
The evidence base for OSH leading indicators
Establishing what is known about how leading indicators improve safety
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The report, 'The Impact of Covid-19 on Psychological Wellbeing in Occupational Contexts', is available to download on the Nottingham Trent University (NTU) website.
The importance of maintaining a focus on psychological wellbeing within the workplace has long been established, with numerous studies outlining the costs to both employee and employer associated with psychological challenges in the work environment. This understanding has led to greater integration of the wellbeing agenda, albeit with a greater focus on physical rather than mental health and wellbeing. The slower uptake of mental health and wellbeing interventions in part being driven by the complexity of the issue and the lack of a clear implementation roadmap.
However, the importance and impact of mental wellbeing was brought into focus with the onset of the COVID-19 global pandemic as individuals and organisations struggled to respond to myriad changes in the workplace and society as a whole. We wanted to see what consequences COVID-19 had on the psychological wellbeing agenda in both the short and long term, with a specific focus on the link between mental health and safety culture in the workplace.
The Foundation has long championed the importance of mental health and wellbeing and identified the strong association between these and a robust safety culture at the industry and organisation level. Numerous studies have proposed pathways or frameworks for implementation; however, COVID-19 has significantly changed the work environment. There is therefore an urgent need to understand how COVID-19 changed organisational responses during the pandemic, but also how the pandemic might shape future policy implementation and frameworks.
We commissioned researchers at Nottingham Trent University (NTU) to build on their prior research for the Foundation by interviewing relevant experts and performing a Rapid Evidence Assessment of current research and practice trends in the literature across several sectors, but with a particular focus on seafarers’ mental health and wellbeing in the face of COVID-19, and specific issues such as the ‘crew change crisis’. The full report is available from the NTU website.
The authors identified several trends from their research:
The authors suggest two broad themes for future implementation:
To support the above processes the authors created two resources; firstly, a maturity framework to provide clarity on current implementations and suggest routes to improvement. Sitting alongside is a key concepts toolkit which can be used to spark open conversations between organisations and employees based on a common terminology and understanding.
COVID-19 has significantly changed the workplace, with a major change being improved understanding of mental health and wellbeing at both the individual and organisational level. As such occupational health and safety should become a central pillar of responsible organisations working to protect and improve all aspects of physical and mental wellbeing, rather than simply a reactive or preventive approach to prevent harm.
This research forms part of the Foundation’s ongoing work to establish the relationship between psychological wellbeing and safety, and to support psychological health being as much a part of the practice of Occupational Safety and Health as physical health, particularly in the maritime industry. To further these aims, the Foundation is convening the industry to strengthen the evidence (and its use) of ‘what works’ in improving the psychological wellbeing and safety of seafarers. It is also exploring ways in which NTU can further support organisations (from any sector) to use the tools provided in this report to affect positive change, and to nurture a ‘community of practice’ among individual employees working across a variety of roles, organisations and sectors.
To find out more, please contact [email protected]