Quantitative Psychosocial Risk Assessment: A Brief History and Next Generation Requirements 

This paper reflects on the evolution of quantitative psychosocial risk assessment, highlighting how far we’ve come, and where we need to go next. Ultimately, it calls for an updated, nuanced approach that reflects the distinct characteristics of psychosocial risk, including the capacity to cause both psychological harm and benefit, along with its interrelated, cumulative, dynamic, and variable nature. 

1st Generation Tools 

The journey began with Hazard Identification surveys, which played a foundational role in the shift toward the inclusion of quantitative approaches in psychosocial risk management. These early tools categorised and measured work-related psychological hazards. 

• Late 1970’s - The Job Content Questionnaire was developed, laying the groundwork  for measuring psychosocial factors as workplace hazards. 

• 1997 - the Copenhagen Psychosocial Questionnaire introduced a more comprehensive assessment of workplace psychosocial hazards, and has continued to be updated over time.

• 2004 - , the UK’s HSE Management Standards Indicator Tool was developed to identify six core work-related stress categories: demands, control, support, relationships, role, and change. 

• 2007 – Australia’s People at Work project was established, leading to the development of the People at Work Survey still used today.  

• 2009 – Canada’s Guarding Minds at Work survey was introduced, a tool that would go on to align with Canada’s National Standard for Psychological Health and Safety. 

• 2010 - A significant development with Dr. Maureen Dollard’s Psychosocial Safety Climate framework. This shifted the focus from assessing psychosocial hazards to the value senior management places on workers’ psychological health and safety through organisational policies, procedures, and practices. This approach now has a large evidence base demonstrating its ability to indicate the likelihood of psychosocial hazards, as well as associated work and health outcomes. 

While 1st generation tools (outside of PSC) identify psychosocial hazards, they do not directly assess risk. Accordingly, 2nd generation tools have emerged over the last decade with the goal of suitably assessing psychosocial risk.  

2nd Generation Tools 

Current regulatory requirements and several popular 2nd generation psychosocial risk

assessment tools are rooted in the Occupational Hygiene Model, originally designed to

protect worker physical health by controlling workplace hazards that can cause harm.

This approach recognises that while Hazard ID surveys can indicate whether work factors

are hazards; they do not assess the risk of harm to workers. And while risk assessment is not a legislative requirement, it is necessary to help prioritise and plan risk controls accordingly. Therefore, psychosocial risk assessment tools aim to examine participants’ actual experience of work factor harm. This method has since played a vital role in increasing awareness and adoption of psychosocial risk management.

But while employing this model for psychosocial risk assessment offers advantages over hazard identification alone, its core assumption - that physical and psychosocial risks can be assessed in the same way - has long been questioned. As early as 2000, Rick and Briner challenged the application of traditional physical risk assessment models to psychosocial risk, suggesting such frameworks are conceptually and practically inadequate to assess the complexity of psychosocial contexts. 

Additionally, 2nd generation tools are usually preferable to Health and Safety professionals who are familiar with risk assessment approaches. However, Human Resources teams are typically comfortable with culture or engagement surveys, which more closely resemble hazard id surveys that tend to explore both negative and positive work aspects. This can lead to misalignment among key internal stakeholders and barriers to building the collaborative, cross-functional teams needed to manage psychosocial risks effectively.  

While effective in managing physical risks, the Occupational Hygiene Model underlying 2nd generation approaches requires substantial revision to suit inherently complex and variable psychosocial environments - and to promote broader, more effective adoption. 

1. Harm AND Benefit 

Unlike physical risks which only cause harm, many psychosocial factors, such as how work is designed, how workers are managed, and governance systems, can both harm and benefit mental health or well-being. 

That’s why it’s not enough to only look for harm. We also need to assess how much psychosocial benefit is being experienced – because this helps mitigate potential harm from hazards, and helps us understand how much beneficial factors are supporting positive mental health or well-being outcomes. 

This is particularly important where inherent requirements of a role mean that exposure to hazards can’t be designed out, instead targeting the most appropriate protective factors becomes a crucial aim. 

For example:

cause harm and benefit. For example, work design elements (e.g., role clarity), relationship factors (e.g., manager support), governance aspects (e.g., procedural fairness), and even work environment elements (e.g., equipment). Therefore, where relevant, the psychosocial environment requires us to also measure the degree of psychological benefit experienced to assess how much a protective factor is mitigating harm from hazards. So, for example, where we can’t design out exposure to hazards due to inherent requirements of a role, we can appropriately target protective factors to help manage this risk. Further, good work is good for people therefore measuring work factor benefits helps us understand the degree to which work supports positive mental health outcomes. It’s also critical to note here that absence of a hazard doesn’t equate to it being protective for one’s mental health in the workplace. 

2. Interrelated and Cumulative 

The occupational hygiene model analyses risk individually, with the highest-rated risk prioritised for intervention. This approach does not consider the inter-related nature of psychosocial factors or the cumulative effect that multiple hazards may have. For example, consider the influence poor organisational fairness and low role clarity might have on increasing workplace incivility downstream. Or consider the cumulative impact of several minor hazards may have when combined.  

This means we need to assess which factors have the biggest influence on the entire psychosocial system, analyse the balance of total harm burden vs protective benefits, and develop controls prioritising system-wide influence. By doing so, we increase the chance effective control measures will result in improvements across multiple factors and deliver the greatest return of investment. 

3. Present vs. Future Harm 

The occupational hygiene model evaluates potential future harm by assessing the risk (likelihood and consequence) of hazards causing harm (e.g., falling into an uncovered hole). In contrast, most psychosocial factors shape all workers’ immediate, daily lived experiences, providing direct awareness of psychological harm or benefit. For example, a reasonable workload, meaningful work, or a supportive direct leader contributing recognisable benefit. Or workplace unfairness and incivility contributing recognisable harm.  

Therefore, traditional risk assessment based on likelihood × consequence is largely unnecessary for psychosocial risks. Instead, the psychosocial environment allows risk assessment of psychological injury or illness based on workers' actual reports of current felt harm and benefit, measured as prevalence × impact (harm severity or benefit significance). 

4. Frequency and Duration Assessment 

The occupational hygiene model and model codes of practice require that organisations have regard for the duration, frequency, and severity of hazard exposure. Notably, psychosocial resource factors (e.g., role clarity, reward and recognition, manager/co-worker relationships) affect workers continuously once established. As a result, measuring hazard exposure or harm frequency for such factors (e.g., asking, "How often are you exposed to this factor?" or "How often does this factor affect you?") is unnecessary. 

Further, hazard exposure (or harm) duration from social factors like incivility or manager and co-worker support changes with each interaction. For example, depending on their nature, a five-minute co-worker interaction might have an impact for days, while a longer exchange may be quickly forgotten, making it difficult, and often confusing, to quantify harm exposure duration in a traditional manner. This means assessing hazard exposure or harm duration for these factors (e.g., asking ‘how long does exposure to this factor last’ or ‘how long does the effect last for’) is also impractical. It is instead more appropriate to assess these fluctuating social factors based on how workers naturally process them - as a general summation of harm severity or benefit significance. 

Instead of frequency and duration, resource-related factors are best assessed using a degree of agreement scale. This reflects their typically continuous, but fluctuating nature once established. 

5. Variable Nature 

While the experience of physical hazards tends to be more stable, the psychosocial environment is highly variable, both between and within organisational groups. This is because many psychosocial factors are dependent on social interactions, and how they are experienced is influenced by our individual personalities, circumstances, and histories. This often leads to significant variation between teams within the same department, driven by factors like team dynamics or the capabilities of individual leaders. And also differences among individuals within the same team, for example:  

• Some team members finding the emotional demands of a role energising, while others experience them as stressful 

• A direct leader’s management being experienced as beneficial for some, but harmful by others 

The traditional occupational hygiene approach is not fit to assess these complexities. Instead, psychosocial risk assessment requires

Moving Forward: Improving Assessment and Promoting Transdisciplinary Teams 

Hazard identification surveys were instrumental in shifting the field toward the inclusion of quantitative approaches to psychosocial risk management. And while 2nd generation risk assessment tools were an important step forward, they aren’t suitably equipped for the complexities of the psychosocial environment. To advance the field it is critical to recognise these limitations to more accurately assess the impact of psychosocial factors on work and health outcomes, and also support the design of effective controls.  

Further, to help overcome the barriers of siloed approaches to psychosocial risk management, the industry needs qualitative tools that bridge the gap between HR, WHS, and other relevant departments...Tools that suitably account for both harm and benefit, the interrelated and cumulative nature of psychosocial factors, and the continuous, variable, and immediate daily lived experience of the psychosocial environment. 

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Dollard, M. F., & Bakker, A. B. (2010). Psychosocial safety climate as a precursor to conducive work environments, psychological health problems, and employee engagement. Journal of Occupational and Organizational Psychology, 83(3), 579–599.

Jimmieson, N. L., Bordia, P., & Hobman, E. V. (2010). The People at Work Project: Development and validation of a psychosocial risk assessment tool. Final Report to Partner Organisations.

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Samra, J., Gilbert, M., Shain, M., & Bilsker, D. (2009). Guarding Minds at Work: A Workplace Guide to Psychological Safety and Health. Centre for Applied Research in Mental Health & Addiction (CARMHA), Simon Fraser University.

Reference for Page 3: Rick, J., & Briner, R. B. (2000). Psychosocial risk assessment: problems and prospects. Occupational Medicine, 50(5), 310–314.