Orlando — ISHN interviewed Dr. I David Daniels, Veriforce Strategic Advisory Board Member and author of the book, “Psychosocial Hazards Are Real!” at the annual conference of the American Society of Safety Professionals. “Is safety just physical stuff? No, there are hazards you can’t see but can feel,” he says.

ISO 45003 is the global standard providing guidance on managing psychological safety in the workplace. It lists 88 psychosocial risks. These risks include shiftwork, long work hours, work overload, inadequate staffing/scheduling, lack of job training, role ambiguity, poor coworker relations, fatigue, violence, bullying, name-calling and public ridicule, according to NIOSH.

Everyone perceives these issues differently, says Dr. Daniels. To some, these don’t represent hazards. For others, they perceive or experience being exposed to one or more of these potential hazards to the extent it changes their behavior and can lead to distress, musculoskeletal disorders and mental health ills such as anxiety, depression, even suicide.

Forty countries have identified psychosocial hazards as risks requiring attention – laws or guidance – which is the same as physical hazards, says Dr. Daniels. The United States is not one of them.

Workplace bullying is the most studied psychosocial hazard, according to Dr. Daniels. It can be a hazard when it comes from a person in a position of power, the behavior is abusive, damaging, and it is repeated behavior. It is not something said just once, but a pattern of behavior perceived and experienced as harmful mentally or physically to a person exposed.                                                          

In the U.S., the attitude typically is, “I don’t see this (psychosocial hazard) as a problem. You might. But I don’t,” says Dr. Daniels, and no action is taken to give the person in distress relief, despite their insistence the behavior is abusive and hurting them.

These hazards happen every day in workplaces across the country. “We normalize it,” says Dr. Daniels. “Just push through it. Suck it up. Just do it. We’re told we need to be resilient, just toughen up.

“The focus on safety (in general) is not as progressive in the U.S. as in other countries,” he says. “OSHA is so small for a country this size, we’re not serious about safety and health. Our system is focused more on profit than people. We’re uber capitalists. If a fix costs money, the money is most often not there. I’d argue we value money over people” he says. “The OSH Act doesn’t address psychological safety at all. That’s why the subtitle of my book is, “A Guide to Understanding Non-Physical Safety Hazards.”

Addressing these hazards first calls for identifying them, according to Dr. Daniels. Next comes assessment, helped by psychosocial hazard inventories that are available, and then the hardest part, mitigation. Why?  Because it often requires spending money.

Mitigation involves a different application of the hierarchy of controls. Can the job be redesigned? Can it be eliminated? It is not applying hard physical controls but working on the nature of the job and the work environment.

Employers can be proactive to reduce psychosocial hazards by creating cultures that are fair, caring, with good benefits, an emphasis on work-life balance, and building a family-type environment.  These “safe” workplaces stand a better chance of retaining employees longer than the U.S. average tenure of about 5 years. Ignoring non-physical hazards can cause turnover, disengaged employees, lost productivity, loss of talented brainpower, and physical and mental health problems.

But Dr. Daniels is not interested in making a business case for addressing psychosocial hazards. He emphasizes taking care of people, valuing people. “I want to make the human case.”