Mental health in the workplace

Psychological health and safety is about protecting the psychological health of workers, in the same that we protect their physical health.

WorkCover Queensland provides resources to help support you in taking an active role in ensuring the psychological health and safety of workers on their website.

WorkCover resources

A great starting point for creating and maintaining mentally healthy workplaces is the Mentally Healthy Workplaces Toolkit.

This toolkit aims to help employers, managers and leaders eliminate and minimise risks to psychological health and create workplace environments that are mentally healthy.  Use the guidance material and practical tools in this toolkit to facilitate positive steps towards a mentally healthy workplace.

Toolkit contents:

• mentally healthy workplaces
• promote positive practices
• prevent psychological harm
• intervene early
• support recovery from injury
• mentally healthy workplaces for small business
• additional resources

Creating mentally healthy workplaces
A mentally healthy workplace is one that:

• promotes workplace practices that support positive mental health
• eliminates and minimises psychological health and safety risks through the identification and assessment of psychosocial hazards
• builds the knowledge, skills, and capabilities of workers to be resilient and thrive at work
• is free of stigma and discrimination
• supports the recovery of workers returning after a physical or psychological injury.

This toolkit is structured around a four-part model that outlines what makes a workplace mentally healthy.

The benefits of a mentally healthy workplace

• decrease in work-related injuries and illnesses
• decrease in workers' compensation claims
• thriving workers
• increase in productivity
• decrease in absenteeism
• increase in engagement and job satisfaction
• decrease in turnover and selection costs
• increase in attraction of top talent