Your people are your greatest asset. So does your H&S resource reflect the risks they actually face?

You say your people are your greatest asset. So why don't your H&S resources reflect the risks that threaten their health and performance?

I was having a conversation recently about the structure of a large organisation's Health & Safety function. And it got me rarked up about how we allocate resource against risk.

When we think about Health & Safety, we tend to think about the risks we can see:

Hazardous substances. Machinery. Falls. Manual handling. PPE. Physical injury.

And rightly so. But what about the risks that are harder to see?

Bullying. Work-related stress. Fatigue. Sexual harassment. Workplace violence. Burnout. Psychological harm.

These aren't fluffy wellbeing issues. They're health & safety risks.

And here's where my case gets stronger 💪🏼

WorkSafe reviewed 1,310 work-related health concerns notified in 2023–24.

• 704 were physical health concerns.

• 605 were psychosocial concerns.

That's 54% physical and 46% psychosocial. Almost 50/50.

So here's the question I think leaders need to be asking:

Does your H&S resource allocation reflect the risks your people are actually facing?

Or are we allocating resource according to the risks we've historically been more comfortable measuring?

I'm not suggesting we take a dollar away from physical safety. 👷🏼

I'm asking whether our overall investment, expertise, capability and resource is proportionate to the risk. Because I suspect that in many organisations, it isn't.

We have established H&S functions.

Policies. Systems. Training. Controls. Investigations. Reporting. Specialist expertise.

And yet psychosocial H&S can still sit somewhere in the 'wellbeing' bucket - often with token initiatives and considerably less resource and influence.

Why?

Because psychological risk is harder to see?

Harder to measure?

Harder to talk about?

Or simply because we've historically been more comfortable managing the risks we can see?

And let's be clear: psychosocial risk isn't just an office-worker issue.

The people exposed to physical risks are exposed to psychological risks too.

We all are.

So why have we got so little resource in the psychological / mental / wellbeing space?

We're talking about stress, bullying, burnout and psychological safety all the time.

But how much are we actually changing the conditions that create them?

Because managing psychosocial risk isn't about giving people another resilience workshop or telling them to use EAP when they're struggling.

It's about looking at the work, leadership and the environment.

Workload. Job design. Role clarity. Autonomy. Leadership. Relationships. Bullying. Fatigue. Culture.

And asking: What are we doing here that could be making people psychologically unwell?

Then actually doing something about it.

I've been lucky enough to experience workplaces where the protective and supportive factors were there, where people could actually thrive at work.

Fuck, imagine if way more workplaces were like that?!

🙌🏼 How much better could our workplaces be?

🙌🏼 How much more productive could we be?

🙌🏼 How much talent could we retain?

🙌🏼 What could that do for the mental health of this country?

Because I genuinely believe there is a massive opportunity here.

We could improve mental health at a population level by creating workplaces that don't make people mentally unwell in the first place.

Our newly released national Mental Health Strategy recognises workplaces as important places where mental wellbeing can be nurtured and promoted.

So the question isn't whether workplace mental health matters.

We know it does.

The challenge is that psychological risk is harder to see.

It's quieter.

It's more invisible.

And perhaps that's exactly why it's been so easy to under-resource.

So my challenge to leaders is simple: Look at your H&S resource allocation.

👀 Look at your people.

👀 Look at your risk profile.

👀 Look at the data.

Then ask yourself: Does our investment actually match the risks our people are facing?

Because if our people really are our greatest asset...

shouldn't we resource their health accordingly?

Data source: WorkSafe, Notifications for work-related health concerns – 2023–2024.