Psychosocial risks are a “wicked problem”

It is 7pm on a Sunday evening. Most people are winding down, but Sam is staring at his work inbox, trying to “clear” emails so he will not be “behind” when he logs in on Monday morning. Since the restructuring last month, Sam is having to juggle multiple new tasks every day (on top of his current responsibilities) with no new resources. Sam keeps telling himself, “I just need to get through this week.” The problem? He has been saying that for almost two months.

This is not just a heavy workload issue anymore; it is a psychosocial risk in the making. While no workplace is immune from psychosocial hazards, how much risk these hazards pose to people will differ, depending on the organisation, the individual, how much support is in place, and what is being done to control the risks.

What are psychosocial risks and hazards?

Psychosocial risks refer to the potential of psychosocial hazards to cause harm. Now, we need to work backwards a little to understand what a psychosocial hazard is.

While there are many definitions and conceptualisations out there, psychological health and safety legislation in Australia suggests that “a psychosocial hazard is anything that could cause psychological and/or physical harm”.

Psychosocial hazards at work often fall under these broad categories:

• Design or management of work
• Work environment
• Workplace interactions and behaviours
• Plant at a workplace

Common psychosocial risks that have the potential to cause harm include:

• Excessive working hours
• High job demands
• Workplace bullying
• Poor support
• Low role clarity

In more simple terms: psychosocial hazards are workplace stressors that have the potential to cause harm, and the psychosocial risk is the likelihood and severity of that harm actually occurring.

If psychosocial risks are not managed, they can lead to serious harm in employees such as burnout, anxiety or depression, and physical illness, which can have flow-on effects in terms of high turnover, absenteeism, presenteeism and decreased work productivity.

Psychosocial risks are “wicked problems” as they are complex issues with no clear causes, no agreed‑upon solutions, and many stakeholders with competing values. They involve high uncertainty, interconnected factors, and can’t be solved definitively—only managed over time (Weber & Khademian, 2008).

But what exactly are psychosocial risks compared to “traditional” health and safety risks, and how do we address them?

Researchers have started to look into some of the reasons as to why organisations might find it difficult or challenging to manage these risks. A useful paper by Schuller (2019) highlights several barriers associated with psychosocial risk; we build on Schuller’s discussion by exploring those barriers in more depth and offering practical, actionable tips to help you and your workplace better manage psychosocial risks.

First barrier: The complicated nature of psychosocial risks

Addressing psychosocial risks is uniquely difficult, compared to “traditional” physical hazards, because they rarely stem from a single source, but rather from a tangled web of overlapping workplace factors, which makes it difficult to address the “root cause” of the issue. Psychosocial risks are perceived as “less tangible” and can be “invisible”.

The difficulty lies in the nature of the hazard itself – for example, you can literally see a missing guardrail on a ladder (traditional health and safety risk), but you cannot “see” a lack of role clarity or high workload (psychosocial risk). Consequently, traditional risks are often eliminated and/or mitigated through ensuring construction workers wear PPE gear, while psychosocial risks require more complex interventions such as changes in the design and management of the work itself (e.g., job re-design or flexible working arrangements).

To help leaders navigate the complicated nature of psychosocial risks, Umbrella offers a focused two-hour workshop on Managing Psychosocial Risk. The session covers the foundations of psychological health and safety and develops leaders’ understanding of psychosocial risk frameworks and assessment tools. Get in touch with us, if you’d like to run this workshop for your team of leaders.

Second barrier: Where does the responsibility lie for managing psychosocial risk?

Identifying a psychosocial risk is only half the battle. The process often stalls at a critical question: Who is responsible for managing it? Schuller (2019) highlights two conflicting lenses through which organisations may view the responsibility.

Scenario 1: Responsibility as an individual matter

In this view, the organisation sees psychosocial health through a personal lens, rather than a structural one. Management may attribute stress or burnout to an employee’s personal life. Solutions are often limited to reminding the worker about how to access the organisation’s employee assistance programme (EAP). While valuable, EAP sessions place the entire burden of “fixing” the risk on the individual’s ability to cope with a potentially toxic environment. Even if there is a personal crisis going on (e.g., family break-down or a newly diagnosed health issue), the root cause remains unaddressed because the employer is waiting for the individual to change, rather than modifying the workplace even a little to help.

Scenario 2: Responsibility as a collective matter

This is the “ideal” scenario, where wellbeing and psychosocial safety are viewed as a collective matter. The focus shifts from “fixing the worker to fixing the work”. There has recently been an increase in organisations seeking to implement psychosocial risk management strategies, and last year, Umbrella ran a market survey which revealed 22% of respondent’s organisations currently offer a wellbeing service that includes psychosocial risk assessments. These organisations are thinking forward and moving toward strategies that re-design work to eliminate stressors – addressing the “dreadful workflow”, the “bullying boss”, or the “crisis-driven timeframes”, rather than just giving people tools to “cope better”. Even where a “personal issue” is in the mix, an appropriate response to that will be impossible in a psychologically hazardous organisation (e.g., if a newly separated worker, having to deal with rearranging childcare, accommodation and emotional shock, dare not even ask their bullying boss for a little leeway).

The transition from Scenario 1 to Scenario 2 isn’t instantaneous; organisations require dedicated support to navigate this change. This is where Umbrella’s training delivers the most value. By partnering with us, you gain access to experienced psychologists who pinpoint the origins of harm – in all its forms – and provide the expertise needed to help put a stop to it.

Third barrier: It is not enough to identify psychosocial risks – we need to control them

Following on from the second barrier, many organisations have become much better at identifying psychosocial risks, but far fewer are confident when it comes to controlling them. In Schuller’s (2019) research paper, she conducted interviews with those in charge of psychosocial risk assessments across 41 different businesses. One of the key findings from these interviews was that a significant amount of effort was found to be placed on naming the problem (i.e., identification), but much less on systematically addressing it (i.e., intervention).

This pattern is something we see frequently across workplaces in Aotearoa New Zealand. Psychosocial risk assessments, engagement surveys, or consultation processes are completed, risks are documented on a spreadsheet, and maybe some reports are made. Yet, meaningful change to how work is fundamentally designed or managed does not always follow. In some cases, the identification phase becomes the endpoint, rather than the starting point for action.

Organisations may hesitate to move into controlling their top reported psychosocial risks because solutions might feel complex and resource-intensive – often falling in the “too-hard” basket. Reflecting the very title of Schuller’s (2019) article, “Interventions as the centrepiece of psychosocial risk assessment”, there is an increasing need for organisations to embed interventions and controls as a core part of their psychosocial risk approach. This means deliberately focusing on how work is designed, managed and supported. This is also where many organisations might benefit from specialist support. Sam knows he’s got too much to do, maybe his boss knows that too, but how to build better systems just feels beyond them.

At Umbrella, our team of clinical and organisational psychologists and researchers work with organisations to translate identified psychosocial risks into practical, fit-for-purpose control measures to eliminate and/or mitigate risk of harm to your people. Visit ourStrategy webpage to learn more about our consulting services and psychosocial risk assessments.

Psychosocial risks are “wicked problems” with no easy fix.

They are complex, interconnected, and rarely solved by a single policy or initiative. The complexity and varied barriers can sometimes deter organisations from addressing their most critical risks – especially when it feels like opening Pandora’s box.