Psychosocial risk: transformation barrier or opportunity?

If ever there was a need for trans­for­ma­tion it is now. Busi­ness mod­els are bro­ken, mar­kets have melt­ed away, many organ­i­sa­tions stand on the brink. McK­in­sey has dubbed 2021: the year of tran­si­tion. But it feels like a tough ask. Indi­vid­u­als’ capac­i­ty for yet more change appears to be at an all-time low.

If things are not easy now, they could soon get even hard­er. Arriv­ing this sum­mer is a new set of guide­lines boss­es will have to get their heads around in the form of ISO 45003. For the first time, this new sub­set of pre­vi­ous­ly broad­er health and safe­ty mea­sures intro­duces the con­cept of psy­choso­cial risk. 

This is the antic­i­pat­ed psy­cho­log­i­cal impact that staff could face from the very way work is organ­ised for them, from the design of people’s jobs to the work­loads they have or the stress it puts peo­ple under. 

But giv­en trans­for­ma­tion involves rou­tines being uproot­ed, it is leav­ing busi­ness lead­ers  with con­cerns about whether firms can real­ly both pro­tect employ­ees’ psy­cho­log­i­cal well­be­ing and do what is need­ed to sur­vive.

“The whole point of trans­for­ma­tion is that it is delib­er­ate­ly about break­ing from the norm,” argues Carsten Linz, author of Rad­i­cal Busi­ness Mod­el Trans­for­ma­tion. “This nec­es­sar­i­ly cre­ates huge psy­cho­log­i­cal strain.” 

Lynne Hard­man, chief exec­u­tive of organ­i­sa­tion­al change con­sul­tan­cy Work­ing Tran­si­tions, adds: “It’s hard for trans­for­ma­tion to occur with­out dis­com­fort or with­out stretch­ing peo­ple beyond their com­fort zones. Firms can’t trans­form with­out their peo­ple being put under some sort of stress.” 

So is this a trans­for­ma­tion bar­ri­er too far? “Trans­for­ma­tion is an event, but it’s also a very indi­vid­ual process that every­one goes through dif­fer­ent­ly,” says Hard­man. “I do have sym­pa­thy with the view of the British Psy­cho­log­i­cal Soci­ety that man­agers could soon be forced into becom­ing psy­chol­o­gists to gauge each and everyone’s poten­tial psy­cho­log­i­cal impact of a change process.

“This is so per­son­al too. As we all know, what is seen as pres­sure by some is excite­ment for oth­ers. Also the ele­ments that impact men­tal well­ness aren’t just job-relat­ed, but are much broad­er.” 

How­ev­er, psy­cho­log­i­cal injury is final­ly being tak­en seri­ous­ly and must be ful­ly under­stood dur­ing the trans­for­ma­tion process. Dr Rebec­ca Holt, clin­i­cal psy­chol­o­gist at Work­ing Mind­set, says: “Fun­da­men­tal­ly, if peo­ple don’t feel psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly safe, trans­for­ma­tion fails any­way. It’s how busi­ness­es man­age con­cerns and vul­ner­a­bil­i­ties about trans­for­ma­tion that mat­ter and, if ISO 45003 builds this into trans­for­ma­tion, it has to be a good thing.” 

“Sim­ple frame­works for hav­ing these sorts of con­ver­sa­tions shouldn’t be such a stretch for lead­ers,” she says.

Hav­ing to assess job func­tions or skill changes in terms of psy­cho­log­i­cal harm is a rad­i­cal depar­ture from the hard­er view that says those who can’t cope with trans­for­ma­tion should just be left to exit the busi­ness of their own accord and leave things to those who can. 

But Emma Robert­son, chief exec­u­tive of Engine Trans­for­ma­tion, which helps the likes of E.ON, San­tander, P&O, eBay and Tesco with their trans­for­ma­tions, argues that trans­for­ma­tions should be linked, and dialled back if nec­es­sary, to employ­ees’ assessed propen­si­ty to suc­cess­ful­ly deal with it.

“The view that peo­ple should ‘fit in’ with change needs to be flipped around to being how the organ­i­sa­tion can change with and around their peo­ple. Trans­for­ma­tion goes wrong when peo­ple are told they have to change, but they’re not equipped for it,” she says.

“Many lead­ers cer­tain­ly lack an abil­i­ty to take their peo­ple on trans­for­ma­tion jour­neys,” James Her­bert, chief exec­u­tive of busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion con­sul­tan­cy Foundry4, con­cedes. “Pain typ­i­cal­ly hap­pens when busi­ness aspi­ra­tions don’t take into account cur­rent mind­sets.

“So if change can be couched from a men­tal health point of view a bit more, there are pos­i­tives to be had. What real­ly stress­es peo­ple out is a feel­ing of the loss of con­trol that trans­for­ma­tion brings. 

“When you think about it, it’s entire­ly sen­si­ble to scope out how roles might change and what allowances peo­ple should get dur­ing a trans­for­ma­tion process.”

So are we all going to start see­ing more wide­spread talk of psy­choso­cial risk? Maybe not overnight, but men­tal health is undoubt­ed­ly on the board­room table and here to say. 

Accord­ing to the British Stan­dards Insti­tu­tion, any new com­pa­ny want­i­ng ISO 45001 accred­i­ta­tion, the cur­rent stan­dard for more gen­er­al health and safe­ty man­age­ment, will now have to prove they have sys­tems in place to mit­i­gate psy­cho­log­i­cal ill-health caused by the way they organ­ise work. 

And at one organ­i­sa­tion, lux­u­ry retire­ment vil­lage provider Aud­ley Group, group health and safe­ty man­ag­er Ian Maxwell already has his eye on it. “In the con­text of occu­pa­tion­al health and well­be­ing, tran­si­tion­ing to ISO 45003 will be about encom­pass­ing and tak­ing account of psy­cho­log­i­cal health and men­tal health. I do feel it forces com­pa­nies to take a new stance on well­be­ing and take a more inte­grat­ed approach,” he says.  

Like many, though, Maxwell does wor­ry that psy­choso­cial health is new ter­ri­to­ry in terms of organ­i­sa­tion­al change. He says assess­ing for psy­choso­cial risk “will require spe­cial­ist or addi­tion­al pro­fes­sion­al help”. But what does seem clear is, if this is the first time the phrase “psy­cho­log­i­cal risk” has been heard by many busi­ness lead­ers, it won’t be the last.

“ISO 45003 will no doubt land in organ­i­sa­tions with a rolling of the eyes, even with­in human resources depart­ments,” says Stu­art Duff, head of devel­op­ment at work­place psy­chol­o­gy con­sul­tan­cy at Pearn Kan­dola. “Most leg­is­la­tion that sup­ports employ­ees’ health and well­be­ing receives the same response: more bureau­cra­cy. But right now, we all need to take more time to under­stand the men­tal health of employ­ees and how indi­vid­u­als man­age pres­sure.”

Her­bert at Foundry4 con­cludes: “Man­agers aren’t psy­chol­o­gists, but by the same token busi­ness trans­for­ma­tion requires peo­ple to come on the jour­ney too. If the stan­dard helps bring about focus on how change impacts peo­ple, and their abil­i­ty to trans­form with the busi­ness, it can’t be a bad thing.”