How work design can help manage psychosocial risks

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It might sound like the latest HR buzzword, but work design is becoming critical for managers. Here’s how work design helps prevent burnout and role overload

IN AUSTRALIA, being safe at work is a basic right. Employers have a number of obligations with regard to physical safety – and now, work health and safety (WHS) laws also require that they “minimise or eliminate” psychosocial risks. Defined as “anything that could cause psychological harm”, psychosocial risks at work cover a wide array of scenarios. A risk could be anything from high workload and tight deadlines to poor support and a lack of role clarity, through to more serious issues like workplace harassment, bullying or traumatic events. Hybrid work has also added a layer of complexity, as companies have to look for ways to manage these risks remotely.

Beamible is an HR tech company revolutionising work with a world-first work design platform. Its unique methodology optimises roles using strategic prioritisation and better visibility into work details, boosting productivity by over 20% and employee engagement by more than 15%. As a recommended solution for modern HR challenges like psychosocial safety risk management, workload management and talent acquisition, work design is a powerful tool that many organisations will adopt to support the future of work – and Beamible makes it easy! Founded in 2016, Beamible is Great Place to Work certified with a 100% remote team who are dedicated to building a happier global workforce.

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“Most HR professionals genuinely care about the sustainability of work, and the last thing they want to see is people really suffering from work overload”

Stephanie Reuss, Beamible

While organisations have understood the need to include psychosocial hazards in their approach to health and safety, it’s easy to find yourself unsure of where to start. This is where the concept of ‘work design’ comes in – a process based around understanding and measuring your risk levels, and then recrafting your roles, teams and organisation to manage those risks effectively.

In order to “minimise or eliminate” your hazards, you first need to know what they are. One popular measuring tool is the People at Work survey, which provides a broad view of different psychosocial hazards. Based on the answers of your employees, the survey determines whether you’re at a low, medium or high risk level for things like burnout, conflict or high emotional demand. According to Stephanie Reuss, co-founder of work design platform Beamible, it’s important to get a “human-centred, bottom-up perspective on what employees actually experience”. Once you understand what risks exist for which roles, you can start the work design process and address the key issues. “Work design is all about who, why, how, what and where work is getting done,” Reuss explains. “A typical example is where you might have gaps in the team, and that puts a lot of pressure on the team remaining. We often see managers wearing multiple hats, covering the gaps as well as doing their own role, which is already at capacity. Work design can really help managers work through a coverage plan.” Once you’ve identified areas of high pressure, you can start to ‘deconstruct’ the work – that is, work out exactly what everyone is doing, including any uncovered roles. You can then identify the critical work that absolutely needs to continue, as well as 20–30% of the work you could pause, stop altogether, or reduce the amount of time spent on. You may also choose to reallocate, ask for help from another team, or wait for a contractor or a new starter.

Reuss notes that managing emotional demand is also important, particularly in more taxing roles that involve customer service. “Understanding what proportion of time people spend doing highly emotionally demanding work and how that can be balanced by other factors can really help to recraft a role and make it more sustainable,” she says. “It’s about being really efficient about how you’re prioritising and distributing your work so that you can continue to meet your goals without the psychosocial safety risk of burning out.”

Beamible also puts some long-term controls in place – from implementing new company-wide policies, through to psychosocial risk education for leaders. “Broad risks can have broad strategies such as education, but through pinpointing exactly where the risk is, we can do things like stem attrition, prevent burnout and even address trends within smaller teams,” Reuss says. “Control measures should be preventative and also reactive. Most HR professionals genuinely care about the sustainability of work, and the last thing they want to see is people really suffering from work overload.

“We often see managers wearing multiple hats, covering the gaps as well as doing their own role, which is already at capacity. Work design can really help managers work through a coverage plan”

Stephanie Reuss, Beamible

Reuss says that while work design might sound like just the latest HR buzzword, it’s actually “critical” for all managers today. They have had to navigate a huge amount of change and will likely need to continue doing so. Being able to adapt goals, priorities and workloads is therefore a core capability. Driven by frustration with outdated work models, co-founders Stephanie Reuss and Victoria Stuart founded Beamible to help managers and HR leaders stay on top of this change and do so in a way that addresses the very different needs of employees. Designed to help businesses optimise their work, Beamible provides an intuitive platform to enable leaders to implement the work design process. By mapping out the work that needs doing, it helps them prioritise the right tasks, get a better understanding of required activities, and reallocate work to reduce the risk of overload and burnout.

“Education is the step that most organisations are at now, and many are coaching their leaders on how to deal with those risks.” Ultimately, Beamible’s purpose is to give managers a tool to use to solve these all-too-common problems. If someone does leave the team or is suffering from burnout, managers can use Beamible to pinpoint the risks very quickly and solve them using work design.

Responding to hazards with work design

Beamible: introducing work design to teams across Australia

Responding to hazards with work design

Beamible: introducing work design to teams across Australia

Published 13 Jun 2023

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Common psychosocial risks

Source: Beamible

High workload

Poor support

Lack of role clarity

Poor organisational change management

Poor physical environment

Source: Beamible

Measure

Put controls in place

Assess risk

Steps to creating lasting change

Identify opportunities

For the companies that have already implemented work design, the results speak for themselves. Teams across Australia have increased productivity by 13–21%, while reducing the risk of overload, burnout and emotional exhaustion. Reuss notes that managers have had a tough time of it over the last few years, and so the opportunity to make their roles more sustainable has been a welcome relief for many. “Burnout is really rife right now, and a lot of people want to change or reduce their workload,” she says. “People are really crying out for a way to do that, so being able to visually break down what’s been done is really powerful.” To find out more about Beamible and how it can help your organisation manage its psychosocial risks, click here.

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