Role of managers in supporting occupational health and safety
A healthy and safe workplace has managers who prioritise their employees’ wellbeing and take steps to prevent psychological harm.
Managers have additional occupational health and safety (OHS) obligations under the Codes of conduct and the Public Administration Act 2004.
If you’re a manager, your role may include:
- providing a safe, encouraging and supportive work environment
- promoting safe work practices and understanding how the workplace operates
- inducting employees and doing safety briefings
- communicating policies and procedures with employees
- ensuring employees have the appropriate training to do their jobs safely
- identifying, managing or escalating OHS risks.
Preventing work-related harm and mental health injuries
Managers play a key role in creating a mentally healthy or unhealthy workplace.
For example, supportive leadership can positively impact the performance of a team.
Being a supportive leader means your team:
- has a sense of your leadership style when you interact with them.
- may feel encouraged to reach out to you when they need help.
As a manager, you should regularly bring your team together to talk openly and share information to build your team’s culture.
Some simple things managers can do to build a positive workplace culture are:
- discuss the public sector values and codes of conduct with the team
- promote education and awareness about mental health needs
- look out for signs of distress and offer timely support when needed
- monitor and manage psychosocial hazards (including workload and time pressure) of each team member to prevent burnout or stress
- give each team member a chance to showcase their work and give constructive feedback
- hold different types of meetings so they’re not always formal
- embed open and transparent communication as a norm
- give feedback as a group and not just on an individual level
- schedule regular one-on-one conversations with team members to discuss their work and wellbeing.
Resources you can use:
- Wellbeing toolkit– tips, tools and activities to support team wellbeing, VPSC.
- Leading in the public sector– develop your skills as a manager or leader, VPSC.
- WorkWell: Mental health resources for workplace leaders, WorkSafe Victoria.
As a manager or senior leader, you look after both your own wellbeing and the wellbeing of your team.
Good mental and physical health means you will be more alert, motivated, attentive and resilient. These are all qualities a manager needs every day.
In your role, you may face a lot of challenging situations.
If your physical and mental health is in good shape, you will be able to manage these better. This also has a positive impact on your team.
The wellbeing toolkit
As a manager or senior leader, never forget that you can ask for help too.
You can use our Wellbeing toolkit for practical tips, tools and activities for you and your team.
Speak with your own manager or HR if you need support.
Individual activities and organisational supports can help your mental wellbeing. Here are just a few tools and approaches to try:
- get help from your manager or access your organisation’s employee assistance program, which may be called EAP
- identify what has a negative impact on your wellbeing and what you can do to improve it
- schedule time in your calendar each week to do something that helps your wellbeing
- speak with another manager about how they support their wellbeing
- talk with your GP or healthcare provider for help.
As a manager, you play a key role in identifying signs of distress in your employees.
When your employees feel safe, they’re more likely to speak up when something is wrong.
The warning signs of distress are different for everyone. If you notice a change in a team member, you should address it early.
It’s not your responsibility to diagnose or counsel an employee. But you should offer support and make any reasonable adjustments they need to continue to work.
For example, you can follow these steps from our Wellbeing Toolkit:
- Plan your conversation and prepare before you speak about any issues.
- Don’t ask for all the details right away. Be slow and gentle.
- Practice active listening or hold space for them if they’re not ready to talk. Focus on what they’re saying and show empathy.
- Help them explore their options and focus on things that are in your or their control.
- If you don’t think you can deal with the issue on your own, you should offer other support options.
Resources you can use:
- Mental health conversations for people leaders, Innovation Network
- How to talk to someone about their wellbeing, VPSC Wellbeing Toolkit
- Managing distress, VPSC Wellbeing toolkit
- Mental Health First Aid Guidelines, Mental Health First Aid international.
Managing psychosocial hazards as a manager or senior leader
Managers and senior leaders have more influence and responsibility in preventing, identifying and managing psychosocial hazards.
As a manager or senior leader, you should use a risk management approach to address psychosocial hazards that could cause harm or injury.
Risk management involves thinking about what could happen and how likely it is to happen.
At each step of the risk management process, you must consult employees and your health and safety representatives.
For practical guidance and best practice advice on managing health and safety risks you can check out the:
- WorkWell Toolkit, WorkSafe Victoria
- Model Code of Practice: How to manage work health and safety risks, Safe Work Australia.
Risk control measures for job demands should focus on good work design, including job design. Good work design considers the organisation’s needs, context and work environment.
Good work design can transform the workplace to benefit everyone. Good work design can eliminate and minimise hazards and risks at the source.
You can use these resources to help you understand and design good and safe work:
- Good work design, Safe Work Australia
- Safe design: safety basics, WorkSafe Victoria
You can use these resources to help you understand, reduce and manage job demands:
- WorkWell Toolkit: High and low job demands, WorkSafe Victoria.
Negative behaviours can include a range of poor communication and behaviour issues that are inappropriate. They can have an immediate and long-term negative impact on those involved, including those who witness them.
Negative behaviours can include:
- hostility or aggressiveness
- bullying
- work-related violence, including gendered violence.
In Victoria, employers are obligated to take reasonable steps to eliminate certain negative behaviours under the Equal Opportunity Act 2010. These include:
Discrimination
Treating someone unfavourably because of a protected characteristic such as race, gender, age, disability, sexual orientation, religion or other personal attributes. This can occur in various forms and can be direct or indirect.
Sexual harassment
Unwanted or unwelcome sexual behaviour that makes a person feel offended, humiliated or intimidated. This includes verbal, non-verbal and physical conduct of a sexual nature.
Victimisation
Treating someone unfairly because they have made a complaint, intend to make a complaint, or have assisted someone else in making a complaint about discrimination or harassment.
You can use these resources to help you understand, prevent and manage negative behaviours:
- Managing negative behaviours, VPSC resources to help manage bullying, harassment or conflict in the workplace
- Preventing and responding to work-related gendered violence including sexual harassment, WorkSafe Victoria
- Workplace bullying, WorkSafe Victoria.
Trauma is an event that someone experiences as harmful or life-threatening.
It can negatively affect mental, physical, emotional, social, or spiritual well-being.
Trauma is usually a response to an incident or event, but it can also come from:
- Cumulative trauma – trauma that repeatedly occurs over time can have a cumulative impact.
- Vicarious trauma – trauma that can occur after exposure to someone else’s trauma.
These resources can help you understand, reduce and manage trauma:
- Cumulative trauma framework, Public Sector Interdepartmental Committee and the FBG Group
- Vicarious Trauma Prevention and Awareness Toolkit, Community Public Sector Union
- WorkWell toolkit: exposure to traumatic events, WorkSafe Victoria
- Vicarious Trauma Institute resources.
Risk management process
As a manager, a risk management approach can help you understand:
- the source of hazards
- its potential to cause harm to your employees and
- actions you can take to address risks
The four steps for dealing with an issue are:
- Step 1: Identify hazards
- Step 2: Assess the risk
- Step 3: Control the risk
- Step 4: Monitor, review and improve
Early identification of issues can help your team meet their goals and maintain a safe and healthy team environment.
Here’s some things you can do to help identify if there are psychosocial hazards in your team:
- Talk regularly with your team: You can do this by doing regular team check ins and encouraging your team to proactively raise issues. Your team might talk about hazards in different ways. For example, they may say they feel burnt out, worried or unmotivated. They may raise concerns about workload, role clarity or interpersonal conflict.
- Recognise and respond to early warning signs: Look out for changes in behaviour. For example, employees rushing or making a lot of mistakes may indicate job demands are too high.
- Review available data and information: For example, your People Matter Survey data or equivalent staff survey data for your work area may provide insight into hazards. You can also look at incident reports, time off and rates of overtime.
- Identify if any other psychosocial hazards are present and consider them together: Hazards can interact and combine to create higher risks. For example, high job demands can create a higher risk if employees don’t have good role clarity or there is inter-personal conflict or poor working relationships.
Once you’ve identified hazards in your team, assessing the risk to employees will help you understand what action to take.
Some things to think about are:
- Are the hazards occurring in isolation or together
- Who is being affected or likely to be affected?
- How serious is the risk to people’s mental and physical health? You could consider how often and for how long employees are exposed to hazards.
You can use a risk assessment tool and/or matrix to support this process. This will help you understand the potential impact of risks. For example:
- Low risks are unlikely to happen and have low impact.
- High risks are likely to happen and will have a moderate to high impact.
Once you understand the risk, it is important to act.
This is also called controlling a risk. A control means a way to manage an issue, or the things that you put in place to eliminate or reduce risks.
Some controls work better than others. The hierarchy of control is a system that helps you figure out which controls offer the best and most reliable protection, and which ones offer the least protection.
OHS Hierarchy of control Definition How effective is it? 1. Eliminate hazards and risks Remove the hazard from the workplace Eliminating the hazard and the risk provides the highest level of protection and is the most effective control measure. 2. Substitution Replace a hazard with something safer The hazard is still present but the risk is reduced by substituting it with something safer. 3. Engineering controls Isolate people from the hazard The hazard is still present but people are physically separated from it. 4. Administrative controls Change how people work to reduce exposure to the hazard This control is less effective as it relies on people following rules and procedures. 5. Personal protective equipment (PPE) Anything employees use or wear to minimise risks to their health and safety PPE is the last line of defence. It provides the lowest level of protection and is the least reliable control. Example of the hierarchy of control measures for work-related stress:
- Elimination – try to prevent or remove the hazard or stressor completely. For example, using Good work design principles to protect workers from harm to their health and safety.
- Substitution – if you can’t eliminate the hazard, replace it with something less stressful. For example, rotate tasks among employees to prevent burnout.
- Isolation – separate the employee from the source of stress. For example, re-assign them to another project or team.
- Engineering controls – make physical changes to the work environment to reduce stress. For example, offer stand-up desks or improve the office layout to reduce noise and distractions.
- Administrative controls – change work methods, procedures or how work is done to minimise stress. For example, offer flexible work arrangements and access to Employee Assistance Programs (EAP).
- Personal protective equipment (PPE) – provide safety resources or equipment to minimise risks. PPE helps manage stress caused by exposure to physical hazards that may cause concern or distress. For example, providing protective equipment to an employee responding to an emergency.
Continue to monitor and review your risk management strategies and any controls you have put in place to check their effectiveness.
Remember risks often fluctuate over time. You can
- Keep an eye on work priorities and tasks
- Keep checking in with your team about risks and how current actions are working
- Consider whether current actions are adequate, or if you need to take further action
What to do if the issue is beyond your control
Sometimes addressing psychosocial risks is beyond your control. In this scenario, you should report harmful risks.
You can:
- Report risks to your manager, your health and safety team and through your organisation’s incident and reporting system or equivalent.
- Clearly identify and describe the type of demand, the source, risks arising and the impact on your team and make any practical suggestions for control measures.
- Keep your team informed of the actions you take and management’s response.
Mental health injury management, recovery and return to work
If someone in your team or workplace sustains an injury, you can follow these key steps:
- Help your employee to find appropriate professional help or medical treatment.
- Check the criteria for notifiable incidents and report it to WorkSafe immediately if obligated to do so.
- Follow your organisation’s reporting policies and procedures to make sure there is a record of the incident and injury.
- Provide your employee with relevant support, recovery and return to work information.
Visit WorkSafe website for a guide on what to do if a worker is injured. The guide has information on:
- what you need to do immediately
- what to do after a compensation claim is made
- how claims are assessed
- how to support an injured worker to return to work
- frequently asked questions.
You can find more information in the Workplace Injury Rehabilitation and Compensation Act 2013. The Act has information for Victorian workers on insurance, workers compensation, claims, rehabilitation and more.
Research shows that managers have the most influence in supporting a successful return to work.
The support you give someone should be tailored to their individual circumstances and needs.
The Victorian Mentally Healthy Workplaces Framework has a guide for supporting the recovery-at-work and return-to-work of an employee.
The same principles apply to people returning from work-related and non-work-related absences like parental, personal or study leave.
The guide includes:
- important information
- a checklist for small to large organisations
- a checklist for sole traders
- additional tips and practical steps.
When planning your approach, you should reflect on your relationship with your employee.
For example, if you and your team member have issues communicating, offer an alternative contact person they feel more comfortable talking to.
Key things to keep in mind:
- Work with your employee to schedule time to check in with them while they’re away.
- Respect the privacy and confidentiality of your team member at all times.
- Consider how someone’s absence will impact the rest of the team.
- Work with people that specialise in return to work. This may include the treatment team, case manager and return-to-work coordinator.
- Plan and prepare for your team member’s return.
- Remember that recovery and return to work isn’t always linear. For example, if someone has an ongoing mental injury, they may need long-term support.
- Make adjustments to support your employee to return to work. For example, flexible work or reallocation of work.
- Check-in regularly to see how your team member is doing.
Resources you can use
- Legal obligations for supporting staff to return to work, WorkSafe Victoria
- Policy and procedures for supporting staff to return to work, WorkSafe Victoria
- Guide for supporting the recovery-at-work and return-to-work of an employee, Victorian Government
Reviewed 27 December 2024
Published 27 December 2024