Shifting the dial on mental health claims: Why leaders must focus to a systemic approach to psychosocial safety
The mental health debate continues to dominate headlines, with business leaders acknowledging the scale of the crisis. Yet their focus is often squarely focused on ‘fixing the worker,’ rather than tackling broader workplace causes.
A battle has played out in the Financial Review with business leader commentary on psychological injury claims crippling insurance costs and workforce performance.
In a recent article, one of Australia’s most prominent businessmen, Ryan Stokes suggested psychological injury claims are dragging down the workforce, with labour productivity being stagnated by worker abuse of compensation claims for mental health.
Stokes raised concerns about the increase in mental health claims by workers for psychological injuries stating, “It is often impossible to ascertain if the mental injury occurred at work, was pre-existing or occurred outside of work”.
Further, he is calling for a change in legislation to prevent compensation being paid to an employee if a claim was the result of reasonable management action (RMA).
An alternative viewpoint
It seems unlikely that stagnating labour productivity is exacerbated in any meaningful way simply by ‘worker abuse of compensation claims for mental health’. It is more likely impacted by workplaces who do not understand their psychosocial safety obligations and have poor control measures to minimise mental harm to workers.
RMA is already a reason for psychological injury claims not being accepted across Australian jurisdictions. It also doesn’t seem likely that claims made due to employee’s dissatisfaction with performance management is the main reason why psychological injuries claims are exponentially on the rise.
Compensation is more commonly awarded when performance processes are poorly managed creating psychosocial risk in relation the hazards poor organisational justice and support. In the face of other contributing psychosocial hazards this in turn this causes harm.
Psychological claims are not going away
Mental illness is now less stigmatised, and employees are significantly more likely to astutely assess workplace conditions contributing to their mental wellbeing. There is no going back and business leaders are now talking about mental health on a grand scale.
Westpac Chief Executive Anthony Miller highlights mental health as “one of the biggest challenges we face”, reflecting how deeply business leaders are internalising the issue. While he agreed there has been a sharp increase in mental health claims, Miller believes more could be done by employers, to promote employee wellbeing before changing legislation.
Despite this, views expressed by the business leaders in the articles seem to be at the ‘fix the worker’ end of the spectrum, which is somewhat surprising given the large investment in mental health programs and senior mental health experts, as well as the Australian Workplace Health and Safety Regulations.
One of the most striking statements to come from this debate comes from Harvey Norman Chairman Gerry Harvey who is quoted as saying mental health claims are “out of control and it gets worse each year”. “People get away with it and then get away with it again and then tell all their friends about it”. “Everyone in business just looks at it and thinks what a joke”.
Perhaps this quote has been taken out of context, however it does on the surface seem to be a very outdated way to think about employee mental health that lacks any factual underpinning. For example, the process of a psychological injury claim is typically quite arduous and psychological claims are not easily accepted.
The way forward
The real question we need to be asking is why almost one in four workers are experiencing work-related psychological issues each year in Australia.
Big business viewing mental health as a ‘worker problem’, or an ‘employees can’t handle feedback’ problem, won’t actually solve anything for anyone. The way forward is a mindset shift for business to systemic controls. The longer they solely blame workers, the bigger the problem will become.
There are absolutely situations in which employees could be more robust to feedback and be more engaged in their obligations from an individual worker perspective to contribute to their own health and safety. Psychosocial safety is a shared responsibility and there’s no reason this can’t be embedded into psychosocial infrastructure in a more thoughtful and less-biased way.
A wicked problem for leaders
The immediate challenge for business leaders is to manage their own biases and to take an objective and problem focused approach to this problem. The cat is out of the bag. The horse has bolted. The beans are spilled. Employees are not suddenly going to revert to old practices and mindsets. Like any complex problem, a systemic approach is required.
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References
To read the Financial Review articles on this debate, please see links below:
Productivity roundtable: Ryan Stokes says psychological injury claims are dragging down workforce
Westpac CEO Anthony Miller says mental health is ‘one of the biggest issues we face’