Psychosocial risk assessment: the method is yours to choose

What does Ontario law say about assessing psychosocial risks?

The two Ontario government pages cited here describe duties for workplace violence and workplace harassment, and one risk assessment, for workplace violence. They describe no psychosocial risk assessment.

According to the Government of Ontario, the OHSA requires employers to have workplace violence and workplace harassment policies and programs in place and to share appropriate information about them with workers. The same page sets out three areas of law on psychological injury: freedom from discrimination and the duty to accommodate, workplace safety insurance, and occupational health and safety.

The one risk assessment the Ontario guide describes in detail is for workplace violence. Under sections 32.0.2 and 32.0.3 of the OHSA, the employer assesses the risk of violence that may arise from the nature of the workplace, the type of work and the conditions of work, repeats the assessment as often as necessary, and develops measures to control the risks likely to expose a worker to physical injury. On harassment, the guide asks whether an employer has to assess the risk that harassment may occur and answers that the Act does not require it.

For information only, Quebec differs. A 2022 fact sheet from the Institut national de santé publique du Québec (INSPQ) states that, since Loi 27, an employer must identify and analyze psychosocial risks in its prevention program.

What does a psychosocial risk assessment involve?

It is a review, repeated at regular intervals, of the workplace factors that can shape psychological health, done with more than one method. CCOHS, working from the CSA Z1003-13 (R2018) standard, says an assessment can cover all the psychosocial factors or target one or a few at a time, as long as all of them are assessed on a regular basis.

It is not an examination of individuals. CCOHS states that the assessor is not responsible for determining a diagnosis of another person's mental health. Team members can use surveys, observation and conversation to note an area of potential concern where further assessment may be needed.

If you want a place to start looking in a team's week, our post on where psychosocial hazards show up in a team covers it. The check below takes about a minute. It uses five of the ten statements in OHA's capacity self-portrait, one for each load, so you see all five side by side.

How do you run a psychosocial risk assessment in five steps?

Scope it, start from the data you hold, audit your structures, ask your people, then report back and repeat.

Step 1, scope. Pick the team and the factors. CCOHS's sample checklist names areas of concern such as pace of work, fatigue, conflicting demands, hours of work, poor communication, and fairness in management decisions, for example approvals of leave or training requests.

Step 2, data. Review what you already hold: complaint reports, absenteeism and turnover rates, and resource usage rates.

Step 3, structures. Audit the policies and procedures, management practices, workplace supports, training programs and job descriptions that bear on mental health.

Step 4, people. Gather feedback through conversations, observation, group discussions, anonymous forms and surveys. CCOHS expects most organizations to need more than one method: a survey for the general picture, for example, then group discussions on the areas of concern. Varying the methods also helps prevent survey fatigue, and CCOHS advises planning the activities at a pace the workforce can sustain so that participation stays strong.

Step 5, report. Share the overall findings while keeping confidential the individuals you consulted, and celebrate successes, which gives everyone a milestone that helps connect their everyday actions to bigger shifts.

Why is the assessment only the start?

Because it tells you where to look, not how much each area weighs or which one to change first.

OHA's Five Loads sort what you found into decisional, cognitive, emotional, relational and administrative load, five kinds of demand with different remedies. Our post on what a capacity diagnostic actually measures explains what that reading adds to an engagement survey.

Pick one load and one change that alters the work rather than the person: remove an approval step, write down who decides what, protect two uninterrupted blocks in the week. Then set a date about 90 days out to repeat the same reading, the length of OHA's Capacity Circle™, so the comparison is like for like. Tell the team in one sentence what you are changing and why.

If the assessment raises many concerns at once, resist launching a program for each. A flat result at day 90 is also information: it tells you the change was not the one consuming capacity, and the next one can be chosen with that in hand.