Despite support for work health and safety (WHS) policy interventions, the evaluation of their effectiveness has been overlooked. As such, many important policy developments have not been assessed for their impact within jurisdictions and organisations. We addressed this research gap by using the Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) framework, theory, measurement toolthe PSC-12, and benchmarks -to investigate the impact of a WHS policy intervention, across Australian jurisdictions, that standardised policy approaches (i.e. harmonisation) and legislated the protection of psychological health. PSC refers to a facet of organisational climate that relates to psychological health and safety and is a predictor of job design and employee health. We investigated perceived organisational PSC across jurisdictions, across time, and contrasted effects between those that did (harmonised) and did not (non-harmonised) adopt the policy. Results showed Time X Group effects for the global PSC measure, indicating a significant difference over time between the harmonised and non-harmonised jurisdictions. Specifically, PSC levels significantly decreased in the non-harmonised jurisdiction over time. Analysis of PSC subscales showed that a significant decline in management commitment and priority, and communication (marginally) in relation to employee psychological health, within the non-harmonised group underpinned these effects. We noted no significant overall PSC change across the harmonised jurisdictions, with the exception that participation and consultation in relation to employee psychological health significantly increased. Results imply that without harmonisation the PSC levels reduced. Future research should seek detailed information regarding policy implementation, regulator perspectives and employer data to compliment results from the PSC-12.
Psychosocial hazards and risks are widely acknowledged to be a serious challenge in WHS.WHS regulatory (hard law) and non-regulatory binding (soft law) policies should strive to engage organisations in psychosocial risk management practices and set a standard for good psychological health in the workplace. Therefore, policies should contain key definitions and aspects of good-practice psychosocial risk management principles. However, at present there has been limited review on policy in this area, despite growing evidence of poor work-related psychological health. Using qualitative methods, the current paper reviews relevant regulatory and non-regulatory policy documents and conducts a gap analysis according to criteria identified in models of good psychosocial risk management practice. The paper extends upon European research by Leka et al. (2015) and examines 39 policies (6 regulatory and 33 non-regulatory) in Australia. We found that most policy documents included psychological health in the objective of the policy. Moreover, non-regulatory policies showed sound coverage of exposure factors and preventive actions and, to a slightly lesser degree, risk assessment. Non-regulatory policy documents scored higher than regulatory policies.Within regulatory policies, there is poor inclusion of risk assessment, preventive action and poor coverage of exposure factors and psychological health outcomes. All policies could be strengthened by including greater coverage of work-related psychological health problems/disorders and associated outcomes. This is a novel review, which contributes to a broader program of research on Australian WHS policy. The next research phase seeks detailed information from WHS experts about the effectiveness and/or implementation of these policies in order to ascertain potential improvements.
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