Psychosocial hazards are any factors at work that increase the risk of work-related stress and can lead to mental or physical harm. When your work impacts your mental and emotional wellbeing that is a psychosocial hazard.
Sexual harassment, bullying, high workload, and emotional hazards are only a few of the psychosocial hazards that workers in local government and social and community services face all the time.
As part of a project to tackle these hazards the Australian Services Union (ASU), in collaboration with WorkSafe Victoria, are conducting a project in local government and social and community services. Their publicly available ASU Toolkit for Mentally Healthy Workplaces includes information about 11 different psychosocial hazards that you may find in your workplace, including guides to what each type of psychosocial hazard might look, sound or feel like, as well as links to surveys to use to identify risk.
The linked resources are useful and informative for all workplaces and include publications such as Bullying – A Guide for ASU Members and a Building Mentally Healthy Workplaces Handbook. Mental health posters and posters for HSRs are available to all to spread the work among your co-workers. Further resources are available for ASU members.
The ASU OHS Training section provides links to OHS information for ASU Delegates, Webinars and the ASU training calendar. Training topics include –
- Mental Hazards at Work
- Beyond the Talk: How to effectively raise, report and escalate OHS issues
- Understanding and Addressing Occupational Violence and Aggression
- OHS for ASU Delegates (Vic)
- Beyond Burnout: Understanding and Addressing Workload as a Psychosocial Hazard
- The Climate Crisis and Worker Mental Health
- Preventing and Managing Work-Related Stress
We encourage employees in all industries to access the ASU’s Toolkit for Mentally Healthy Workplaces to learn more about safeguarding their psychosocial health at work.
Read more: ASU Toolkit for Mentally Healthy Workplaces