National Surveillance of Psychosocial Factors at Work; Results from the Australian Workplace Barometer

At the 2nd International Commission on Occupational Health (ICOH) in 2005 at Okayama, Japan, a roundtable of 29 international experts unanimously agreed that Australia required a national psychosocial surveillance system to measure and monitor workplace psychosocial risks and their impact on the health of working Australians.  The Australian Workplace Barometer was launched in February 2009, and is sponsored by several Australian Research Council grants, and grants from Safework SA and Safe Work Australia. Project partners from around the world worked together to develop the Australian Workplace Barometer (AWB) based on new and well-known psychometric scales.  The AWB measures a wide range of worker demographics, job demands, job, resources, productivity and health outcomes.  It has been used to collect data from approximately 5000 Australians from six states and territories, across all industries and occupations.  The results have given a deeper understanding of psychosocial safety climate and its role as a precursor to psychosocial risks, including hazardous behaviour such as workplace bullying, work demands, and work resources, and its effects in turn on psychological health and engagement  It provides the first recorded national prevalence rates of bullying and harassment in Australia as well as new data on the issue of work-family conflict.  The results generate insights into gender and age and relationships with psychosocial risk factors and outcomes.  The research has enabled a number of interesting international comparisons and greater knowledge about the influence of psychosocial risk factors on worker productivity and health outcomes within Australia and around the world.