Poor support:

• includes workers are not getting enough practical or personal support from supervisors or other workers. Examples include when managers and workers are physically based in different regions, and when managers/supervisors aren’t available to help, provide unclear guidance, take a long time to make decisions, or are not empathetic
• includes a competitive or critical workplace culture that discourages support or workers are too busy to help each other
• includes not having the resources (like training, information, equipment or IT systems) they need to do their job well, safely or on time.

Identify and assess the risks

To learn if there is poor support in your workplace (or the potential for it) look at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.

• Consult your workers. They may tell you they feel stressed, unsupported or like they’re competing with others. They may raise concerns about their ability to do their jobs well or on time. Talk with your health and safety reps and committee too.
• Observe work and behaviours. Workers waiting for others or struggling with tasks, or work often needing to be redone can be caused by poor support.
• Review information such as overtime records, time off, injuries, incidents and near misses, and workers compensation claims.
• Use surveys and tools. If you have more than 20 workers may find the People at Work psychosocial risk assessment tool useful. Head4Work is suitable if you have 20 or less workers (see Psychosocial hazards resources).
• Have a way for workers to report their concerns, and treat these seriously and respectfully. That will encourage reporting and help you fix the problem.
• Identify other hazards present and consider them together. Hazards can interact and combine to create new, changed or higher risks. For example, poor support may create a higher risk in workplaces where workers often need help to do tasks safely.
• Consider how long, how often and how severely workers are exposed to hazards. The longer, more often and worse the poor support, the higher the risk that workers may be harmed.

Practical control measures

Here are some ideas for control measure that can help you prevent and manage poor support.

Review your control measures

You must review your control measures to check they are working as planned. If your control measures aren’t managing the hazard or is creating new risks, you must make changes.

Get feedback from those affected by the changes, and include them in any modifications to their workplace or work routines. Look at your incident records to see if numbers are going down.