The Importance of Granular Psychosocial Risk Assessment…

Q: Why is granular risk assessment important for effective psychosocial risk management?

A: Because psychosocial factors vary significantly across departments, teams, job roles, and demographics. This variability is due in part to the influence of social factors on risk outcomes.

Here’s a recent example from one of our organisational assessments…

The team with the most beneficial psychosocial environment (Team 7) and the team with the most harmful environment (Team 11) were in the same department. This highlights the likely impact individual managers and team dynamics have on staff psychosocial experience.

Below are the cumulative harm and benefit scores for these two teams from the Mibo Psychosocial Risk Assessment (scored 0-100 on the harm-benefit indicator):

Cumulative Harm: Team 11 (43; Moderate), Team 7 (8; Very Low)
Cumulative Benefit: Team 11 (6; Very Low), Team 7 (62; High)

Interestingly, harm and benefit scores strongly correlate with health outcomes…

For instance, using valid questionnaires, no one from Team 7 reported anxiety or depression at levels that might indicate a mental health diagnosis. And no-one reported burnout, very poor sleep quality, or very poor musculoskeletal health.

In contrast, in Team 11, 25% reported burnout, 17% reported depression symptoms and 25% reported anxiety symptoms that might result in a mental health diagnosis, 25% reported very poor sleep quality, and 17% reported very poor musculoskeletal health.

And, not surprisingly, we’re finding these links maintain in big samples…