Psychologically healthy workplaces can be the remedy for sick and injured workers

A recent study has highlighted the stark difference that offering a healthy workplace to employees could have in limiting the estimated losses of $30 billion a year due to workplace injuries and illness.

Organisations that maintain a healthy workplace and offer wellbeing support to their staff, including supportive relationships with supervisors, valuing skills and job autonomy, and minimising work stress, report much fewer days lost per workers’ compensation claims.

It seems simple, really, yet a majority of organisations still struggle with identifying and negating psychosocial risks.

The study was conducted by researchers hailing from South Australia’s Psychosocial Safety Climate Global Observatory, where they compared working conditions in 100 Australian organisations to 12,000 injured and sick compensation claims.

Through this avenue, they were able to identify the root causes of delays in people looking to return to their jobs after sustaining a workplace-related injury or illness.

It was discovered in the study that of the organisations that had a poor psychosocial safety climate (PSC), they reported 160 per cent more days off due to workplace injury or illness, compared to high PSC organisations, with the statistics being 177 days compared to 68 days.

In terms of the financial implications, the repercussions were similar as the costs for injury and illness were 104 per cent greater in very low PSC organisations versus high PSC organisations, as the statistics were $67,260 compared to $32,939 per employee.

University of South Australia, ARC Laureate Fellow Professor Maureen Dollard said: “Our findings show that a healthy psychological climate in workplaces is essential if companies want to reduce working time loss and costs related to workplace injuries and illnesses.”

“Aside from a strong PSC, the most important factors in predicting a quicker return to work included how satisfying and rewarding their job was, how supportive their supervisor was, whether their skills were potentially adaptable, and how much autonomy they had in their role,” Dollard said.

During 2017–18, throughout Australia, an estimated 563,000 people succumbed to a work-related injury or illness, representing 4.2 per cent of the overall workforce. Taking time off work happened in 60 per cent of those cases, which resulted in costing the equivalent of Australia’s annual agricultural output, or 1.6 per cent of the nation’s gross domestic product (GDP).

According to Dollard, the findings’ main highlight is that “healthy workplaces matter” and can prevent these issues from occurring if organisations are willing to commit: “They are not only important to our psychological health and to prevent injury to workers, but PSC is just as important following injury or illness.”

“Building an organisation with a strong PSC will help to reduce time lost and also cut costs through better injury prevention and management,” Dollard said.