For workplaces to truly thrive, we need to stop viewing psychosocial safety as a pure compliance point and start to see it as a strategic imperative for business success. Here’s how. 

In the latest episode of AHRI’s podcast, Let’s Take This Offline, host Tani Jacobi CPHR speaks with Tanya Heaney-Voogt, a mentally healthy workplaces expert, on embracing psychosocial safety as a strategic imperative. 

Heaney-Voogt shares how HR practitioners can influence and enable organisations to create environments where employees feel supported, engaged and safe to speak up.

Listeners will gain practical advice on demystifying complex psychosocial concepts, fostering open dialogue and adopting sustainable work design practices. 

By focusing on long-term cultural and behavioral change, HR practitioners can better support leaders, balance performance pressures and enhance both people and business outcomes.

Below is a snippet of their conversation, edited for clarity. You can listen to the full episode here:

Moving beyond compliance

Tani Jacobi CPHR: Psychosocial safety has been around implicitly or explicitly for some time, but it’s become a central focus more recently. From your perspective, what’s driven this heightened attention?

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: Certainly the legislative push and the release of new codes of practice have raised the profile. Insurers, regulators and advocacy groups are talking more openly about psychosocial hazards and their management. It’s not that the obligations are new – these have existed for quite a while – but we’re finally having transparent conversations. 

With codes of practice now readily available and well-promoted, businesses have greater clarity on what their responsibilities are. This has created an environment where compliance is just the starting point, and we can have more meaningful discussions about prevention and wellbeing.

Tani Jacobi CPHR: I know many of our listeners will be well versed in psychosocial safety, but not everyone will be. Can you share what some of the common risk factors are?

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: The psychosocial risks that are most prolific – and it differs depending on industry – are job demands, particularly, in relation to the volume of work, the timelines you have to complete your work and the mental, emotional and physical intensity of the work. Conflict and poor leadership support are another common risk.

One that I think is quite unrecognised for the large impact it can have, is role clarity. We often think it’s about job descriptions, but there’s so much more to it. Role clarity can concern competing or changing tasks, expectations or priorities. It can even extend to your scope of decision making. So, who do I escalate things to? 

A lack of role clarity could also lead to role conflict, in cases where there’s contradictory information from one manager to another manager, or, ambiguity around the ownership of particular tasks in a project. So, there are a couple hidden risks which have always existed, but we’re not really talking about them in a similar manner to the more easily recognisable risks. 

“We need to shift into a transformational space where organisations understand the root causes of psychosocial hazards.” – Tanya Heena Voogt

Tani Jacobi CPHR: Many HR teams feel pressured to focus on compliance – ticking the box with training or policies. How can they move towards more transformational outcomes?

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: It’s about going beyond trivial or transactional efforts. Trivial approaches, like fruit bowls or one-off wellbeing sessions are well-intentioned but don’t create systemic change. Transactional steps, such as mandatory training, tend to be tick-and-flick exercises rather than embedding new behaviors. 

We need to shift into a transformational space where organisations understand the root causes of psychosocial hazards. That means looking at things like workload, role clarity or leadership support and making sustainable changes that reduce harm. Instead of reacting, we ask: What do we know about our workplace factors, and how can we address them at their source?

The ownership of behavioural change extends beyond HR

Tani Jacobi CPHR: There’s a wonderful opportunity to make these decisions together with our stakeholders. Rather than delegating the onus to leaders, we can, as a collective team, ask how we want to approach psychosocial safety. What are your thoughts on the accountabilities and division of ownership for this process? 

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: One of the biggest risks is that we devolve this responsibility to leaders, particularly middle managers, without establishing the appropriate systems.

I’ve seen a transactional approach at the executive level, where middle managers have been tasked with completely implementing risk management plans. This is a group that is already one of our highest stressed and burned out cohorts. What we do is sandwich them further. They don’t fully understand what they need to do. And these plans don’t get traction or enact meaningful change.

So, there’s a role for HR in managing the change aspect and understanding that this is a long-run, not short-run, process. 

Reaping the rewards of psychosocial safety requires genuine listening

Tani Jacobi CPHR: How can leaders and HR practitioners work together to identify and address psychosocial hazards in a meaningful way?

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: It requires open dialogue and psychological safety. 

If people don’t feel safe speaking up about their workload or role conflicts, it’s very hard to pinpoint and mitigate these issues. Leaders need to develop trust by holding regular one-on-ones, asking the right questions and genuinely listening. 

HR can provide the frameworks, tools and education –  such as equipping middle managers with a structured template for team wellbeing check-in’s or offering guidance on how to have these conversations. Collaboration across work, health and safety, HR, learning and development and other areas ensures a more holistic approach.

Tani Jacobi CPHR: If organisations do this well, what’s the ultimate payoff?

Tanya Heaney-Voogt: Beyond meeting legislative requirements, we see improved engagement, retention and productivity. When people feel safe and supported, they perform at their best. 

Reducing psychosocial risks not only minimises claims and absenteeism, but also drives better business outcomes. Ultimately, moving beyond compliance allows HR to play a strategic role in building a culture where everyone can thrive.

This is an edited excerpt from an episode of Let’s Take This Offline. Listen to the full episode here and subscribe to ensure you never miss a future episode.