Psychosocial Risks

What psychosocial risks are

Psychosocial risks (المخاطر النفسية الاجتماعية) are aspects of the design, organisation and management of work, and of its social relationships, that can cause psychological or physical harm to workers. Examples are a team that is repeatedly given a workload beyond its capacity, an employee who does not know what the role requires, and disagreements that are handled with insults or with silence. The risks are attributed to the work and not to the temperament of individuals. The first question concerns the conditions that workers face, and only then their ability to withstand them.

The term belongs to occupational safety and health in management. What follows is an explanation of the concept. It is not a diagnosis of a health condition, it is not medical advice, and it gives no legal description of any particular incident.

How psychosocial risks differ from neighbouring concepts

The neighbouring concepts sit on different axes. The effect is the harm once it occurs, the environment is a description of what goes on in a workplace, resilience is a property of a person or a team, and the method is a way of examining a hazard:

• Effect. A condition that arises from chronic pressure at work, burnout, is one possible effect. A psychosocial risk is the condition that comes before an effect, and a risk can have effects beyond burnout.
• Environment. The term toxic workplace describes a harmful pattern that the establishment tolerates. Such a pattern may raise the risk, but it is not a list of risks.
• Capacity. Psychological resilience is the ability of an employee or a team to absorb pressure and return to performance, and working conditions support it. Raising an individual’s capacity to withstand pressure may leave in place a source of pressure that is there every day.
• Method. When risks are assessed (occupational risk assessment), the questions concern a hazard, its likelihood and its severity, and the controls over it are then ranked. Psychosocial risks are a category within this examination.

Where psychosocial risks arise at work

This classification is our own practical grouping, and we did not take it from a specific reference:

• Volume and pace of work. What is demanded in the time available, the succession of deadlines and the spread of peak loads across the team. Matching tasks to the capacity available is the aim of workload management.
• Decision and autonomy. How much power the employee has to arrange the work and to choose the method, which is the focus of job autonomy.
• Role clarity. Whether the employee knows who is responsible for what and who requests what, and whether conflicting requests arrive from more than one manager.
• Relationships and treatment. Dealings among colleagues and with the manager, including insults, exclusion or being ignored.
• Change and uncertainty. Restructuring, a change of tools, or news about the future of jobs that arrives incomplete or late.
• Support and reward. Whether there is someone to ask and to help when needed, and what the employee receives in recognition and pay in return for effort.

Several axes can meet in one situation, so a condition need not be assigned to a single axis. The purpose of the grouping is to show the establishment where to look, not to sort complaints into boxes.

Examining psychosocial risks like any other risk

We suggest handling these risks in the same order as other hazards at work, in the steps below:

1. Locate the place. The establishment names a particular department, role or project and not the whole establishment, because conditions differ from one team to another.
2. Identify who is exposed. The establishment counts the people affected, notes how long they are exposed and records whether the exposure is continuous or seasonal.
3. Review the existing controls. The establishment checks whether a channel exists for raising an objection and whether the distribution of work is reviewed at peak times.
4. Estimate likelihood and severity. The establishment uses a simple scale that it sets and announces to the people who use the estimate.
5. Choose an action, an owner and a review date. An estimate without a name and a date is a document and not a plan.

These risks differ from a physical hazard in ways that merit attention. Their effect may be indirect, and its severity varies with the circumstances of the person affected. The evidence for them is gathered about a group and not about one person.

What evidence is gathered, and about whom

Useful evidence in this area is evidence about groups and not files on individuals:

• Fixed questions in a pulse survey on workload, role clarity and the possibility of speaking one’s mind, compared between departments and between two periods.
• Records of overtime hours and delivery dates for each team, and of what departed from the plan.
• Patterns of departure and absence in each department, and what leavers say.
• What is said in regular individual meetings between a manager and the team.

We suggest that the establishment set a minimum size for a group whose results are shown, because in a group of two or three people the owner of each answer may be identified. Figures at the level of a department do not describe the situation of a particular employee, and no judgement about an employee rests on them.

A hypothetical worked example

Take a hypothetical establishment with three departments: the first has 40 employees, the second 30 and the third 30, so the total is 100 employees. A pulse survey included the statement “I know what I am responsible for”. Twelve employees in the first department answered “no”, six in the second and three in the third. The shares are 12 ÷ 40 = 30%, 6 ÷ 30 = 20% and 3 ÷ 30 = 10%. Together 12 + 6 + 3 = 21 employees answered “no”, so their share in the establishment is 21 ÷ 100 = 21%.

The overall figure hides that three in every ten employees in the first department do not know what is asked of them. The establishment then examined its overtime records. Employees whose hours exceeded the plan numbered 24 of 40 in the first department, 9 of 30 in the second and 6 of 30 in the third, which is 60%, 30% and 20%. Together 24 + 9 + 6 = 39 of 100, which is 39% in the establishment.

The establishment estimated each department on a scale of three points for likelihood and three for severity. It chose for the first department 3 for likelihood and 2 for severity, so the product is 3 × 2 = 6. For the second it chose 2 and 2, so the product is 4, and for the third 1 and 2, so the product is 2. The examination starts with the first department.

The figures are hypothetical and set to illustrate, and the scale is our own estimate. No conclusion about cause rests on the differences between departments, because the higher share in the first department may come from the nature of its work and not from its management.

Where remedies begin

In the order of response that employee wellbeing describes, the sources of harm in the work are examined first, such as the distribution of work, the schedule, the clarity of responsibility and the possibility of objecting to the manager. Supporting services are added afterwards. A service that is added alone may not move the figures if the cause in the arrangement of work remains.

Remedies differ by location. For role ambiguity, the remedy is a written description of responsibilities and of who decides what. For the spread of peak loads, it is redistributing tasks or adjusting deadlines. For treatment, it is holding behaviour to account and not a general training course alone. These are possibilities that the establishment judges once it understands the location.

What psychosocial risks do not mean

Psychosocial risks do not mean that every pressure at work is a harm. Work involves deadlines and responsibilities, and their effect varies with their duration, with how much decision power the employee has and with the support the employee receives. They do not mean that a weakness in the employee is the cause of what the employee reports, or that the establishment is responsible for everything that workers go through outside work. They mean that what lies in the work and can be changed deserves the same serious attention as a visible hazard.

Psychosocial risks and the Labor Law

Article 122 of the Saudi Labor Law (نظام العمل) obliges the employer to take the necessary precautions to protect workers from the hazards and diseases arising from work and from the machinery used. Article 123 of the Labor Law requires the employer to inform the worker, before starting work, of the hazards of the occupation. Both articles speak generally of hazards and diseases arising from work.

In the text of Articles 122 and 123 of the Labor Law we found no mention of psychosocial risk by name. We do not take those articles as a rule on workload or work pressure, and we do not decide what counts as “hazards and diseases arising from work” and what does not. Articles 121 to 126 of the Labor Law, and the places where they refer to a ministerial decision, are set out in occupational health and safety.

Article 54, paragraph 1, of the model work regulation (النموذج الموحد), which is Annex 1 of the Implementing Regulation (اللائحة التنفيذية) of the Labor Law, counts as abuse (إيذاء) all practices of ill treatment, whether active or passive, and all forms of exploitation, blackmail, enticement or threat, whether physical, psychological or sexual. The paragraph covers such conduct when it occurs in the workplace from the employer against a worker, from a worker against the employer, from one worker against another, or against any other person present there. Assisting in such conduct or covering it up counts as abuse too.

That text binds as content that the work regulations of establishments prepared on the model must carry. It is not an article of the Labor Law. It deals with abuse between persons, so it covers one part of the relationships and treatment axis in the grouping above. For the route of complaint and investigation, see workplace harassment.

Acceptable levels and the measurement of psychosocial risks

We set no acceptable level for any of these risks and no figure above which a risk counts as dangerous. A scale or a threshold that an establishment adopts is its decision, and the establishment announces it together with the figures. In the sources we reviewed, we found no text requiring an establishment to measure these risks or fixing a method of measuring them, and we propose no standard of our own.

Psychosocial risks remain a way of asking what in the arrangement of work can do harm before harm occurs. The concept points the establishment to a place that merits examination, and what is decided afterwards rests on what the workers say and on the nature of the work.

This is an explanation of the concept and of the statutory provisions cited, not legal advice.