Corporate governance and business ethics advisory

Psychosocial risk management

As anticipated in recent years, laws to further protect the mental health of workers have been introduced in a number of states across Australia.

We are working with many businesses in diverse industries from construction to professional services to advise on the implementation of psychosocial risk management. Our range of work has spanned:

• hosting workshops to collaboratively work through with our client the approach that will work best for their organisation – what is already covered in their systems, and what new elements are needed
• reviewing client’s existing procedures and making suggestions for improvements 
• drafting new procedures to provide risk registers, standards or procedures, investigation methodology, incident reporting and concern observation notifications 
• board reporting and satisfaction of officer duties to make sure the reporting processes and governance structures enable meaningful information to be provided to the board

Social impact risk arising from serious safety incidents

Over recent years, the expression of community anger and dissatisfaction with the occurrence of serious health and safety incidents, and the perception that organisations and their leaders have not been held sufficiently accountable, has grown. This has led to the introduction of more serious offences including industrial manslaughter, and the use of these offences by regulators. Further, some health and safety regulators have introduced and strengthened specific guidelines covering their interactions with family members of affected workers. The ALP National Platform expressed a commitment to enable unions, workers and their families to bring prosecutions. 

We are mindful of the context of the impact of a serious health and safety incident on various affected communities, and integrate this into our provision of advice. 

Director due diligence obligations 

We regularly advise boards regarding the governance and reporting structures needed to enable satisfaction of their proactive health and safety due diligence duties. Health and safety regulators are regularly testing the governance and reporting structures regarding director obligations when serious health and safety incidents occur. Not having reporting structures in place that enables the provision of meaningful information, including covering broader measures of social impact, to the board, exposes the officers to breach of due diligence duties.