In the Jan/Feb edition of Safeguard we pose three questions based on stories in the magazine. One of them is this:
Josh Darby was surprised to find a FENZ survey found organisational factors to be more strongly related to staff mental health than their exposure to critical incidents. How surprising is it?
Feel free to respond here on the Forum, or privately here via a Survey Monkey form.
An edited selection of responses will be published in the March/April edition, but with no names attached. One randomly selected person will receive a prize, namely a copy of the book Proving Safety, by Greg Smith.
Organizational factors such as safety culture which is lead by the management team which normally filters from the senior management attitude towards their people which have a direct influence on their perceptions within the workplace.
The management activities such as lack of safety leadership training is normally to the detriment of the company as not all people managers are natural team leaders and the softer skills of managing a team can be taught if the recipient is willing to learn.
The human interaction within the work environment such as safety communication and team management normally determine if the staff turn over is going to be low or high. I have a preference of working for organizations with low turnover as that is normally a good indicator on culture.
If roles for the same organization keeps on recurring it is normally and indication of a toxic culture resulting in many people leaving a good job because of poor people management practices all which impact on staff mental health.
The staff reaction to exposure to critical incidents depends on the work culture within the organization should the focus be on blame instead of learning, focus on what is going right so they know what to expect, know what to look for and how to respond.
From a psychosocial risk management perspective it makes sense.
Critical incidents are high severity, but (hopefully) much less frequent.
Organisational factors are less severe but may be frequent or constant. Psychosocial risk factors also interact more readily so one or two minor organisational issues may interact to be greater than the sum of each factor.
FENZ would also have supervision and debriefing in place for critical incidents, but not for ongoing problems with workplace culture, bullying or other organisational issues.