Got survey fatigue? Its a pretty good indication of workplace culture issues and PsychoSocial Risks

People often think a culture has to be 'toxic' before you can say there are work environment cultural issues. If you aren't being bullied everyday while your boss ignores you, cultural workplace issues do not apply to your workplace. This couldn't be further from the truth. What most people don't recognise is that it's usually a very long road to this state of rife 'toxic workplace'. And before that, many years of cultural micro-issues, which are exactly what psychosocial risks are, have gone unchecked, unmanaged, unrecognised, growing to cumulative long term problems where toxic issues become the norm. And all the whilst people have slowly, unconsciously been normalised to these growing cultural misalignments.

Whether it's engagement, psychosocial risks, burnout, organisational commitment, bullying, or all of the above, surveys that no one wants to fill out, the predominant underlying cause is usually workplace culture issues.

Often we hear workplaces say 'we have 80% survey engagement'. Then you go in a discover they are forcing people to participate, getting false data due to everyone answering 'average' down the middle, so they take away this option, and get even more skewed data. Implementing wrong strategies. Employees see no fixes, because the wrong issue is being implemented on with wrong strategies, they lose trust in leadership, disengage more from work and the organisation. Managers throw more surveys at them because they aren't seeing improvements with 'forced 80%' surveys. Force people to participate. And to add to all these cultural issues, they use in-house developed surveys that are not actually measuring anything real, or implementing and identifying actual problems. And so the cycle of survey fatigue is exasperated into a down hill cycle till the work environment is eventually toxic.

This is especially true for PsychoSocial Risks. The legal requirement for all workplaces to prevent and mitigate. It can often take years before the outcomes of psychosocial and cultural risks becomes evident. By then the harm done is deeper and wider. Psychosocial risks are fluid, cumulative and numerous, each at varying levels of risk and change through time. Simply doing Risk assessments and surveys does not prevent harm or meet the legal requirements of Psychosocial Risk Management. PsychoSocial Harm Prevention can only be sustained on a supported Healthy Culture.

Psychosocial Risks Assessments alone, which only fulfils about 20% of legal requirements, do not fulfil legal requirements and can not Prevent Harm. And especially crucial here, is getting the right expertise in place. Throwing repeated surveys here will especially be a hard cycle to get out of, whilst employees get more and more fatigued and are unwilling to answer them honestly, or at all.

When a Healthy Culture is in place, employees generally have more discretionary efforts (mental capacity) available, and are more willing, to help the organisation, and their colleagues & self, by accurately providing positive, and negative feedback, via surveys or any other form. They trust their workplace and are willing to provide honest feedback. Allowing accurate decision making and implementation, in the right areas. Saving revenue. Saving Risks. Establishing sustained healthy workplaces.

When cultural issues, which are a signifiant cause of and so go hand-in-hand with psychosocial risks existing, start becoming part of the long term landscape, people use more and more of their mental power to try and work around it, ignore it, cope with it, or sometimes, fight it, mostly subconsciously. They have less and less energy to do their job properly, and have less and less will to stay with the company. Hence high turnover, sick leave, errors, risks.

Often unhealthy cultures exist simply because people don't realise it's broken in the first place, not because they don't care or want it to, or find it acceptable to be subpar. It's simply a lack of transparency, and expertise on what to look for.

Culture is the long term landscape. It comes from attitudes, communication, actions, reactions, and a whole lot more. It does not come from policies, certificates and lists of psychosocial risks that are ticked or not. These are all outcomes of a Culture. And takes real expertise to correct. And more importantly, sustain.

Establishing a Healthy Workplace takes real expertise, across multidisciplinary requirements. Org. Psych, Risk Management, Operational excellence, Human Factors. Trying to silo surveys and fixes is increasing risk & increasing cultural issues

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The author is a sought after key-note speaker, consultant, Thought Leader and Expert in the field across Organisational Psychosocial Risk Management, Wellbeing, Engagement, Resilience, Leadership and Culture. She is an International Speaker and has presented and spoken at varying conferences and summits, including the World Congress for Health and Safety as an Expert Speaker with EnableOrg? showcased as an Innovator in the field.

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Ranjeeta has had a career spanning organisational governance, development and risk management. She has worked across Clinical, Public and Private sector industries in UK, Australia and NZ. She has been an expert panel member for JAS-ANZ Auditor development, is a Lead Auditor for Health & Safety, Quality, contracts Compliance & Conformance, a BSI Executive ISO trainer across several varying Standards, an Executive Coach and is a current Board Director.

She is founder of EnableOrg? - Benchmark SaaS. Leading experts in Psychosocial Risk, Mental Health & Healthy Culture EnableOrg? s’ Lead-indicator, integrated software helps you identify, correct, prevent and manage workplace psychosocial & wellbeing risks, for a sustainable, long term mental health, healthy culture and healthy engaged, employees.

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