), an evidence-based workplace assessment tool run through a university that has generated data that has contributed to peer-reviewed publications.

After collecting data, the committee chose leadership as a psychosocial hazard to focus on to improve employees’ experiences interacting with their direct managers. The organization had a cultural history of command-and-control leadership and wanted to move towards a trusted leadership style. The committee’s trend analysis showed that leaders perceived as command-and-control individuals had higher turnover rates and disability claims on their teams than more trusted leaders.

The targeted outcome was to decrease the leadership psychosocial risk hazard. The lead indicator to be piloted was the benefit of leaders completing an evidence-based Psychologically Safe Leader program, which included online training and follow-up accountability peer-to-peer meetings.

Leaders were expected to meet weekly for 10 minutes to report what key performance behaviours (i.e., regular feedback) they were practicing, their progress, and their areas to improve. These sessions also allowed leaders to seek peer guidance. This post-course accountability activity would be continued over six months and tracked through the company’s learning management system.

Piloting and validating any PHS lead indicator helps us understand it. In the case of Company Z, the thesis was that training leaders in psychological safety and engaging them in peer-to-peer follow-up meetings would help correct the forgetting curve and support leaders in developing new habits that would show up in their day-to-day interactions with direct reports.

The Plan-Do-Check-Act approach validated this new PHS lead indicator using short, monthly pulse checks on the employee experience, listening tours, and comparisons of year-over-year results. Once validated through a PHS lens, a lead indicator can make its way onto a PHS scorecard.

For a PHS lead indicator to be of value, it must be behaviourally based, specific, tested and validated in the culture to predict the desired outcome. In the case study above, more positive interaction between managers and employees drove increased engagement.

Dr. Bill Howatt is the Ottawa-based president of Howatt HR Consulting.

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