Applied
Leader training
What psychosocial hazards look like in their team, their duties in plain language, and what they can actually change.
Capability area
Psychosocial hazards & psychological health and safety
Psychosocial safety is bigger than wellbeing initiatives. Identify, assess, control and review — and fix harmful work design at source, rather than relying on resilience training and an EAP.
- Leaders & all staff
- Facilitated risk conversations
- Strategy & review
- Region-aware
The core message
Address hazards in the work itself
Psychosocial hazards are the aspects of work that can cause psychological harm: workload and demands, lack of control, poor support, role confusion, badly handled change, bullying, harassment, violence and aggression, traumatic exposure and more.
Training, EAP and resilience programmes are supplementary. They are not a substitute for identifying and controlling hazards at source. Our work is designed to help you do both — build capability and address the system.
Global anchor
Informed by ISO 45003:2021 and ISO 45001 principles
ISO 45003 gives international guidance on managing psychosocial risk within an occupational health and safety management system.
Our work is informed by these principles and can support your alignment with them. To be explicit: IAP does not certify, audit or accredit organisations to ISO 45003 or ISO 45001, and nothing here is legal advice.
- 01
Identify
What hazards actually exist here — from data, from consultation and from the people doing the work.
- 02
Assess
Likelihood, severity and how hazards interact. Rarely does a single factor act alone.
- 03
Control
Change at source first: work design, workload, role clarity, leadership behaviour, systems and process.
- 04
Review
Did it work? What changed? What's emerged since? Then adjust.
United Kingdom
HSE Management Standards
In the UK, the HSE's Management Standards approach to work-related stress covers six areas of work design. It emphasises risk assessment using data and surveys plus active discussion and genuine employee partnership, looking for underlying causes and preventing harm.
The Management Standards are a useful structure, but they are not the totality of psychosocial risk duties. We help you use them well without treating them as the whole picture.
- Demands — workload, work patterns and the work environment
- Control — how much say people have in the way they do their work
- Support — encouragement, sponsorship and resources from the organisation and line managers
- Relationships — promoting positive working and dealing with unacceptable behaviour
- Role — whether people understand their role and avoid conflicting demands
- Change — how organisational change is managed and communicated
How we help
Capability and system change, together
Awareness
All-staff sessions
Shared language, why consultation matters, and how to raise things safely.
Consultation
Facilitated risk conversations
Structured discussions with workers and HSRs that surface real causes — not just survey scores.
Discovery
Review of existing activity
What you already have in place, where it's working, and where the gaps and duplications are.
Decisions
Strategy & action planning
Agreed priorities, owners, timescales and measures — shaped with the people affected.
Follow-through
Implementation & review
Support to actually land the changes, then revisit them.
Please note: Our training and consultancy is not legal advice, and it doesn’t replace a competent work health and safety or legal risk assessment.
Respond to what your people are telling you
We can help you identify priorities, plan changes and review whether they are helping.