A new University of South Australia study has looked at the concept of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and its role in workplace and organizational resilience.
According to the study, psychosocial safety climate is ‘a positive system level factor that reflects how the organization values and prioritises the psychological health (humanity) of its employees’. PSC is defined as employee “shared perceptions of policies, practices and procedures for worker psychological health and safety” (Dollard et al., 2019).
The study explains that:
PSC reflects the organizational safety system within which to manage psychosocial risks to worker psychological health and covers four domains:
- Senior management commitment to stress prevention,
- Senior management priority for employee psychological health over productivity imperatives,
- Organizational communication about factors that affect employee psychological health, and
- Organizational participation and consultation with all stakeholders about work health and safety issues that affect psychological health.
Research for the study compared working conditions in 100 Australian organizations to 12,000 injured workers’ compensation claims, identifying the root cause of delays in people returning to work after workplace-related injury or illness. Organizations with a poor psychosocial safety climate reported 160% more days off due to workplace injury or illness, compared to high PSC organizations (177 days vs 68 days).
Likewise, costs for the injury or illness were 104% greater in very low psychosocial safety climate organizations versus high PSC organizations ($67,260 vs $32,939 per employee).
Our findings show that a healthy psychological safety climate in workplaces is essential if companies want to reduce working time loss and costs related to workplace injuries and illnesses.
UniSA ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Maureen Dollard
