 coming along to what's, I'm sure, going to be a really interesting and important conversation where I'm going to ask these panellists who are two Canadians, one Australian, to cut through the spin on psychological health and safety and help guide us to some insights around delivering practical and implementable health and safety in Australian workplaces. No, Australian, we would all agree, deserves to be harmed at work. In fact, it's their right to be safe. And as professionals, we have all worked very hard over the past few decades to ensure that physical health and safety is a part of the automatic considerations of business. Our challenges in the future are now to ensure that the same appropriate focus is also on psychological health and safety. But Jamie, before we start, maybe we'd better clarify some terminology here. What are we talking about? When we're people talking about stress, what do they mean? Well, stress is, and it's different for everyone. It's very subjective in many respects. But stress means that a person has the experience at whatever, whatever event they're currently experiencing, they perceive it's beyond their capacity to manage or control. So there's a, either they don't have the resources to do what's required, they don't have the knowledge to do what's required, or it's just simply an overwhelming experience. And what is stressful for one person may be simply mildly challenging for another. And Eldine, you know, what's the evidence saying about psychological health and safety? I think no matter what country or what geographical region you're from, you'll see that a lot of the studies are saying that the more that we are affected in a negative way, the more that increases the risk for any type of injury or illness within a work environment. So traditionally, as health and safety professionals, we've often looked at that hard hazard, right? The physical hazard that's in the workplace. Well, the, the hazard, the mental health hazard can increase the risk of being hurt as we interact with that, as well as it can present its own hazard in the work environment that can cause people to become physically ill, can no longer be able to work. So definitely the results all across the geographical regions are saying, the more people are stressed out, the more psychological health issues are not being dealt with, the higher risk for injury and illness, right? And that, and then that affects what we do at home and play and at work, right? So that can have some detrimental, detrimental effects. So one of you, are there some factors we know that are more important than others? Is it context specific? Is it, what's the evidence telling us about what are the psychosocial hazards that are most important? I think a couple that's in my work experience has been role demands and whether they're realistic or not, both in terms of work required and the time limits in which to complete that would be a significant contributing stressor for a lot of people in the work environment. So that's those role demands and those time pressures seem to be almost universal. Yeah. And I think that's definitely on one side of it. You can look at the environmental context of how management manages. And I think then another component is the coworker environment because we can get poisoned work environments where people are experiencing violence or bullying or, and it may come from purposeful willful or in the case of like healthcare, when you're dealing with medically induced situations, you can be, you know, harassed or stressed out by dealing with a patient that has no other alternative but to act that way. So I think that's also another contributing factor is, is, is how people interrelate within the work environment as well. So we're hearing about role overlays and people, relationships with each other and occupational violence taking that any is for you as a regulator that you are seeing as a really common problem, not only in Queensland but across Australia. Yeah, absolutely. I think workplace bullying and harassment. So that comes under the relationships that you spoke about as well as occupational violence. So being exposed to physical assault or that ongoing verbal assault that customer service operators, for example, would experience quite regularly. We're also experiencing an increasing claims around exposure to trauma, whether that be fatalities in the workplace or distressing events in the workplace. And I think that's the primary sort of drivers. And I think that it's unique to the industry sector that you're in, right? So healthcare may have some production demands and then the demands from how they're interacting with their clients, service or retail may be different, manufacturing more be a production focus. And I think that's why it's so important to have the right program components in place before you do anything. You have to assess where you're at and what's causing the stress or the negative psychological affects. Is it a, is it something that someone's also bringing from home? Because that can affect how we react or what we choose to do or not to do within a work environment. So assessment of individual workplaces is key to find out what can actually contribute to that situation so that you can put the right components in place. And the new National Guide that we've got really clearly articulates those nicely in terms of role clarity, job demands, time pressures, issues around relationships, but also you would know more than me, Peter, some of those reward and recognition. Yeah. Yeah. So I guess that's a long list of potential hazards that businesses need to look at. So how do they work out which ones are relevant that are context specific for them? Perhaps I might go to you, Jamie. Well, I think it starts with, and I'll be very careful not to get too evangelical about this. I think it starts with leadership. And you know, it's not surprising that we've been hearing over the last two days, the importance of leadership in terms of occupational health and safety. I believe it's the same for mental health as well that leaders have a huge impact on terms of managing wellness within a work environment. They have a huge influence. And I think if there was one message I could say is, I think I like to say there's a difference between knowing something and getting it. And I think every leader probably knows that they obviously have an impact and influence their people. But I don't think people really get just to what degree that they can influence. And one of the things that I think leaders need to do when trying to assess what's posing the greatest risk mental health risk for their people or psychological safety is just talking and really listening and really trying to appreciate that it from your observation as a leader, it may be quite different from how people in the front line experience that. And I think one of the things we were talking about previously, and I'll be very brief about this is oftentimes not always, but oftentimes, particularly more senior leaders, one of the reasons why they've been able to progress to that role is that they have either through just good genes or through good skill development along the way have learned to cope with high levels of stress, maybe high levels of uncertainty. And therefore, there's a tendency for them to assume that well, the way I'm experiencing this picture challenge must be the way that my people are experiencing it. And that is not necessarily the case at all. And so being willing to actually have conversations with people about how are they feeling, what's working well, what's working less well, and really being able to hear and listen to what they what they have to say would be a starting point. So is there something that you've so I'm hearing leadership is an issue, but what other ways are there is to actually for businesses to hone in on what are the key issues in their workplaces? I think it's just like any other safety initiative or program that you're taking within your work environment, finding the right assessment tools is necessary to be able to ask the questions and at times in a confidential way, because otherwise people, especially if there's some already anxiety and stress and some pressures, they may not feel confident to, to say in front of a group or a focus group, yeah, I'm having some trouble or I don't like how I'm being communicated with and it's increasing my stress levels is finding that right assessment tool and method that's there. And so I've seen everything from survey monkey type online paper surveys. I've seen where some organizations have brought in outside to do one on one interviews on a variety of levels. So it's finding the right tool and determining the right questions. Because that's important to how you ask them can either increase or decrease stress. Have you ever taken one of those tests where you're like, Oh, if I don't answer this right, what's the right question, I'm gonna have to live with something I really didn't want. Oh, no. Right. So I think, you know, that's that's the right ways finding the right assessment tool, the right, the right approach, the right questions, based upon the objectives that you want to achieve to achieve. And that's to identify what are the hazards that are within the work environment. And what are the other factors that influence that individual that affects the work environment. So there may be some questions about home or. And again, you have to ensure that there's a certain privacy. Yeah, yeah. So Tegan, I know that Queensland led the way with some practical tools around helping employers in what might seem a kind of confusing space. So I wondered if you can share with us, what are some of the practical tools that are out there? Yeah, over a 10 year period, we've been developing what's called the people at work tool. So that's a freely available tool that's available on our website. You can download that and you can use it within your organization. Now it is manual, but at the same time you can implement it and put it into things like Survey Monkey. But it is a validated tool. It's reliable and it does ask some really good questions around each of these risk factors or hazards that are outlined in the National Guide as well as our mentally healthy workplaces toolkit. Yeah, so I understand it's got demand and control and support and organisation change. Yes, absolutely. And I also noticed which goes back to, I guess, our opening statement that I made which was around physical hazards as well, is that it picks up some issues around fatigue and MSD and burnouts as well. Yeah, so it's got some outcome issues. A couple of questions around sleeping, fatigue, those sorts of things, definitely. But it's something that you would incorporate in your whole risk management approach. So when you are trying to understand what those hazards are and the level of risk, you can use a tool like that. But then again afterwards, having those focus groups or having one-on-one interviews with the staff to really understand the context. So the survey results might show you that workload is high, but being able to have those focus groups or interviews will tell you what is high, what is it about the context that people are feeling that their workload is high. So I guess since we are looking at you at the moment is that what is it that you, as a regulator, you expect if your inspectors are going in to workplaces, what is reasonably practical mean and how are you going to see where that's actually being achieved? Yeah, as the regulator we expect that an organisation has a system of work in place that is very much like their physical system, that psychosocial hazards are incorporated into that and that psychosocial hazards are identified, assessed and controlled to a way that's reasonably practicable. So what our inspectors would be doing is looking for documentation or evidence of a system and that it's actually effective in working and they may be asking for documentation then around data like absenteeism and injury rates and injury reports, hazard reports and those sorts of things. So we were having some conversations before today about what's reasonably practical mean and that's what the regulator says but we've heard that leadership has a really important role. What is the system, what's a work system? We as health and safety professionals get roles of our own, design a good design of work and work systems. What's that actually mean in practice for ordinary businesses? We've created a Canadian standard, one of the first countries to actually put together a voluntary standard that helps support a safety management system component. So it's based upon all the elements of what you'd have in a normal safety management system for every physical hazard that's there but it just looks at it within the psychological hazard aspect of it and it actually is a standard that's now going to be the base for a brand new initiative with ISO. ISO is going to take the Canadian CSA standard, create a committee system like they did for 45,000 and one and start to put together more of a global voluntary standard. So that's kind of exciting. So that'll supplement the 45. Yeah on that topic specific just like you'd use 30,000 for risk management and you'd use it so it would help support going forward but it basically outlines the same components that are there but again leadership assessment hazard and risk assessment based upon the hazard and risk assessment what are the components the training the education that's necessary what roles and responsibilities is it of the worker of the supervisor of middle management of the senior executive team and how do they play within that has has been outlined within that that standard and to me would reflect what you would put into any safety management system no matter what geographical location you were from. So I think that's going to really be a bit of a game changer that's for big business though and people with health and safety professionals to help them is it? Well that's what people often think is oh yeah if I want to use you know the 45,000 and one it has to be a big business there's no small and medium aspect to it. One of the things that I liked about the Canadian standards is that we only have like a few big businesses right and they're really big and then everybody else is small mom and pop on entrepreneurial enterprises and some medium ones that are there so often when we look at our standards we we don't target just the big dogs that get to play but how it can apply it's just that the sliding scale to what you implement how technical you get how what documents and what kind of resources you may put to it every organization needs to outline roles and responsibilities they may be different when you have five or six or seven or eight different layers versus when you are a small organization and there's two or maybe three but you still need to outline who does what within that program aspect that's there so you can still use the document it's just a bit of a sliding rule that's there. Training what I want to do for training for a supervisor or owner of a company would probably be fairly similar it's just going to just be a little bit different in range and and how much resources they get versus versus a larger organization. Before I come back to you and ask you to kind of share that story about leadership which I wouldn't want to lose I'm just interested in terms of the regulators in terms of that term that we so often hear about reasonably practicable but in terms of how you go in and have a proportional response as a responsive regulator to a mom and dad fish shop you know fish and chip shop initiative and what would it what does it look like in terms of what your expectations are for for a company with 50 versus five. Yeah as we are a responsive regulator so we often do look to what is the level of exposure so what are the consequences of the risk and the likelihood of that occurring and then we work with that term reasonably practical to understand what should they be doing and in the circumstances or the type of business they have what is reasonable for them in those circumstances so it's hard to say exactly what that would look like because every business is different every industry is different but our inspectors are upskilled to understand how to assess that and how to look at it. And I understand there's quite a lot of work going on behind the scenes with the regulators to be nationally consistent about how they actually apply the expectations around this. A few of the gentlemen this morning spoke about houses so that's the heads of workplace safety authorities and that's a group that we meet nationally we've got two groups in the psychological health space one is from the engagement perspective so how do we engage organizations around this topic of mentally healthy workplaces but from the inspector perspective it's about building their capability and their capacity. So we've been doing a lot of work on developing audit tools and training and just upskilling our inspectorate in this space. So traditionally if an inspectors come to your workplace you may have seen that they might have primarily walked through the procedures with you and perhaps say focus more on bullying but now we're giving them more skills and education and training around how to look at a holistic psychological health and safety management system and to give guidance and advice around that. So even your even your physical inspectors? Yes for us in Queensland it's all of our inspectors we do not have dedicated psychosocial inspectors we have generalists. So I know you're very passionate about the role of leaders in driving change but you've also told me a salutary tale about leaders and personalities and how that can be an issue or not. So can you kind of just explain for us about the role of leaders? Well I've experienced this doing coaching on more than a few occasions where a leader is it's not that they're lacking empathy but they genuinely struggle to try and understand why people are not coping as well as they perceive that they should and I think part of it comes down to just that their own capacity as I said earlier to deal with stress to work long hours to be very very task focused to be very self driven is something that they don't necessarily are there all their people share that same level and so there's there's a sort of a disconnect and because there's a fundamental perception on the part of the leaders going well they just and it's not again it's not a lack of empathy but it's more of a curiosity it's more like they just need to harden up you know I've been through this myself and you know in one of the talks I sat in this morning we're talking about the importance of emotional intelligence. I think I go back to my point about leaders have a big influence over their team you have a big influence over how people experience their work and I'm not talking about that you need to go around and give people hugs and tell them that they're beautiful people but understanding that everything from how you manage your stress how you deal with disappointments how you respond to setbacks is role modeling to your team how they should respond and under the banner of emotional contagion you know the mood that you're in as as a leader will set the tone for the mood that your people are in and so oftentimes it's about helping leaders understand people may actually experience it different than you are and we go back to our my point about it's important to try and be curious to really get a sense of well how how are people experiencing this why do you find this particular situation a challenging and stressful so that's what brings us to one of the issues is that uh I think Elbin was challenging me with last night that people can be part of the hazard too yeah I and I I think it's kind of to speak to your your point a bit is is that leaders sometimes again don't have the tools or skills to deal with it because they've hardened up right they they've just said I'm gonna do this I'm going forward and that's that's a tool they've used to survive and and to thrive uh which doesn't work for everyone else so I think the other aspect of them having difficulty in approaching things is that they don't have the skills then to interact with the individuals that are having the problems to be able to talk to them about it or to give them any tips and then there's that fear in them that if they say something wrong because yeah okay I'm now not reacting properly that's not giving them a good fun and fuzzy now if I say something wrong which sometimes they do now is making it worse and so I rather say nothing at all or not participate in it because of that fear base that's there so that's where we have to support anyone who we see in a leadership position in a role in the organization whether it's the one owner and three workers at the fish shop or the a hundred employee with the supervisor manager and senior leader to give them those those skills to be able to be empathetic to be able to be self-regulatory so they're not saying things that are inappropriate and that they can give good advice or ask the right questions within the environment so that's the supervase I would say the other element that goes to that is oftentimes the leaders themselves are just as stressed as everyone else they just have their own sources of stress and so you've got people who are not coping trying to support people who are not coping yeah in fact I've seen some work by Michelle Tucky we're up to 90 percent when she's basically done a causal analysis 90 percent of the bullying behavior can be tracked back to the pressure pressures that people are under so we're sort of skirting around one of the sensitive issues here is that when employees have psychological issues they can behave badly too can't they so what about when our own individual vulnerabilities and how how big how much does an employer have to actually feel like they need to take responsibility in fact that I might be a sleep deprived grandmother so for us it's all about the systems of work that they have in place so thinking about that idea of a continuum what we say is that on any one day you will have people that will come in with signs of stress or signs of distress or fatigue and those sorts of issues but it's how does your system capture those people and support them and we talk about an idea of it's based on Tony Lamontage's model having a system in place that not only promotes good practices in regards to mental health and that's things like are you okay today and mental health week for example but prevention from a risk management perspective understanding how to identify assess and control those hazards and having an effective risk management approach around that and then being able to intervene early so once someone does show those signs of stress fatigue having ways to capture that and to be able to support that individual and then lastly if they do happen to have an injury illness being able to support them to recovery so it's more so about the system and being able to support them as far as reasonably practical and that's the other From you as a regulator you see there's a limit toward the employee might too I know Elden you're an advocate for better practice so where does that leave off It's difficult for some workers to trust right to be able to say I've just had a child they're callicky they've been crying every night haven't slept very well because they're worried that the supervisor or the manager or the company is going to say we can only tolerate that so long that you know we can have we can have excuses for a period of time but there's a undo hardship that comes into play now larger organizations can often take more of that but if you're one person in a five man team and then you don't want to let anybody down and you don't want to give other pressure and then that increases your stress and pressure because you feel like you're letting your teammates down and your teammates feel like they've been holding up the ball for you for now too long and they exert pressure and it gets to be a big ball that's in there so again you need to have a system in place to support that otherwise that kind of just keeps but what does that system look like and it could be different for every organization that's I hate cookie cutter programs right for three nine three payments of nine ninety nine you two can take this name out put your name in and this will work for you it there is no one size that fits all especially with psychological health and that's why assessment is so important an example of one organization that I thought did an amazing job where they sort of integrated or assimilated their physical hazard and the psychological hazard because sometimes me coming to work in the state that I am in I'm the hazard I could be harmful to myself and to other people by what I choose to do or not to do especially when I interact with the physical hazards within my environment like a crane or a plane yeah yeah and so this happened to be a power generation company in in Canada and they're doing some amazing things under their psychological health and mindfulness and programs and such but one of the things that they do is they do a risk assessment before they do any project and especially with the high hazard activities and they ask about the physical you know it's a normal risk assessment that we all have the conversation with and they do it with them themselves at times small groups with a supervisor and it asks what are the physical hazards are they controlled you know do I have the right tools to do the job and then it's then it asks is there any type of psychosocial hazards that are there yeah we're doing this work in the hood I don't know that's what we call bad areas back home right it's going to be in a bad area and I'm going to set up so I'm really worried because the last time we worked there somebody was attacked or I've you know the dog took my bank account and my truck and they're gone and I'm really stressed out and where they can have that conversation in a very safe environment a very courageous environment so that they can say you know what maybe today you shouldn't be doing this job maybe but you know and here's our EFAP program and here have you but again that can't be just you know here's your new check sheet now go do this it has to have that system that's set up around it so that everyone's supported to have the right conversations and use the right tools I noticed you throw you put in some comments there about wellness and well-being and I think we should actually talk about that because this is one of the issues about well what what does the evidence say about what's effective and what's not and I know that you are sharing with me some of the the literature that's said around cognitive behavioral therapy if you're going to do something absolutely so things like if you're doing stress management training for your people you want to make sure that it's evidence-based and generally speaking if cognitive behavioral therapy techniques are included in the stress management it's it's probably going to be reasonably effective I know that there's some was reading some research on things like anti-bullying campaigns can be very helpful I think one of the things getting back to sort of conflicts or threats in the workplace that unresolved conflicts amongst peers or between a leader and a follower can be one of the highest sources of stress for people that they can become overwhelming quite quickly mindfulness training those sorts of things can be very useful in helping people learn to cope a little bit better I think one of the the key things with training whether we're talking about well-being or we're talking about safety as well though is really trying to understand that just because you share some information with people does not guarantee that they're going to an active and this is where everything from messages systems that are in place to support people for example lunch breaks where people can do a little bit practice their mindfulness whatever it might be or they're encouraged to go for a walk that their systems in place to encourage this and I go back to my my point about leaders walking to talk with this as well that again I think one of the under the banner of role modeling leaders who are proactively looking after themselves sends a strong message one of my leaders heads to the gym at lunch time every day and under the banner of looking after himself and that sense of message how do we balance though not going back to the whole blame the worker and issue deep and they focus on the individual because that's what I'm so worried about is that resiliency training or training that's targeted at the worker is going to be our new PPE right is if we slap that on them then they're going to be safe and it's kind of up to them and really and the hierarchy of our controls that training is kind of down here we have to be looking at some of the systemic issues that are around it and deal with and control those as well so that's one of the things that I've been seeing and that really worry me is that we're just going to focus on that and that's what we do with our people and then it's done oh we're doing something or we phone the company up next door and say what training package are you using and we just use the same one and it may not be for our individuals and yeah it really perpetuates that idea of that it's an individual issue and that's what concerns me is that the organization doesn't have a responsibility the individual has a responsibility somehow it's because they're inherently weak yeah yeah and it sort of blurs the lines for employers and what their actual role is and what their obligations are so by kind of selling these individual programs which is great because they are good things but they need to be part of a bigger system of work that focuses on the individual team and organizational level controls and as safety professionals I think it's going to be important that how we communicate that as well too because you're always going to have a certain amount of the workplace audience that says you know what this is none of your business you know go away I don't want to talk to you about it I'm handling it just fine and I don't want to participate in the programs and or see it as an evasion of their privacy and so how we look at the bigger wellness programs of you know what's your blood pressure and and all that I think we have to be just as sensitive with this if not more so at times to how people are going to react and be able to have the skill set as safety professionals and practitioners to communicate effectively what the program is all about and and what those levels are and be able to address people's concerns on all levels whether it's the worker I don't want to say too much next thing you know I'm going to be fired or if I say too much it's going to be the next new rumor whether it's a supervisor saying I don't want to say the wrong thing and then he does go out and kill himself or you know whoever it may be I think we have to have tools in our toolkit to be able to put the program together and to be able to talk about it effectively so do you need to be an organizational psych to do this stuff it'll help everyone did a psychology degree organizational psych to hear that yeah we're not biased or anything yeah yeah so do you I mean if if we're meant to be incorporating looking at psychosocial hazards as part of a holistic system of dealing with it are we actually making this too complicated for people I think we need some education and in it I don't think we should say hey this is what I want to do if if I was going to go out and do a confined space entry program I wouldn't want to do that without having some knowledge and and base within it or scaffolding program or so forth I need to have some background not saying that you have to become a psychologist within it but definitely understanding the process and the and the components and I guess that kind of brings me to that there is some courses that are out there in different geographical locations and different universities that are putting on to say if you were going to put this program in place this is what you would need to do again in Canada they've just started a certificate program for managers people who are the champions of this program within their workplace that they can take online through the University of Frederickton that says this is how you would assess these are the components that are there these are the things that you need to take a look at and they actually then have a center of excellence see that will support with background information and extra information that you may need to have within it and then that's their advanced program and then they have ones for managers and supervisors and so forth just like we'd say the manager needs to have some training in education and the worker does I think as safety professionals we should be attending professional development conferences like this taking some courses if this is going to be an area of our responsibility and I think you as the regulator would tell us that we all need to be completely across the psychosocial hazards that may actually be impacting other areas that we might consider around our specialty definitely we've got the core skills around identifying, assessing and managing risks it's just about understanding that in the context of psychosocial safety and there's enough guidance out there there's definitely training programs like you've spoken about but I'd hate to say that you have to be an organizational psychologist to do this type of work because you know we talk to our inspectors quite often that they've got that skill base it's just upskilling themselves in this particular area in terms of what the controls are and what the most suitable controls are and then what the hazards are and of course under the due diligence requirements are a person conducting a business or on taking a ploy you might use that term actually it's an obligation to know what's going on in their business and what are the hazards and risks so they can't just say oh I'll leave it to a specialist that I'll call in I think there's a worry out there I know that it's in Canada and it may be here in Australia as well is that this is a new program and initiative right this is going to be something that's new but yet it's been in our legislation forever and a day that you're to take care of the physical social and mental well-being of your employees and so a lot of people are seeing this as a new thing on the landscape as well and and it's not it's already a part of what's regulated it's already a part of what we need to do it's just I think now we're starting to build up our tools and our resources to be able to support that kind of program and initiative in our workplace the one thing that does worry me is that we still in certain workplaces are not good at the physical hazards and and that that doesn't have sometimes a lot of people in it it doesn't have the emotionality around it it's going to be so much harder for us when it is with that people factor right when I can't put a guard on a piece of equipment how can I help someone who's suicidal all right it's and and that's a bit of a worry last night when we were chatting you you were saying it's actually about having reasonable conversations in a reasonable way absolutely I think that first of all I would say and I understand when you've got leaders particularly frontline leaders who are already feeling completely overwhelmed and overworked that when it comes to things like asking them to be a little bit more vigilant not just about physical safety but about mental health safety leaders again who are not trying to be uncaring but just kind of say well where am I going to find the time to do this say I don't have the skills be it's an area I feel completely uncomfortable with and see just why don't they just harden up and I think one of the things it gets back to is I believe in terms of what I've seen on a day-to-day basis the really good leaders who are keeping their people safe whether it's from physical hazards or psycho-emotional they seem to have the capacity to demonstrate care they have the capacity to be willing to genuinely listen I heard a I guess it's a little bit of a clever statement but I on the radio a couple months back someone asked the question what's the opposite of talking any idea what it is listening it's waiting to talk that for most of us our definition of listening is developing a counter response and I think that when we get really good at listening which is really trying to both hear what people are trying to say to us and actually pay attention to how they're acting oftentimes people are communicating to us in ways already that we just need to tune into it and again it's not about being a psychologist but I think it is about being willing to be brave and have conversations going I'm not very good at this sort of stuff but help me understand how are you traveling how are you feeling and what is it seems to be contributing to that and is there anything that that I can do or saying look I'm really lousy at this sort of stuff but you know it looks like maybe you need to you know maybe maybe want to chat with somebody here's here's our REAP number but I think it's about being brave and being willing to be a little bit uncomfortable to at least ask the questions the other thing that I would say and I always say this from a whether we're talking about OHS or whether we're talking about mental health taking care of people is your number one job and again under the banner of leadership and again these terms we use this morning about transactional and transformational I think if fundamental leadership development was helping people understand more about this or our job yes we have to make sure that we're checking the boxes and producing what we need to produce and we need to be looking after our people and developing our people and yes there's certain skill sets that go with that you have a situation where people are more likely to speak up you have a situation where leaders are more likely to be a little bit more tuned in and it starts from senior leaders though because if you want your frontline leaders to be engaging with their team they need to be engaged by their managers and so on and so forth I'm aware we're coming to an end so one of the things that I'd like to do is to ask you about some take home messages for us all from about this topic and so perhaps starting with you Tegan what are some take homes that you'd like about pushing through the spin to actually get to the core issues I think it's about remembering this idea of the continuum the mental health continuum and developing your systems around that looking for guidance on our website so we have recently developed a mentally healthy workplaces toolkit it is the first of its kind from a regulator so that's just a little bit of a plug there but it is true that it's it's really a practical tool that has everything that you need so we got a lot of feedback from industry that they were struggling to understand what is evidence based and where do they go for these type of resources being able to bring it all together in one place so I would suggest if you hadn't had a chance to look at that look at that as well as the national guide because that really provides the foundation for everything that you need in this space so cutting through this beam what do you think this been I think as safety professionals we need to look at what are the tools in our toolbox as well and what the tools that we give individuals in the organization from frontline all the way up to senior leadership to be able to implement a fully developed system to deal with the issues that are there so I think that part of it is on us to ensure that we have the information that's necessary may not become the psychologist but the information that's necessary to build the system and give the support to the people who are responsible within the work environment whether it's small mom and pop or a large organization last thing I'd say is this year alone three million people will experience mental well mental health issues related to anxiety and depression two million with anxiety one million with depression another 25% on top of that will go undiagnosed as leaders it's not a question of if you encounter one of your team members that may be experiencing mental illness it's likely a question of when this is important and again under the banner of using the systems that are in place or in some cases maybe demanding a system be put in place to support you to support your people because again I believe that's your number one priority as a leader is looking after your team one that came to me as you were talking and that I'd noted earlier was we're talking about resilience but what's the difference between personal and organizational resilience because I'm hearing those terms used interchangeably a lot but I believe that they're different perhaps I might start with you LD thanks thanks well I think organizations often are set up to be more resilient because it's a part of their planning right as as you know if something's going to happen in their organization that causes stress on it whether it's a national a natural disaster or whether it is a sales issue or marketing issue they often have already identified some of the hazards the risks and put some controls in place to be able to withstand those types of things where so it's a business resilience yeah it's a real business resilience aspect to it we're on an individual basis we often don't have that built in one of our close family members is killed in an accident or we suffer a loss or something else traumatic happens in our life and it just stops us we haven't a plan in place most often we haven't thought about that because we don't want to think about it and again some people are hardened enough that they can just kind of go and go on and others don't have that or the tools to cope with it so I think it's a real different scale that's there and to me that's the biggest differences is the planning and the system in place so the one thing that would add to that is that on an individual definition resilience is it's not about being bulletproof or not getting knocked down but it is this capacity to be able to pick yourself back up and they oftentimes now using language not just bounce back but bounce forward some people seem to have this ability that when they take a hit there's very much it's very much experienced almost as a as a learning experience and I appreciate that when they're in the midst of it it's not necessarily a learning experience but they they move forward and and learn whatever lessons they need to so they're they're stronger the next time out one of the things from an organizational resilience is is about this ability for an organization to again take a take a hit and be able to bounce back and there is an interesting connection from an organizational to individual resilience those organizations that seem to be most resilient to changing economic conditions and such require a great deal of adaptability and the ability to make changes fairly quickly to do that they need people who are good at change and who are good at adapting and to be good at adapting at an individual level you need to be able to again to have some resilience and be able to manage stress and be able to manage uncertainty you also need to not be overworked and have that yeah absolutely and know that there's times when we're in the change we're going to be working well that begs another question about pressure and stress but yeah being able to respond to the times when when you really need to put in the hours for example but also knowing that there's going to be an end point to that and that you're going to have some recovery time as well all right I think we've probably come to the end of our time if there's no questions from the audience I'd like to thank our panelists for coming along and talking today and being part of Safe Work Australia's virtual seminars yeah thank you