Applicants applying for team leader, manager, and leader roles need to understand psychological safety and their part in fostering this important aspect of workplace culture.

As pointed out in Fostering a pro-integrity culture, psychological safety is a necessary element for building a culture of integrity.

Two 2024 documents give further insight and information about the importance of mental health:

• Safe Work Australia – Data report: Psychological health and safety in the workplace.
• National Mental Health Commission – Managers creating mentally healthy workplaces: A practical guide.

Data on psychological health and safety

Notable findings in Safe Work Australia’s report include:

• ‘Mental health conditions accounted for 9% (11,700) of all serious workers’ compensation claims and 7% of all work-related injuries and illnesses in 2020-21. This represented a 36.9% increase in claims since 2016-17, compared to an increase of 18.3% for all serious claims over the period.
• The most common mechanism attributed to claims for mental health conditions were work related harassment and/or workplace bullying (27.5%), work pressure (25.2%) and exposure to workplace or occupational violence (16.4%).
• The median time lost and compensation paid for mental health conditions were more than 4 times greater than that of all injuries and illnesses.
• Women were more likely than men to experience poor work-related psychological health outcomes. This is because they were exposed to more psychosocial hazards, including work pressure, work-related bullying and harassment, occupational violence and workplace sexual harassment than men.
• Workers in the Health care and social assistance, Public administration and safety and Education and training industries accounted for the highest number of serious claims for mental health conditions out of all industries.
• Occupations including Community and personal services workers, Professionals and Clerical and administrative workers accounted for the highest proportion of workers’ compensation claims for mental health conditions.’ (p. 29)

What is a mentally healthy workplace?

The NMHC’s guide explains that a workplace supports people’s mental health by ‘offering purpose, structure, opportunities for growth and development, financial security and social connection’, and by protecting and promoting mental health.

Mental health is negatively affected by ‘poor work design, poorly handled change, outdated leadership practices, organisational policies and technology’ and ‘experiences like bullying, harassment, unreasonable demands and micromanagement’. (p. 4)

Safe Work Australia’s report lists an ‘organisation’s characteristics that create tension and are bothersome to employees, including:

• Role overload
• Role ambiguity
• Role conflict
• Cognitive demand
• Emotional demand
• Group task conflict
• Group relationship conflict.’ (p. 32)

Manager’s role in creating mentally healthy workplaces

The NMHC’s guide aims to help managers perform three aspects of their role:

• advocate for mental health and wellbeing at the organisation level
• create a mentally healthy environment for their teams
• protect their own mental health and wellbeing. (p. 2)

Their guide provides advice on each of these three areas. This article focuses on creating mentally healthy environments for teams, so applicants can assess their own performance and think about how their resumes, applications, and interview responses reflect what is expected from leaders and managers.

It is worth noting that a mentally health workplace has many organisational advantages, including ‘thriving workers, higher productivity, lower unplanned leave, fewer occupational injuries and illnesses, fewer workers’ compensation claims, higher engagement and job satisfaction, lower turnover and rehiring costs, higher worker loyalty, a positive return on investment’. (p. 4)

How to support a mentally healthy workplace for your team

Based on the NMHC’s guide, you could ask yourself some questions to help with identifying relevant examples to use:

• Do you understand your responsibility for workers’ psychological wellbeing?
• Can you identify psychosocial hazards in your workplace?
• Do you support your team by building a positive culture, as well as supporting individuals?
• Do you consider how to support people to navigate change and impactful events?

The NMHC’s guide lists a range of psychosocial hazards, including:

• ‘Work demands
• Low job control
• Lack of sufficient support
• Lack of understanding about role
• Poor organisational change management
• Lack of adequate reward and recognition
• Bullying and harassment (including instances of sexual harassment)
• Lack of organisational Justice
• Poor physical Environment
• Conflict or poor workplace relationships and interactions
• Violence and aggression.’ (pp. 5-6)

The guide explains these behaviours, provides ways to reduce the risk of these behaviours in the workplace, and gives examples to demonstrate approaches.

There are useful sections providing advice on helping staff to:

• navigate changes, including impactful events such as accidents, disasters, pandemics and illness.
• be more flexible and adaptable.
• balance work with other responsibilities.
• manage workloads and conflict.

The section on supporting individuals to thrive in the workplace provides useful ideas on finding purpose, facilitating professional development, and enabling meaningful professional connections. Of particular value, is this section on connections, as it points to the value of quality interpersonal skills.

Building social connections

The guide points out that: ‘Social connection is more than just ‘getting along’ with people. As humans, we crave contact and connection with other people…Social connection is the experience of feeling close and connected to others, and includes feeling cared for and valued’. (p. 46)

Building positive social connections is not a one-off, set-and-forget exercise. It takes time, dedicated attention, is multi-faceted, and requires high levels of skill and understanding. The guide states that: ‘Positive social connections and meaningful relationships are built on: trust, integrity, good communication, appreciation, empathy and care, fun, authenticity, and reciprocity of support’. (p. 46).

Simply stating that you used your good communication skills to build positive social connections, tells nothing about how you behaved in a given situation, nor what evidence you used to judge the outcome. Here the guide provides practical ways to foster positive working relationships, both live and online.

What also needs to be kept in mind is that no approach can be applied to everyone. Rather, adjustments must be made for people’s unique experiences. The guide provides practical ideas on supporting team members from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander backgrounds, culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds and LGBTIQ+ communities.

Reading these documents helps with future behaviour, particularly if you’re looking for ways to perform more professionally in your role. Other resources worth reading for self-assessment and guidance, including:

• NSW Government icare resources on Active listening, Communicating clearly, Rebuilding a disconnected workplace, and Six tips for supervisors.
• Comcare: Psychosocial risk assessment tools.
• Comcare: Psychosocial hazards.