While employee surveys can be a useful tool to identify health and safety hazards, acting on survey findings necessitates a considered and well-rounded approach.

Employee surveys, also known as pulse or culture surveys, can often serve as an early warning system for employers. They reveal work health and safety risks that an employer may not otherwise know about before it’s too late. 

Conducted anonymously, and often by an external organisation, these surveys can uncover a range of issues, from physical safety hazards due to inadequate equipment, to intangible hazards like the psychological impact of high workloads or systemic discrimination and bullying.

While a physical safety hazard that is called out in survey results, such as lack of PPE or dangerous plants or equipment, may be quickly and easily mitigated, psychosocial safety hazards can be harder to address. 

This article offers a practical guide for employers on what to do when employee pulse or culture surveys results indicate psychosocial work health and safety risks in their workplace.  

Australian employer obligations around psychosocial risks

Ensuring the safety and wellbeing of employees is a critical priority for employers. The Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Cth) (WHS Act) and various state and territory laws lay down a robust framework requiring employers (broadly defined in the legislation as “person(s) conducting a business or undertaking”) to ensure a safe working environment for their employees. 

Employers are required to eliminate risks to the health and safety of workers as far as is reasonably practicable. If elimination is not reasonably practicable, employers must minimise those risks as far as is reasonably practicable. 

“Health” is defined as both physical and psychological health, meaning that as part of its primary duty, an employer must manage risks to a worker’s psychological health as far as is reasonably practicable. Some states and territories also now have regulations expressly requiring psychosocial hazards be eliminated or minimised. 

Psychosocial hazards refer to aspects of work and workplace situations that may give rise to a risk of physiological harm caused by the associated stress response. For example: 

• bullying, sexual harassment, and poor workplace relationships 
• high or low job demand and low on-the-job support 
• low job clarity or control, or lack of recognition and reward 
• poor systems of organisational change management, and organisational justice (where policies/decisions are applied unfairly or unequally)
• poor environmental conditions, and remote or isolated work. 

Employers also have obligations under the Sex Discrimination Act 1984 (Cth) and the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) to prevent the psychosocial hazards of sexual harassment and bullying from occurring. Employers can also be vicariously or accessorily liable for sexual harassment and bullying occurring. 

Assessing employee surveys to identify hazards 

Employers must scrutinise survey results for indicators of psychosocial risks. 

Some surveys will directly – but anonymously – allow employees to report disrespectful or toxic behaviour, bullying or sexual harassment. Depending on the structure of the survey, this can be through free-text responses, or targeted agree/disagree statements such as, “I have not experienced bullying or harassment at work” or, “I have witnessed or been subject to conduct of a sexual nature in the workplace”. 

Answers which indicate that the workplace is not free of bullying or harassment will put an employer on notice of a possible hazard that it must address.  

Other indicators of latent, unaddressed psychosocial hazards can be identified via poor scores in response to questions such as: 

• “I am confident I can report issues to my manager, and they will take them seriously.” (May possibly indicate poor organisational justice and possible unreported behavioural, bullying or harassment issues.)
• “I understand how decisions are made about my role and my career progression.” (May possibly indicate low job control, clarity or lack of reward and recognition.) 
• “I think the organisation holds people accountable for their unsatisfactory behaviour and actions.” (May possibly indicate unreported behaviour, bullying or harassment issues.) 
• “My manager allows and encourages me to make decisions and take responsibility for my work.” (May indicate low job control, low job demand and poor workplace relationships.) 

Acting on findings from employee surveys

Results from employee surveys that indicate a psychosocial safety hazard mean that an employer is on notice of possible safety risks. It must then take steps to apply the WHS risk assessment framework. Once a risk is identified, it must be assessed and controlled with measures to mitigate the risk. 

To properly identify and assess the risk, it is particularly important to be able to drill down into department, division, location or manager-level results. Where an employer can do so, it can use the survey results to decide on next steps, and assess and control identified risks more effectively. 

If not, a follow-up survey may be the first step, with more targeted questions and increased ability to filter results and determine areas of the business where psychosocial hazards are an issue.

Otherwise, depending on the scope and nature of the issue, and the extent to which results can be filtered to narrow in on where a problem may exist, we recommend the following identification and assessment measures: 

• HR meets with line managers or supervisors in an identified division or work group to discuss the survey results. HR representatives should be prepared to ask managers specific questions and may need to have hard conversations with managers about why the results are poor. These meetings should be followed up to ensure that managers are taking necessary action as required. 
• Additional monitoring by HR of an identified division or team, including arranging catch ups with members of the team to discuss wellbeing and experiences. 
• Engage experts to conduct wellbeing interviews with members of a team with poor survey results, to gather more specific information about concerns in that team.  
• Engage experts to conduct a culture review investigation by interviewing people throughout the organisation or selected teams to gather information about culture, leadership, organisational justice and misconduct management. 
• Review the practical impact of organisational policies and practices such as performance review processes, grievance handling procedures, remuneration and recognition.  
• Establish employee culture consultation committees or working groups to provide and collate information about psychosocial risks across business units and to provide specific and real-time feedback about how to address issues.   
• Review and promote the organisation’s grievance procedures and reporting mechanisms, including giving assurances about encouraging a “speak up” culture and having a no-tolerance approach to victimisation. 
• Introduce “contact officers” or “go-to” people for workers to report issues outside of the human resources and leadership teams. 
• Roll out training for line managers and supervisors on topics such as leadership, respectful behaviour, psychosocial safety, workload and capacity management and handling complaints. 

Understanding legal professional privilege 

When investigations, culture reviews, wellbeing interviews or other information gathering is conducted, we recommend seeking legal advice and, if possible, having external counsel conduct or engage culture reviews. This will ensure, as far as possible, that any findings about current psychosocial hazards in the workplace are covered by legal professional privilege* and legal risks can be mitigated confidentiality and effectively. 

In our experience, employers that take these steps following any concerning pulse survey results will be demonstrating compliance with their work health and safety duties. By acting on the early warning signs contained in survey results, employers can more effectively mitigate the risks associated with psychosocial hazards. The practical benefit of this, as well as being legally compliant, is a healthier, safer and more productive workforce, with higher retention rates and a reputation as a great place to work. 

*Legal professional privilege protects confidential communications and confidential documents between a lawyer and the client where they have been made for the dominant purpose of the lawyer providing legal advice or professional legal services to the client (or for use in current or anticipated litigation).

Aaron Goonrey is a Partner and leads the Australian and APAC Employment & Rewards practice at Pinsent Masons. Emma Lutwyche is a Special Counsel and Yuliya Chis is an Associate at Pinsent Masons. The advice in this article is general in nature and does not constitute formal legal advice.