Psychosocial Safety Climate: Measuring What Really Shapes Culture
Description
In this live recording of the Psych Health and Safety Podcast, co-hosts Jason van Schie and Joelle Mitchell will be joined by Laureate Professor Maureen Dollard to explore how organisational culture (values, priorities, corporate mindset) shapes and is shaped by psychosocial safety.
Professor Dollard developed the concept of Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) to describe and understand the shared perceptions workers hold about how much their organisation genuinely prioritises psychological health through its policies, practices and leadership behaviours. In other words, PSC provides a way to move beyond slogans and surface-level initiatives to understand what the culture actually communicates about mental health and safety at work.
In this conversation, Professor Dollard will reflect on the development of PSC, why culture sits at the heart of the construct, and how robust measurement has helped organisations make culture visible, diagnosable and open to change. The discussion will explore how PSC reveals the often-hidden signals leaders send about workload, pressure, and wellbeing and why these signals matter more than individual-level interventions.
The session will also examine how PSC data can be used to guide cultural change efforts, support prevention-focused risk management, and provide leaders with clear insight into whether their systems of work are reinforcing safety or inadvertently creating harm.
The final portion of the session will be opened to audience Q&A.
Prof Maureen Dollard
Director Psychosocial Safety Climate Global Observatory
Professor Maureen Dollard is a globally recognized expert in workplace mental health and the pioneer of Psychosocial Safety Climate (PSC) theory. She is an Australian Research Council Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellow, Bradley Distinguished Professor, Director of the PSC Global Observatory at the Adelaide University, and formerly Honorary Professor at the University of Nottingham. Her research has profoundly influenced national and international policy and practice by emphasizing the role of corporate climate in employee psychological health. She founded the Australian Workplace Barometer and co-established the Asia Pacific Academy for Psychosocial Factors at Work and the Australian University Census on Staff Wellbeing. Professor Dollard is ranked #1 globally for Safety Culture research and has over 200 publications and 26,000 citations. Professor Dollard
Jason van Schie
CEO and Organisational Psychologist
Jason is an endorsed organisational psychologist and has been specialising in human factors and psychosocial risk management since 2007. He has a wealth of experience consulting with workplaces in the areas of health, well-being, and safety.
He is the founder of FlourishDx – a globally innovative company that combines consulting, education and technology to help leading organisations create psychologically healthy and safe workplaces.
Over the past decade, he has built a strong multi-disciplinary team that includes psychologists, software developers, marketing and communications, project management and operations staff.
Jason regularly contributes to the discussion of best practice in workplace mental health. This includes as co-host of the ‘Psych Health and Safety podcast’ and lead course instructor on the FlourishDx Academy. He
Joelle Mitchell
Director of Psychosocial Safety, Organisational Psychologist
Joelle is a registered organisational psychologist and human factors specialist. She takes academic research findings from the fields of Psychology, Occupational Health and Safety, and Human Factors, and translates them into the language and tools used in the field of risk management.
Joelle applies the principles of evidence-based practice to drive improvement in psychological health and safety outcomes. Her qualifications include a BSc(Honours) and a Master of Applied Psychology, and she is a certified ISO45001 auditor.
Joelle was previously a Human Factors specialist for the offshore petroleum safety regulator NOPSEMA, giving her unique insight into the expectations of safety regulators when it comes to psychological health and safety.
As Director of our Psychological Health and Safety delivery team, Joelle leads
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