Poor organisational justice

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 poor organisational justice include:

• inequitable or inconsistent application of procedures across workers or over time (e.g. reward and recognition, promotion or job rotations, opportunities for training or job assignments)
• unfair or inequitable distribution of resources (e.g. pay inequities, access to benefits)
• bias, impartiality, favouritism and nepotism
• workers or managers believing that rules do not apply to them and failing to follow agreed policies, guidelines and procedures with no repercussions.

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 poor organisational justice 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 poor organisational justice, 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 based on 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
  • Hire and promote workers based on merit using transparent and objective selection methods.
  • Provide systems to protect workers who raise safety concerns from discrimination.
  • Design fair procedures and implement procedures consistently over time and across all workers and work groups (e.g. a structured performance review and recruitment processes so all workers are reviewed and recruited using consistent processes).
  • Apply processes and procedures (e.g. recruitment, performance management) in a transparent and consistent manner. To do this, ensure managers and supervisors are provided information and training.
  • Ensure procedures are explained to workers in situations where the procedure will be applied to them (at the commencement of disciplinary procedures or complaint processes).
  • Provide workers with a mechanism to manage complaints or appeal the result of a procedure. Where a worker may perceive unfair work practices, encourage them to access the appeal process.
• 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
  • Design unbiased and transparent workplace processes, policies and procedures in consultation with workers (e.g. decision making, recruitment, promotion, performance management, task allocation, work health and safety or workplace entitlement policies).
  • Review decisions to ensure that they are fair and free of bias.
  • Train managers in how to have difficult conversations with their workers in a fair and just way.
  • Foster a culture of transparency, openness, respect, fairness and equity.
  • Provide support and communication mechanisms for all parties to complaints and those going through disciplinary or investigative procedures.

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 poor organisational justice.

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.