PHSMS 5/6 – Leverage Technology and Analytics

It can be difficult to understand and add Psychological health into your safety management processes to create a complete PHSMS.  The good news is that there are a lot of professional help articles and direct help apps that can fill in a lot of the gaps or point to the correct paths.  Mental Health Apps for example, use data and digital tools to track engagement and outcomes. Many apps offer analytics and reporting features that can provide valuable insights. Data analytics built from our collected information can be used to identify patterns and trends. These types of tools can help pinpoint areas for improvement and measure the overall impact.

A starting point may be the Total Worker Health Toolkit from the CDC (https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/twh/php/toolkit/index.html) or the Assembling the pieces toolkit from the CCOHS (https://www.ccohs.ca/products/courses/assembling_pieces).

Digitally, you can find tools that will help you rank different psychosocial hazards to help assess risk, evaluate results and prioritize interventions.  Understanding consequences versus likelihood and highlighting management perceptions versus employee perceptions. The best part of using technology-based tools is that you will have frameworks and related questions already pre-populated saving you time and also maybe enhancing coverage.  Many of these tools are also vigorous and broad to ensure you get a good baseline.  Once these tools are deployed, managers can find results that are tabulated and summarized in reports. 

You can find some tools for manager training through Managing Mental Health Matters at workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.Com or this use tool which helps build resilience mentalhealthfirstaid.ca.  Supporting Employee Success is a free tool available at workplacestrategiesformentalhealth.com.

Technology will help you monitor and capture progress.  What is your corrective and preventative action process look like?  Does your incident investigation plan and reporting process work?  You can define and track your plan, objectives and targets, track processes and procedures and identify areas for improvement.  Your plan may also include areas like using an internal audit or a detailed management review.

Conclusion:  You do not need to be an expert in mental health to discuss and develop psychologically healthy and safe workplace solutions. Start with a Kick-off meeting to communicate to staff and ask for input on your PHSMS objectives, targets, and plans.

Use technology to keep everything organized and documented. Things like having review meetings on a scheduled basis. A system can ensure confidentiality. Celebrating and highlighting progress including a few quick successes and then focused on two or three main priorities (It is far better to choose a lesser number of priorities and do them well than attempt to tackle too many things and not be able to accomplish your goals.).  Develop a three year plan with key milestones and improve and review as you go. Use teams and allocated tasks toward a common goal.  Use things you already have in place within your organization (currently accepted and utilized - For example if there are already monthly safety talks, lunch and learns or other regular meetings). 

With proper tools you can monitor progress (be patient – it takes time to foster culture change) and add/remove people to your team who have implemented other standards or management systems.  With good reporting you can show how each employee can contribute and focus discussions on workplace practices and processes that are part of the day-to-day experience in the workplace benefit from the improved communications.

Using a confidential system to both organize and document your data and your progress is essential to long term success in the world of Mental Health.  One solution is to use Workhub’s simple, all-inclusive $4 per user per month health and safety management software.  Our customer support team is always available to help and its always free to book a demo at www.Workhub.com.