Protecting health, safety and wellbeing in the workplace: AMP 

In June 2022, the model Work Health and Safety laws were amended to deal with psychosocial risks in the workplace. This amendment complemented AMP’s approach to supporting workers’ mental health, wellbeing and safety.   

AMP started with broad-reaching information sessions for board members, executives and team leaders about the amendments, to ensure they understood the principal changes and what they meant for individuals, teams and the organisation. AMP’s initial objective was to embed a fit-for-purpose psychological safety management system and uplift awareness and understanding of psychosocial risk management requirements.   

Protection is a key pillar of AMP’s Health, Safety and Wellbeing strategy. It involves practical and concrete actions that support worker wellbeing and mental health, through:  

• educating leadership about psychosocial health and safety so that they can identify and respond to risks appropriately   
• conducting risk assessments to gather valuable data about the key stressors affecting workers, recognising different teams and roles are exposed to different psychosocial hazards and risks.   

AMP Group Health, Safety and Wellbeing Manager, Lauren Allen, says identifying psychosocial hazards and risks was integral to their approach. AMP joined an Australian-first pilot program with health technology company People Diagnostix. The program’s overarching purpose was to champion psychological health and safety across leading Australian companies. It included aligning existing policies, procedures and processes with best practice standards for psychological health and safety management systems and adopting the Psychosocial Risk Assessment tool – using the FlourishDX application. Part of this program was a wellbeing check with workers to understand personal and work factors negatively impacting wellbeing. Data from the wellbeing checks confirmed areas where psychosocial risks were most significant and where targeted action was needed.   

Some common psychosocial hazards became apparent, although risk exposure varied between business areas and roles. For example, vicarious trauma is a common hazard for workers in customer-facing positions, particularly in the current environment where many interactions with vulnerable customers relate to people experiencing financial hardship.  

Many indicators show AMP's activities to create a psychologically safe and mentally healthy workplace are positively received by workers: people are empowered to speak up about psychosocial stressors and encouraged to access support if needed. AMP focuses on supporting leaders to demonstrate healthy leadership behaviour. This includes championing how safe systems of work and the principles of good work design can impact productivity and cultural drivers: reducing staff turnover and reducing the incidence of severe health and safety risk outcomes.   

“New executive leadership focusing on continuous improvement had led to a noticeable positive shift in workplace culture, particularly around psychosocial risk management.” Lauren Allen, Group Health, Safety and Wellbeing Manager   

AMP also learned some valuable lessons from the experience. In particular, if an organisation wants to implement a psychosocial health strategy for its workers, talk and initiate the conversation. Documenting the discussions with workers is essential to understand any root causes of stress. From there, the organisation can create a program and either partner with external providers or use the vast array of free safety regulator resources that are available. A holistic approach must support and provide tools for the workplace and workers’ wellbeing to thrive.