WARNING: This episode refers to sexual harassment and occupational psychosocial risks – we advise listener discretion.
Meep-meep. The roadrunner—an analogy for the rapidly changing occupational sociocultural landscape.
What happens when psychosocial risk management, industrial relations, human rights, and WHS law intersect?
In this episode, Alan Girle, Trajce Cvetkovski, and Sara Pazell explore the evolution of psychosocial risk management—from the decommissioning of PAWS to the development of PRAiSE (Psychosocial Risk Assessment and Integrated Solutions for Employers) and the PRA (Psychosocial Risk Analyser) feature in ErgoAnalyst, an integrated task-based risk assessment and work re-design decision support software system.
The discussion examines survey bias, the challenges of measuring psychosocial risk, acute versus cumulative exposures, predictive analytics, and the shift from lag indicators to leading indicators. This is a practical discussion about moving beyond compliance to build organisational capability to design better, healthier, productive work.
Along the way, the team reflect on favourite childhood cartoon characters and their ‘on the edge’ antics, recent industry forums, WhyWork workshops, and Trajce’s “rockstar” days. Alan compares Trajce’s 80’s music genre pursuits with the current phenomenon of the precariat, casualised worker whose livelihood depends on wages and tips (“That’s ‘tips’ with a ‘P’ for our listeners who may have lost that pronunciation,” reminds Alan, in his cheeky but dry wit style). The team take a few more nostalgic detours featuring past Coyote Ugly podcast chatter, the Road Runner’s “Meep Meep!”, and the cartoon character, Marvin the Martian.