There are a range of risks at work that can affect a worker’s mental health. They include unacceptable work interactions (such as bullying and harassment, including sexual harassment), work-related stress, and fatigue.

Research shows that work can lead to a range of mental health harms. If sustained, these can lead to mental ill-health, illness and/or physical injury. For example, anxiety, depression, musculoskeletal disorders, and impaired immune systems are all associated with unhealthy work environments.

Organizational factors at work, such as work culture or unreasonable deadlines, as well as individual factors, like poor management techniques, can both lead to mental harms.

We recognize it’s hard to identify and manage risks around mentally-unhealthy work. It can be hard to find out whether the cause of harm was work-related, or related to other parts of the person’s life. That’s why the role of the PCBU is to provide the best work environment, without digging into the person’s history.

Having a mentally healthy work environment can also reduce the likelihood of injuries (as stress can cause distraction) and musculoskeletal disorders (which are correlated with stressful work environments).

Mental health is an important part of the working environment, and organisations have a responsibility to ensure they are providing a workplace which looks after the mental health of staff. When a business or organization has committed to and is supporting Mentally Healthy Work, its people thrive.

The way to create a mentally healthy and safe work environment is by being evidence-informed and promoting positive workplace cultures. Mentally Healthy Work has also been shown to reduce harm to workers – be it mental harm, pain or discomfort, injuries, diseases and illnesses – there are many benefits to mentally healthy work.

There are three key concepts to help businesses and organisations begin to understand this broader reach of Mentally Healthy Work.

Work Design is one element of Mentally Healthy Work. Workers who don’t feel they have any input in how their job is created, what their role is, or if they are often working alone or remotely and disconnected, often have poorer mental health than those who fit into the opposite. Businesses and organisations should consider how they design work to reduce or remove the potential for mental harm.

Work environment is another area to consider. How dangerous are the tasks being carried out and is there a potential for these to cause mental harm? Are there other factors such as poor air quality, high levels of noise, extreme temperatures either high or low?

Relationships are the third concept within this three-step approach. This is often the area where most people are able to readily identify and talk about the potential impact on mental health. Relationships are about the culture of the organization as a whole, whether leaders have clear expectations of workers (rather than ambiguous or changing goals and requirements), if there is recognition and reward; not only for a job well done, but for a job done. Is there an appropriate work/life balance where workers can choose themselves whether to do work out of hours – instead of feeling a stress to do so.

There are many ways to improve one or a combination of these aspects of Mentally Healthy Work – whatever type of work is being done.