Well-being and Wellness: Psychosocial Risk Management

Book excerpt: Well-being and Wellness: Psychosocial Risk Management is a companion to Health and Safety: Risk Management that describes the techniques and background knowledge for preventing injury and ill health in the workplace. The new book instead describes the techniques and background knowledge for preventing impairment of worker well-being and wellness. These techniques differ from those required for the prevention of injury and ill health because of the need to take into account individual differences in susceptibility to psychosocial risk sources, and the fact that psychosocial risk sources can provide opportunities as well as threats. The book is divided into two parts: Part I describes the required background knowledge, including the nature of psychosocial harms to individuals, what can trigger these harms, and what can be done to mitigate these harms, and also deals with the necessary psychological background and the role of individual differences in reactions to psychosocial risk sources. Part II describes an outline psychosocial management system based on the ISO 45001 specification and the guidance in ISO 45002 and ISO 45003. However, the nature of the psychosocial risk sources being dealt with means that the ISO 45001 requirements must be extended in a number of ways, for example, by having threat and opportunity assessment, rather than risk assessment. Written primarily for OH&S professionals who wish to extend the scope of their management system to include well-being and wellness issues, the book is also directly beneficial to human resources (HR) professionals who have the responsibility for managing psychosocial hazards such as bullying and harassment. Additionally, it can be understood and applied by managers in all sectors who want to improve the well-being and wellness of their team, and it will be a relevant reading for students on OH&S, HR, or management courses.