Key Insights
- Most Australian organisations can now describe their psychosocial hazards, risks and describe psychosocial controls in place. The biggest gap that remains is verifying those controls are actually effective.
- Training completion rates and attendance numbers measure activity, not effectiveness. A control can be 100% implemented and still not be reducing harm.
- For a control like active bystander training, effectiveness shows up as more reports early on, lower severity over time, and a shorter gap between witnessing behaviour and reporting it.
- Good control monitoring uses data capable of showing change, is planned when the control is designed, and is reviewed as trends rather than one-off numbers.
Since the legislative changes in Australia that created a flurry of psychosocial effort, many organisations are well on their way on the psychosocial maturity journey. These days, most clients we work with can clearly describe their psychosocial hazards in the workplace and associated risks, and a lot of them have controls that are genuinely well defined. That’s great progress.
Where we find the biggest room for growth is demonstrating those controls actually work.
Not for lack of data. There is usually plenty of it. The problem is that the data many organisations refer to simply measures activity, not effectiveness.
Activity data vs effectiveness data
Activity data tells you a control has been put in place: training delivered, policies issued, surveys sent, check-ins completed. Effectiveness data tells you whether the control is reducing the risk it was designed to manage. Both have a place, but only one answers the question boards, regulators and workers need the answer to: are people actually safer?
It’s the same trap we see with injury statistics. A low TRIFR can look good on a report without telling you much about how well risk is being managed, and psychosocial reporting can easily fall into the same “looking good” pattern.
Frequently asked questions
Control effectiveness is whether a control is reducing the psychosocial risk it was put in place to manage. It’s different from activity or implementation. A control can be fully rolled out, with policies issued and training completed, and still have little effect on how often or how seriously harm occurs.
