Low reward and recognition

The first step is to identify hazards in your place of work. This means looking at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.

Typical situations that may lead to workers experiencing low reward or recognition include:

• failing to provide positive or constructive feedback about work performance
• providing unfair or unjust negative feedback (e.g. criticising work that is outside of a workers’ control or for which they have received insufficient training or support)
• not having appropriate practices in place for performance discussions, planning and goal setting
• providing little or no opportunity for workers to develop their knowledge or skills
• providing recognition that is not meaningful or attributed to specific situations or actions.

Sometimes, a worker may avoid reporting concerns because:

• it’s thought to be ‘part of the job’ and nothing can be done about it
• the worker believes that only ‘serious incidents or issues’ are to be reported
• there’s a belief that nothing will happen if they report
• the worker believes they will be blamed for not being able to handle the job
• the reporting process is time-consuming and complex
• the workplace culture encourages “just getting on with it”.

To determine if low reward and recognition is a potential hazard in your place of work:

• Talk with health and safety representatives, health and safety committees, and workers.
• Walk through and inspect your place of work, including how people interact.
• Review workers’ compensation claims.
• Refer to industry standards and guidelines.
• Review the hazard and incident reports, exit reports and complaints.

A risk assessment involves thinking about what could happen if someone is exposed to a hazard (the consequence of exposure) and the likelihood of it happening.

Psychosocial hazards may interact or combine to increase the overall psychosocial risk so need to be considered together.

A risk assessment can help you figure out:

• the severity of a risk
• whether any effective control measures are in place
• what actions you can take to control this risk
• how quickly you should act.

To determine the likelihood that someone will be harmed by low reward and recognition, ask yourself:

• has it happened before, either in this place of work or somewhere else?
• if it has happened, how often does it happen?

To determine the possible consequences, ask yourself:

• will it cause minor or serious injury, or death?

After the risks have been identified and assessed, you'll need to control them. Risk control measures should be selected on the basis of highest protection and most reliability.

Control measures

• Eliminating the risk
  The most effective control measure is to eliminate the hazard and associated risk. If you are unable to eliminate the hazard, you must identify ways to ensure you are managing it in a way that minimises risks to health and safety.
• Minimising the risk
  If it’s not reasonably practicable to eliminate the hazard, the risk should be minimised by using a range of control measures, for example:
  • You should use fair, transparent and meaningful ways of providing recognition and reward to reflect workers’ efforts. Feedback should be provided promptly, ensuring it is specific, practical, fair and clearly relates to workers’ performance. Recognise workers for their work outputs, but also for their ideas and behaviours.
  • Consult with workers when deciding on reward and recognition measures to ensure they are meaningful to your workers.
  • Speak with workers’ about performance expectations and design and implement performance management processes that are fair, consistent and transparent.
  • Implement a performance review system that ensures workers are provided with positive and constructive advice for future performance, including opportunities for skill development.
• Using administrative controls
  You must also use administrative controls if there is still a risk after you’ve tried to reduce it with other control measures. Administrative controls protect your workers by working in ways that reduce their exposure to a hazard, for example:
  • Make sure that managers are trained in using your performance management procedures, and ensure they are consistently applied. Develop leaders’ abilities to have difficult conversations, manage underperformance in a way that prioritises improvement over blame, provide constructive feedback and recognise good performance.
  • Introduce recognition programs that provide all workers with equal opportunity to be recognised for their contributions.

You may need to use a combination of these control measures to meet your responsibilities under WHS laws. Refer to the Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards at work Code of Practice 2022 for more information.

Risk management should be an ongoing process in your business, and you should review your control measures regularly. Don’t wait until something goes wrong.

In some situations, WHS legislation requires you to review controls.

These are:

• when the control measure is not effective in controlling the risk
• before a change that might give rise to a new risk
• when you identify a new hazard or risk
• when consultation with workers indicates a review is needed
• when the dynamic and complexity of your business changes, for a new supervisor or worker
• after a health and safety representative requests a review.

A review of risk control measures should be undertaken after incidents or complaints involving low reward and recognition.

A review of risk control measures can include an examination of:

• the physical work environment
• work systems and procedures
• worker training and information
• the consultation processes in your place of work.