How To Facilitate Effective Psychological Health And Safety Critical Event Reviews

The Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety defines an “incident” as any occurrence or condition that results in, or could have resulted in, injury, illness, or damage. When incidents occur, workplaces typically conduct a “check” (based on the Plan-Do-Check-Act model) into prevention strategies to ensure they are effective and carry out an accident investigation to determine the root cause so steps can be taken to prevent a recurrence.

When incidents cause psychological harm, a critical event review should be conducted. Like an accident investigation, a psychological health and safety (PHS) critical event review will help uncover harmful behaviours and practices that led to the incident.

Specific regulations, like the Canada Labour Code, outline when reviews like these should occur. Below are a few examples:

1. An employee is bullied by colleagues for six months and is forced to take disability leave after a workplace investigation confirmed repeated harassment.

2. An employee faces unresolved conflict over quality control, resulting in a substantial financial loss for the company. Their efforts to maintain psychological safety led them to remain silent, contributing to a serious product issue.

3. A manager is known for shouting during stressful situations. Despite undergoing leadership training, the manager’s behavior drives three employees to resign in search of healthier work environments.

Tips for Facilitating Effective Critical Reviews

Creating a structured plan for conducting PHS critical reviews can yield valuable insights. When tasked with a PHS review, I recommend reinforcing the message that it is an essential process to understand the underlying reasons and contexts for mental harm.

1. Gather evidence: Determine the nature and degree of harm sustained in incidents.
2. Conduct a root cause analysis: Assess policies, procedures, communication, and training designed to prevent such incidents to determine whether they are effective and whether the necessary preventative measures were in place.
3. Learn from findings: Analyze data to identify gaps and determine what needs to change.
4. Develop an action plan: Use the findings from your review to implement corrective actions and identify key performance behaviours to mitigate risks.
5. Measure and monitor: Follow up to ensure that actions and behaviours are having the desired impact and monitor and adjust as needed.

Work as a Team and Use the Tools Available to Achieve Desired Outcomes

The knowledge and skills of facilitators are critically important. Human resource professionals and OHS representatives should work together to ensure efforts are based on occupational health and safety principles and trusted resources, such as the Canadian Standards Association CSA-Z1003 Standard.

Tactics such as document reviews, individual interviews, focus groups, anonymous surveys, and listening tours with structured focus groups can be helpful in investigating factors and events that led to harm.

Create a Culture of Psychological Health and Safety to Mitigate the Risk of Incidents Occurring

Take steps to prevent incidents by supporting employees' psychological well-being:

• Set clear policies and provide training: Reinforce your commitment with respectful workplace policies and provide thorough training to build understanding of acceptable behaviours.

• Develop and implement a conflict resolution framework: Integrate a conflict resolution strategy into your PHS framework, so employees understand how conflict can be managed through the ‘Four Rs’ approach—recognizing, resolving, rewarding, and reinforcing proper conduct.

• Adopt a supportive and safe leadership approach: Adopt a collaborative, trusted leadership approach and avoid command-and-control tactics to promote a culture of psychological safety.

Talk regularly and openly about the policies and expectations you have in place to keep people safe, and remind employees of resources such as Employee and Family Assistance Programs (EFAP) and benefits for psychological support. Monitor to identify and remove any barriers preventing the use of these services.

[See: Mental Harm Prevention Roadmap for a suite of tools and resources to help you implement a psychological health and safety strategy in your workplace.]

With the right culture in place and the use of OHS tools such as plan-do-check-act, accident investigations, and critical event reviews, you can create an environment where employees trust that you take their health and safety seriously. And if harmful incidents occur, they will know you are committed to taking the necessary steps to prevent them from happening again.

Get to know the authors – Dr. Bill Howatt