Work is a significant factor in people’s mental health.
We know that meaningful, rewarding, good work can impact positively on our mental health. Equally we know that issues such as high workloads, customer and client aggression and poor workplace relationships can adversely impact on workers’ mental health.
Just like physical health and safety hazards (such as slippery surfaces, dangerous and unguarded machinery and badly set-up work stations), there are also workplace mental health hazards (such as high workloads, isolated work and poor role clarity). These are known as psychosocial hazards.
Mind Your Head (MYH) is a campaign by the Australian Council of Trade Unions. It brings employers, workers, unions, insurers and academics together to improve workplace mental health to prevent injury before it occurs.
Mind Your Head aims to:
- Raise the priority of mental health and safety to sit equal to treatment of physical health and safety
- Educate and develop workers, HSRs, managers and leaders to understand work-related mental health risk factors and the relationship with WHS
- Design tools and resources for workplaces to create mentally safe systems of work
- Facilitate engagement with workers, HSRs, managers and leaders to work together to create mentally healthy work
- Review and analyse the interventions to determine best practice and create a community that learns from each other.
Background
The Mind Your Head campaign has several elements. Initially a workplace program piloted in Victoria, supported by Employers Mutual Limited and WorkSafe’s WorkWell Mental Health Program, and was completed in 2023.
This pilot saw a Comprehensive Workplace Program completed at a number of participating worksites, which established their baseline psychosocial safety score (via worker surveys) and implemented a number of systems and strategies to improve it – you can read more about this here. This program is now in it’s early stages in other jurisdictions.
Through this pilot, comprehensive education, trainings, tools and resources were developed. These have since been refined and further developed into specific trainings and tools for Health and Safety Representatives (HSRs), worker representatives (such as union delegates and officials), workers themselves and their employers. By up-skilling as many people as possible in this manner, Mind Your Head hopes to have further reach and greater impact.
- Via our Resources, workers can access our National Guidance Material and other tools and resources.
- Health and Safety Reps and union affiliates can also can access our Psychosocial Community or Practice, which provides tools developed through the MYH workplace program. This includes surveys, action planning templates, step-by-step guidance and implementation strategies to help with the identification and management of psychosocial hazards in your workplace.
The Problem
Workplace mental health hazards (psychosocial hazards) injure thousands of workers each; with psychosocial injury claims are currently the fastest growing claim in Australia, (costing the economy upwards of 40 billion per year).
Like physical hazards, psychosocial hazards often fly under the radar with most hazards and most injuries not being properly identified or reported.
Most people do not understand what a psychosocial hazard is, let alone how to identify and manage these, yet most workers don’t feel enough is being done to address workplace mental health hazards.
Unlike physical hazards, employers find it difficult to identify workplace mental health hazards and put systems and practices in place to address them.
Mental health hazards can have a major impact on individuals, but they also affect everyone in the workplace through high staff turnover, reduced productivity and of course, an increase in workers’ compensation claims.
The Solution
Having a mentally healthy workplace means having the right knowledge, tools and resources to identify and address workplace mental health risks before they become a hazard. Mind Your Head is helping workplaces improve their workplace mental health systems and practices by providing systems for workplaces and a suites of resources that workers, unions and organisations can use to identify and eliminate psychosocial hazards in their workplace.
Sign up to get access to Mind Your Head tools and resources to help improve your workplace’s mental health systems and practices, as well as ongoing updates about workplace mental health and the program.
Mind Your Head is an initiative between the Australian Council of Trade Unions, supported by Employers Mutual Limited.
The Australian Council of Trade Unions is the peak body for Australian unions, made up of affiliated unions who together represent almost two million workers.
Employer Mutual Limited is one of Australia’s oldest personal injury insurers and is dedicated to creating safer workplaces and achieving better return to work outcomes.