Australian WHS Survey - Autumn 2023
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Background
The Australian WHS Survey (the Survey) is an initiative from the Centre for Work Health and Safety (the Centre). It is the first of its kind in Australia and provides a platform for workers from across the nation to share their first-hand experiences of Work Health and Safety (WHS).
The Survey captures three aspects of what WHS looks like in Australia.
- The WHS profile of Australian workers, e.g., their exposure to physical and psychosocial hazards, including harassment, their awareness of WHS rights and responsibilities, and their feelings of empowerment to participate in, and influence, health and safety at work.
- The respondents’ perceptions of their workplace’s existing WHS policies and systems, demonstrated WHS commitment and practices, and views about the barriers and potential enablers to improve WHS in their workplaces.
- The respondents’ observations of new or emerging WHS issues and suggestions for potential harm prevention measures.
This information is critical in assisting Australian businesses, WHS regulators and affiliated bodies to prevent workers from being harmed in the workplace. The Survey will be open for response every six months. While this report provides insights exclusively based on data collected through this 1st edition of the Survey, future iterations will allow for the analysis of trends over time.
Method
The Survey was conducted in January 2023. It was open to all people over 18 years of age, currently living in Australia, and who have worked in Australia in the previous six months. In total, the survey received 1,017 valid responses.
The Survey (Appendix A), designed by the Centre, included the full suite of questions taken from two published instruments: the Psychosocial Job Quality Index (Butterworth et al., 2011), and the Occupational Health and Safety vulnerability measure (Lay et al., 2016).
Findings
Monitoring Australia’s WHS pulse
The Survey considers a series of indicators measuring WHS at various levels:
- the level of awareness of workers to their and their employer’s WHS rights and responsibilities,
- their empowerment to participate in WHS discussions,
- the level of commitment to WHS, and
- the level of WHS systems in place in their workplaces.
The Survey will occur every six months with these measures enabling monitoring and eventually forecasting of the WHS pulse in Australian workplaces in future.
In this 1st Edition, respondents were found somewhat ‘aware’ and relatively less ‘empowered’, with three out of four respondents showing adequate levels of awareness, whereas only one out of two showed adequate levels of empowerment. Mixed views were shared in regard to workplace practices and commitment, with one out of two respondents reporting adequate policies and procedures in place in their workplace or experiencing commitment to healthy work and support to a strong safety culture from their leaders.
Key Barriers and enablers
The Survey indicates that safety practices in Australian workplaces are constrained primarily by limited time and resources. Improvements could be achieved if safety requirements were easier to understand or if the financial or reputational benefits were more demonstrable for organisations. Organisations would be likely to be motivated to improve WHS if its value proposition was clearer for workers and/or their leaders.
Increasing psychosocial harm
Results indicate a high and increasing level of psychosocial harm in Australian workplaces, with workers experiencing:
- higher level of poor job quality - 16.3% of respondents were working in roles considered to be of poor psychosocial quality,
- higher level of burnout - almost two-thirds of respondents reported feeling drained by their work, and
- more adverse work environments with higher levels of harassment and bullying - more than two-thirds of respondents indicated they had experienced bullying in the workplace in the past year.
The increasing normalisation of chronic understaffing across organisations, along with the limited acknowledgement and limited action taken against bullying and/or harassment in the workplace, were cited as the main drivers for this increase in psychosocial harm. The recent explosion of home and flexible working arrangements was also discussed as an important contributing factor, especially due to the increase of workers operating in isolated environments.
On the positive, respondents indicated that awareness of and practices to reduce psychosocial issues were increasing in their workplaces, particularly since the introduction of the new WHS model regulations and code of practice on addressing psychosocial hazards.
Call for a re-prioritisation of WHS in Healthcare
The Survey responses from the Healthcare sector were most alarming. Results show that Healthcare workers felt more exposed to hazards, including harassment, sexual harassment and bullying, than workers from other industries. Almost one out of two Healthcare workers experienced a form of harassment or bullying on a monthly basis, and there were indications that sexual harassment was also more predominant in this industry.
Healthcare workers felt less aware of their and their employer’s WHS rights and responsibilities and were also less empowered to participate in WHS discussions than their colleagues in other industries. Healthcare workplaces were not perceived as great places to work from a WHS perspective, being viewed as less prepared to manage WHS and less committed to it than workplaces in other sectors. The lack of time and resources, but also the de-prioritisation of WHS, were the main barriers to good WHS identified by healthcare respondents.
Workers and management share different WHS experiences
The views of the workers with respect to WHS practices in the workplace were generally different to the views of managers and executives. In comparison to respondents in management roles, respondents in worker roles generally felt less aware and less empowered and also perceived their workplaces as being less prepared to manage WHS and less committed to it.
Interestingly, workers' most potential driver for better prioritisation of WHS in their workplace was if it was more valued by workers. Executives were more of the view that WHS could be re-prioritised if it became more financially rewarding or more valued by customers and investors.
WHS considerations in small businesses vs. in large organisations
The Survey indicates more frequent instances of harassment and bullying in small businesses, in comparison to large organisations, with seven out of ten workers experiencing a form of harassment in the last twelve months. In contrast, workers from large organisations were found to experience a higher level of burnout associated with higher job demand.
While workers from small businesses also feel less aware of WHS rights and responsibilities and less empowered to participate in WHS than workers from large organisations, they report a higher level of commitment to WHS from their workplace.
The main barriers to good WHS practice identified in the Survey vary depending on the size of the organisation. On the one hand, workers from large organisations pointed out the lack of time and resources and also the de-prioritisation of WHS in favour of other objectives as the main barriers to good WHS. On the other hand, workers from small businesses identified the limited understanding of the WHS obligations and the limited knowledge of WHS risks and hazards as key issues and flagged that WHS could be best reprioritised if it was more financially rewarding or more valued by customers and investors.
At risk workers
The Survey shows that female-identified and diverse-identified workers (CALD, First Nations Australians, migrants, LGBTQIA+ or disability) felt more vulnerable in the workplace, notably reporting more frequent experiences of harassment and sexual harassment. In addition, diverse-identified workers (CALD, First Nations Australians, migrants, LGBTQIA+ or disability), together with young workers, felt less aware of their and their employer’s WHS rights and responsibilities, as well as less empowered to participate in WHS.