Psych Health and Safety Podcast

In this episode we chat with Dr Hillary Bennett, Director of Leading Safety and the Resiliency Centre. Hillary discusses the state of workplace mental health and the maturity of current approaches to psychological health and safety in New Zealand. She shares a framework to help businesses implement strategies to prevent harm as well as to facilitate early identification and recovery should harm occur, and describes the processes she finds effective in conducting a psychosocial risk assessment.

In this episode we chat with Niclas Wisen, a military psychologist from Sweden. Niclas discusses the psychosocial hazards that members of the military experience, and describes some of the approaches adopted within the Swedish military to manage psychosocial risk. Some of the strategies described include adopting de-stigmatising language, alignment with physical health terminology, and equipping personnel with the skills to cope with the unique situations experienced during deployment.

In this episode we chat with Clive Lloyd, Psychologist, Principal Consultant at GYST Consulting, and author of "Next Generation Safety Leadership: From Compliance to Care". Clive talks about the impact of fear and trust in the workplace, and describes the undermining effect that active mistrust can have on any improvement initiatives. He describes the research supporting the idea that leader benevolence (i.e. care) makes a significant contribution to psych health and safety outcomes, and suggests a range of practical strategies that leaders can apply to start to build trust and demonstrate care to their workforce.

In this episode we chat with Dr Joti Samra, CEO and Founder of My Workplace Health, and founding member of the CSA Technical Committee that developed the National Standard of Canada for Psychological Health and Safety in the Workplace. Dr Joti shares with us her recollections of developing the Guarding Minds at Work framework and the Canadian National Standard. She provides us with a great example of how much work is actually involved in developing an evidence-based framework, and shares her views on why our use of language is so important in talking about psychological health and safety rather than mental health.

In this episode, we chat with Angela Martin, Founder and Principal Consultant of Pracademia, and current Professorial Research Fellow at the Menzies Institute for Medical Research at the University of Tasmania. Angela gives us a comprehensive insight into the challenges small and micro businesses face in implementing psych health and safety strategies and describes some of the significant psychosocial hazards to which small business owners are exposed. Angela then points us to some excellent, free resources available to assist small businesses meet their psych health and safety obligations for their employees, as well as resources designed to support small business owners in practical ways. She also describes how larger businesses can support the psych health and safety of their supply chain providers through simple policy changes, and shares some information about upcoming small business supports currently in development.