MOAI Guide

Your responsibilities as an employer to manage psychosocial risks

All employers are legally required to protect employees from potential hazards. Whilst measures to manage physical risks are commonplace, awareness and understanding of psychosocial risk factors remains low in the UK.

“Just 2% of UK organisations explicitly reference psychosocial risks in their business practices.” ~ (Ashurst, 2023)

What are psychosocial risk factors?

Psychosocial risks are factors within the workplace that can have a negative impact on the mental health of employees.

Examples include:

  • High workloads
  • Lack of autonomy
  • Poor task design
  • Job insecurity
  • Harassment

When organisations don’t measure and mitigate against these risks, they can have a detrimental impact on both the physical and psychological health of employees, resulting in:

  • Stress and burnout
  • Common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety
  • Musculoskeletal disorders
  • Increased absenteeism and presenteeism

Awareness is key

A recent survey revealed that just 2.5% of UK organisations explicitly reference ‘psychosocial hazards or risks’ in their practices (Ashurst, 2023), with many choosing to group these issues under broader well-being initiatives.

We believe this approach is problematic for a number of reasons:

When an organisation has no shared definition or understanding of psychosocial risks, they cannot be accurately assessed and monitored

Grouping psychosocial risks alongside other well-being initiatives fails to acknowledge the importance of taking a proactive approach to these risks; organisations should work to identify psychosocial hazards before they cause harm

This approach leads to organisations viewing psychosocial risk assessments as a ‘tick box’ exercise, rather than an opportunity to make meaningful and lasting changes

Your legal duties as an employer

There are two key pieces of health and safety legislation you must follow:

The Health and Safety at Work Act, 1974

This establishes an employer’s duty of care to ensure the health, safety, and welfare of their employees, as well as others who might be affected by their work.

The Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999

This legislation requires all employers to carry out a thorough and appropriate assessment of the risks to their employees’ health and safety in the workplace.

In relation to psychosocial risks this means you must:

  • Conduct psychosocial risk assessments on a regular basis for all employees. These should be reviewed:

    • At least annually
    • Following changes in the workplace

  • Take appropriate measures to mitigate the risks identified, where reasonable

  • Conduct an individual risk assessment if an employee discloses that they are experiencing mental ill health.

  • Maintain written records of your risk assessments if you have five or more employees

The Health and Safety Executives has created a step-by-step workbook ‘Tackling work-related stress using the Management Standards approach’ which can be found here.

In relation to psychosocial risks this means you must:

  • Look our for any signs or ‘red flags’ that an employee is experiencing work related stress

  • Act swiftly to reasonably address the causes of work related stress if:

    • You recognise the signs someone is experiencing stress at work
    • An employee tells you they are struggling

  • Once interventions are put in place, continually monitor psychosocial risks and how the employee is doing

If you signpost an employee to an EAP, this will only help them with the mental health symptoms they are experiencing. It is important to remember that this alone is not enough to resolve the problem. Employers have a legal responsibility to also identify and address the underlying cause.

The importance of consulting employees

Though there is no legal requirement for employers to consult employees when completing psychosocial risk assessments, the Health and Safety Executive strongly recommends engaging employees in this process.

  • Not all psychosocial risks are easy to see
  • How each employees experiences and is affected by psychosocial hazards is individual to them
  • If only one person or a small number of people are conducting your assessments, it is more likely to will be biased towards their own personal experiences and views

Without consulting employees it is impossible to truly understand which risk factors may be causing harm.

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