Mitigating Psychosocial Risk Before Disaster Strikes: A Session with Bianca Buie and Mary Ellen Gornick  

By now, most organizations are familiar with the core factors that make up “psychosocial risks.” Yet many continue to overlook the warning signs—those subtle indicators that risk is building beneath the surface—and remain ignorant of the need to act early to prevent disaster. 

This imperative was the focus of a thought-provoking session on Day 3 of the Center for Organizational Effectiveness’ four-day virtual summit, Thriving in Uncertainty: Leadership and Wellbeing in Turbulent Times.  

During the session, “Identifying and Managing Psychosocial Risks Before They Escalate,” Mary Ellen Gornick, WPO Consulting Managing Partner, joined Bianca Buie, Ambassador Program Manager at WPO, for an insightful discussion on how leaders can prevent psychosocial risks early—not just to avoid harm, but to foster healthier, more resilient, and high-performing workplaces.  

Over the course of their conversation, Gornick outlined the differences between psychosocial risks, their consequences, and their early indicators—and explained what leaders can do to systemically address them.  

Read an excerpt from the session below: 

Bianca: Let’s get started with the basics. What exactly are psychosocial risks and why are they so critical for leaders to pay attention to today?  

Mary Ellen: Psychosocial risks are an item that refers to the aspect of work design, how work is organized, how work is managed, as well as some of the social and relational aspects of work. So it’s really about how the work experience is designed and how the workers experience that work. 

The reason that we focus on psychosocial risks is that, sometimes, the working conditions or the way the work is designed can cause psychological harm or emotional harm to the worker. So they can affect how people feel, how they function on their job. Most importantly, they can affect how they perform their work. 

This often leads to situations of anxiety, negative or chronic stress, and disengagement. These risks can also lead to mental health challenges when they are not managed properly.  

So ultimately, unchecked psychosocial risks can really be a huge factor in burnout—so they’re a very important aspect to focus on.  

There are different organizations and groups and legislation that have defined psychosocial risks. We here at the Center for Organizational Effectiveness look at 14 risks, and those involve things like excessive workloads, unrealistic deadlines, lack of control over how you do your work or autonomy, role confusion, and leadership support. Is your leadership supportive? Are they listening? Are they connected with your role and how your work is performed? 

Another area of psychosocial risk that we consider to be at the top of the list is work-life balance and job security. If you’re concerned about whether you’ll have a job in the future, that’s a big factor that’s going to weigh heavily on your mind. But also what impacts you is your ability to balance your personal and work life. And I’m not just talking about logistic or practical things that help you manage the job well. It’s more about whether you have time when you’re finished with your work to recover. Do you have time to engage with your family? Do you have time to engage with your friends or pursue an interest that you may have?  

All those factors contribute to the big umbrella that we call psychosocial risk.  

Bianca: Thank you, Mary Ellen. And that leads very nicely into my next question: What are some of the early warning signs that psychosocial risk may present in a team or in an organization even before a crisis hits?  

Mary Ellen: Well, that’s a really good question, Bianca, because identifying the early warning signs of psychosocial risk help leadership in an organization intervene proactively and prevent issues from escalating and causing things like burnout or undue absence, attrition, conflict, and low production. 

The signs often emerge subtly across multiple levels of the organization. So, they can emerge at the individual team level as well as at the organizational level. You may see that your HR team may be sounding the alarm regarding turnover or anecdotal information that comes out of exit interviews. Or your operations and quality team may be observing a decrease in the quality of work that’s being produced. Your EAP may be presenting you with data that’s showing you an increase in risk cases or that workplace concerns are showing that there’s more conflict in the workplace. Then, at the management level, your managers may be highlighting more conflict among teams and reduced collaboration.  

You notice that I didn’t mention absenteeism. Absenteeism is a metric. It’s an important metric, and we focus a lot on that. Yet when you understand psychosocial risks and the hazards that they pose in the workplace, you become more aware of these subtle indicators.  

So, before someone is actually absent and stops coming to work, you will see that they may be withdrawing from team conversations. You may see that their contribution to team meetings declines, or that their attitudes are a little bit more combative—they’re a little bit more tense.  

So, it’s important to understand not only what the risks are and understand what the metrics are, but also those subtle indicators that managers at all levels can recognize that indicate early that there may be a problem. 

Another metric to keep your eye on is engagement. The engagement score: is it going up or down? If you’re having difficulty moving that score up, you may want to take a step back and ask why and consider what you’re seeing that may be a subtle sign of psychosocial risk.  

Especially at the organizational level, another thing to look at may be the increased use of grievance procedures and employee complaints—increased individuals taking leave because they are experiencing burnout.  

I think the important thing with psychosocial risk is really keeping a broad view of what are the indicators that show something isn’t right with the workers or the work, and what are the more subtle indicators that you may not pick up on metrics, but you would consider early warning signs.  

Bianca: That was really great. Thank you, Mary Ellen. Now let’s talk about a leader’s role in risk prevention. How can leaders move from reacting to psychosocial issues to actually anticipating and preventing them through their culture and systems?  

Mary Ellen: Well, that’s a really good question, Bianca. Leaders can shift from reacting to anticipating and preventing psychosocial risks by really embedding wellbeing into the very culture of the organization. And by that, I mean into the systems and the leadership mindset of the organization. 

A proactive approach doesn’t just mitigate harm. It promotes resilience, it encourages engagement, and it sets the stage for long-term performance.  

So, some of the things that leaders can do to move from this reactive mode to more of a preventive approach include… 

Ready to trade in psychosocial risk for organizational resilience? 

Want more insights like this? Click here to view the full library of session recordings from #2025COEWeek.