Wellbeing in the workplace is a topic that has been around for a while. But with new positive duties for company directors in Australia, psychosocial safety in the workplace is the latest evolution in workplace health and safety obligations. Board Members are well-aware of their responsibilities to the physical safety of their work force. However, directors now must proactively manage hazards that could create harmful levels of psychological injury. These injuries may include anxiety, depression, post-traumatic stress disorder, and sleep disorders.

It will help boards to see these positive duties as an opportunity to embed a strategic workforce wellbeing program; one that moves the needle for employees and for the business bottom line.

How an organisation does this is the domain of Dr Clint Strahan, a Partner at Exsona, where they help organisations elevate the human experience at work. Clint has spent his career in consulting and senior leadership roles applying the principles of organisational psychology to help businesses, and the people within them, perform at their best. His PhD research on accountability and employee engagement in Australian mining provided a foundation for effective strategies and interventions designed to develop leadership capability & drive business performance. He led high-performing Talent Acquisition and L&D departments in the insurance industry for 7yrs and brings that internal, real-world perspective to his consulting work with clients.

Clint and I discuss

• Workforce wellness and wellbeing: what it is and what it isn’t.
• How workforce wellness addresses psychosocial hazards.
• How to best address poor performance and incentivise high performance.
• Ways to measure employee wellbeing to understand how your organisation is performing with psychosocial safety and workforce wellbeing.
• Simple strategies that all organisations (even small organisations) can introduce to leverage psychosocial safety and workforce wellbeing for a tangible ROI.
• How to create the business case for investment into workplace wellness and wellbeing programs.
• Experimenting with workplace wellbeing activities to find what works and moves the needle forward.
• Clint’s views on recent comments about employees literally taking up arms for their early-stage tech company employer.

This isn’t a soft and fluffy wellbeing conversation. There’s a lot of valuable information in this conversation; I took a page of notes and made some key points to ask at my next board meeting. Enjoy this conversation with Dr Clint Strahan. 

Useful and Mentioned Links

For regulatory codes and guides for psychosocial hazards/management, refer to SafeWork Australia and your industry peak body. 

Connect with Clint on LinkedIn

Clint’s Organisation: Exsona

Access the Psychosocial Hazards Checklist