Safety at work: addressing psychosocial risk

Work-related psychological injuries are on the rise in Australia, with workers compensation claims due to mental health conditions increasing by 37% between 2018 and 2022.¹ Staff in frontline roles – such as life insurance claims – are particularly susceptible, due to the challenges that come with regularly dealing with members in distressing personal circumstances. So how can organisations better identify and address the risks their employees face to build a more resilient and supportive workplace culture? 

What is psychosocial risk?

Working in a frontline role such as life insurance claims is both rewarding and challenging. TAL’s claims consultants help members who are going through some of the most difficult times in their lives, and provide essential support and guidance when members need it most. But this also exposes our teams to a number of psychosocial hazards.

Psychosocial risk refers to work-related stress factors that can impact the mental and physical health of workers. This can severely affect the morale and wellbeing of individuals and teams, as well as having broader implications for the organisation in terms of productivity and service quality.

With recent changes to work health and safety legislation, organisations now need to think more deeply about the psychosocial wellbeing of their staff, as well as their physical wellbeing. The reforms differ from state to state, but they’re broadly about making sure that organisations and their executive boards understand the hazards their people face, and ensure the right controls are in place to minimise those hazards and their impacts.

Understanding the challenges

At TAL, we recently undertook a project to identify the main psychosocial hazards faced by our claims consultants, so we could identify any gaps and explore opportunities for improvement.

During the discovery phase, we spoke to team members and leaders, risk specialists and external partners to gain insights into the most common risks and their impacts. We also analysed indicators like absenteeism, staff turnover, complaints and employee engagement scores.

Through this process, we identified the types of risks that are most frequently reported by our claims teams. These fall into three key themes, which all strongly correlate with negative health outcomes:

1. Vicarious trauma and compassion fatigue – the cumulative effect of regularly hearing stories of pain and grief from members who are making a claim.
2. Customer violence and aggression – often resulting from the distress of a member following an illness or injury, or the death of a loved one.
3. Job demands and workload – due to team members going the extra mile to support members following a claim, which may involve dealing with a range of third parties.

We also explored how these themes interrelate. For example, if a member behaves aggressively, it can exacerbate the claims consultant’s vicarious trauma. And if a claims consultant is overstretched by their workload, it could make the member more likely to become aggressive if their expectations aren't met.

Solutions for a safer workplace

Once we’d identified these risk factors, we developed a range of integrated processes, tools and training to support our teams.

We’re now using AI voice analytics software to analyse the tone, sentiment and keywords of member phone calls and flag instances of aggression or threats of self-harm. Since its implementation, we’ve flagged up to 20 calls a month where members refer to suicidal ideation or intent. Where these references are identified, the calls are classified as high risk. By monitoring their frequency and severity, we can provide the right support and intervention for team members when they receive these types of calls – as well as supporting the members themselves.

Our risk indicator dashboard tracks other potential hazards such as caseload volumes and out-of-hours work, which has helped with workforce planning and cross-team load sharing. We’ve also reviewed our work design to find opportunities for minimising manual tasks and automating processes to reduce the burden on our staff and improve our service to members.

Although it’s still early days, we’ve already received excellent feedback from our teams since implementing the changes. As we continue monitoring the results and make additional improvements, we’ll share further details and provide guidance on how our partners can support your own frontline teams.

1. Safe Work Australia, Psychological health and safety in the workplace, February 2024.