A Research-Backed Guide to Psychosocial Hazard Prevention
I was in a mine site office three years ago when a shift supervisor pulled me aside. He said,
“We’ve done everything right. Safety protocols are solid. Incident rates are down. But I’m losing people for reasons that don’t show up on an incident report.”
He wasn’t exaggerating. Over the next eighteen months, his operation cycled through 14 supervisors. Not terminations, resignations. Retirements early. Medical leaves that didn’t end. The people he brought in were experienced. They knew the work. But something about the system made capable people unable to stay.
That supervisor was managing a system problem. He didn’t know it yet. His organization didn’t know it yet. But the data, global data, Canadian data, and the research that now underpins this guide, shows that what he was experiencing is one of the most expensive, most preventable, and most overlooked operational failures in Canadian mining and construction.
This guide walks you through what that problem is, why it’s costing you more than you think, what the law now requires, and what a 90-day path to solve it looks like.
What Global Research Shows
In 2026, the International Labour Organization released a comprehensive global report on psychosocial working environments. The findings were stark.
840,000 deaths each year are attributable to five specific psychosocial risk factors in the workplace. That’s not an estimate from a consulting firm. That’s the ILO’s evidence-backed analysis, led by Manal Azzi, Team Lead of Occupational Safety and Health Policy and Systems at the ILO.
Alongside those deaths: 45 million disability-adjusted life years are lost annually. In economic terms, 1.37% of global GDP is lost every year due to the effects of psychosocial hazards. For Canada, that translates to billions.
The five risk factors are specific and measurable
Job strain: Work with high demands combined with low control. You set the expectations but give people no authority to adjust them.
Effort-reward imbalance: Workers give a lot but do not receive as much in return, whether that’s advancement, recognition, or fair compensation.
Job insecurity: Uncertainty about employment continuity as the employment landscape continues to shift.
Long working hours: Consistently working more than 48 hours per week.
Workplace bullying and harassment: Direct mistreatment, exclusion, or intimidation.
These aren’t isolated individual problems. They are system problems.
And the cost is immediate. Depression and anxiety alone account for more than 12 billion workdays lost every year globally. Nearly one in three workers in Europe report job-related stress, depression, or anxiety. In New Zealand, around 12% of assessed suicides were found to be work-related.
In the European Union, work-related depression costs over 100 billion euros per year. Employers bear more than 80% of that cost.
Construction workers, your sector, are specifically named in the ILO analysis as facing elevated risk for both work-related psychosocial harm and suicide risk. This is not a soft issue. This is an operational and legal reality.
Understanding the System: The Three-Level Framework
Here’s what the research tells us about where these problems come from.
According to Vera Paquete-Perdigao, Director of Labour Governance and Sectoral Policies at the ILO:
“Psychosocial risks arise from how work is designed, how it is organized and how it is managed.”
That statement doesn’t point to individual weakness or “people problems.” It points to system design.
The ILO’s research identifies three levels where these system problems emerge:
Level 1: The Job Itself
This is the work task itself. Does the role have variety? Does it require skill but also develop it? Can the person see the meaning of what they’re doing? Can they exercise any judgment?
When a job is designed with no discretion, no variety, and no connection to outcome, it triggers job strain, the gap between what’s demanded and what you can control.
Operational signal: Supervisors and managers report feeling like order-takers with no input.
Level 2: How Work Is Managed and Organized
This is the supervisor and manager layer. How clear are expectations? Can people ask questions? Is there actual support for doing the work, or just monitoring to make sure it gets done? Are decisions explained or just handed down?
When management is absent, inconsistent, or purely directive, it triggers effort-reward imbalance. People work hard without understanding why decisions are made. They see no path forward.
Operational signal: Turnover spikes among capable mid-level people. Exit interviews mention “unclear expectations” or “no support.”
Level 3: Broader Policies, Practices, and Procedures
This is the organizational layer. How are people evaluated and rewarded? Is there flexibility, or is every hour monitored? Is there protection from bullying? What happens when someone raises a concern?
When these systems are rigid, punitive, or inconsistent, they signal that the organization doesn’t care about people, only output. This triggers job insecurity and opens the door to bullying and harassment.
Operational signal: Grievances pile up. Accommodation requests multiply. People stop speaking up.
Psychosocial risks rarely arise from a single cause. Effective prevention requires attention across all three levels.
Five Operational Conditions That Signal System Failure
When you move through these three levels, five conditions tend to emerge together. You’ll recognize them because they’re probably happening in your operation right now:
1. Unclear Expectations and Authority
People don’t know exactly what they’re accountable for, and they don’t have the authority to make the decisions that affect their work.
2. No Real Feedback or Development Path
Conversations about performance happen at review time, not continuously. There’s no clear development roadmap, no mentoring, no sense that doing better work leads anywhere.
3. Inconsistent or Absent Support
When problems emerge, a difficult crew, a delayed material shipment, a conflict with another supervisor, the response is unpredictable. Sometimes you get help. Sometimes you get told to figure it out yourself.
4. Silent or Punitive Problem-Reporting
People know something is broken, but raising it feels risky. The last person who spoke up was labeled a complainer. Or they reported something and nothing happened, which sends its own message.
5. Stretched People, Stretched Management
You’re operating at capacity constantly. When someone leaves, the workload redistributes. When a crisis hits, overtime becomes the default. Flexibility doesn’t exist because there’s no room for it.
When these five conditions cluster together, you get the pattern that supervisor saw: capable people burning out, good supervisors becoming exhausted managers, and a cycle where people leave not because the work is hard, but because the system makes hard work unsustainable.
What This Is Not
This is not a wellness problem. You don’t solve it with yoga or an employee assistance program.
This is an occupational safety and health problem. It’s a system design issue. And because it’s a system issue, it’s one you can control.
The data is clear on this point. When organizations address these system conditions, not by fixing people, but by fixing how work is designed and how managers are supported, outcomes shift. Within 6 months, you see measurable improvement. Within 18 months, you see sustained change.
We’ll show you the research on this in the next section.
The Signals in Real Operations
You’re probably seeing some version of this right now, even if you haven’t connected the dots to a system problem.
Turnover among mid-level supervisors and managers exceeds 20% annually in many operations. Exit interviews mention “unclear direction” or “no career path.” When you ask supervisors what’s expected of them, answers vary by person. Communication from senior leadership to front-line is inconsistent, and people say “it depends who your manager is” when asked about expectations.
Supervisors report feeling burned out despite what looks like reasonable workload. Accommodation requests, medical leaves, and WCB claims have increased. Grievance or complaint logs are growing. The same people are regularly working 50+ hours per week. New supervisors take 6+ months to feel confident in their role.
When you ask what’s happening, the pattern is always the same: people see no stability, no clarity, no path. They work hard anyway, until they can’t anymore. Then they leave.
Each of these signals is evidence that one or more of your three system levels is broken.
What the Research Shows
In 2024, a peer-reviewed study by Tripney Berglund, Kombeiz, and Dollard was published in Safety Science (Volume 176, 106552). This wasn’t a pilot. It was a randomized controlled trial with 10 teams, 5 receiving a manager-driven psychosocial safety intervention, and 5 as a control group.
The intervention was approximately 3 hours of manager-led training designed to address the three system levels: job design clarity, management practices, and organizational policies.
The data below tracks psychosocial safety climate over the full 18-month study period. Watch what happens to the intervention group compared to the control group, they separate and stay separated.
Over 18 months, the intervention group sustained meaningful improvement across all measures. The control group, by comparison, either flatlined or declined.
After establishing this foundational improvement in safety climate, peer support, which is critical for system health, tells an even sharper story. The intervention group not only improved but sustained that improvement. The control group, despite starting higher, declined.
The control group’s decline in peer support is particularly telling. This is what happens when system conditions deteriorate unchecked: people isolate. They stop relying on each other. What started as individual stress becomes collective breakdown.
What happened in the control group? At 6 months, after conditions had deteriorated, they brought in an external consultant reactively. Even with that intervention, they didn’t catch up.
The key insight: Managers leading this work themselves, with clear tools and support, achieved better results than external consultation brought in after problems accumulated. By month 18, all 5 intervention teams rated High PSC (sustainable safe climate). The control group still had 4 teams at Medium PSC (at-risk level).
This matters for you because it means you don’t need an external overhaul. You need your managers to understand the three system levels, see the signals in their own operations, and have a framework to fix what’s broken.
What This Is Costing You Right Now
Let’s put numbers on what you’re probably experiencing.
When supervisors and managers burn out, they leave. Turnover in operations leadership in Canadian mining and construction runs 18-25% annually in high-risk regions. Replacing a supervisor costs roughly $45,000 in recruitment, training, and lost productivity. Replace 3 supervisors in a 20-person management team, and you’ve absorbed $135,000.
But that’s just the obvious cost.
The broader system costs are larger. In the European Union, work-related depression alone costs over 100 billion euros per year. Employers bear more than 80% of that cost through lost productivity, absenteeism, medical accommodation, and turnover. Construction workers experience this burden at higher rates than most sectors.
For a mid-sized Canadian mining or construction operation (100-300 people), that translates to direct costs of $450,000 to $850,000 annually through turnover, replacement, absenteeism, lost productivity, accommodation, and WCB claims.
That’s the cost of a system problem you’re probably managing around, not through.
The Regulatory Reality Is Already Here
You might think this is a “nice to have” or a “people initiative.”
It’s not. It’s law.
Federal level:
Canada Labour Code Part II, and Section 25(2)(h) of the Canada Occupational Health and Safety Regulations specifically require employers to eliminate psychological and psychosocial hazards. Bill C-65 (in force since January 2021) reinforces this with explicit harassment and violence prevention duties.
Provincial level:
Ontario: OHSA Section 25(2)(h) requires elimination of psychosocial hazards; CSA Z1003 is the guiding standard
British Columbia: WorkSafeBC OHS Regulation explicitly covers psychosocial hazards
Alberta: OHS Code Part 27 (effective March 2025) establishes specific obligations
Quebec: Bill 27 / Loi sur la santé et la sécurité du travail (effective October 2025) names psychosocial hazards directly
Saskatchewan, Manitoba: OHS Acts and Regulations all include psychosocial hazard language
This isn’t scattered. Every Canadian province and the federal jurisdiction now recognize psychosocial hazards as an occupational safety and health responsibility.
What regulators are looking for:
1. Evidence that you’ve identified psychosocial hazards in your operation
2. Documentation of your risk assessment
3. A control plan (not a wellness program, a control plan)
4. Evidence that controls are implemented and monitored
If you’re audited and can’t show this, you’re non-compliant.
A 90-Day Path Forward
You don’t need to overhaul everything. You need to start somewhere and move systematically.
Days 1-30: Discover
Gather your operations leadership team (supervisors, managers, coordinators). Use the three-level framework to audit your own operation. Ask: Where are we unclear? Where is support inconsistent? Where is communication breaking down? Document what you find. This becomes your baseline.
Days 31-60: Design
Identify your top 2-3 system problems (probably in the management/organization level). Design a targeted change, not a program, a change. Example 1: Implement weekly 1-on-1 check-ins with clear decision-making authority for supervisors. Example 2: Establish a transparent career progression pathway. Example 3: Create a no-blame problem-reporting mechanism. Pilot with one team or one site.
Days 61-90: Test and Refine
Run your pilot. Measure: Are people clearer about expectations? Is support more consistent? Are people speaking up? Refine based on what you learn. Plan for rollout to your full operation.
The ILO’s three-level framework aligns directly with this 90-day roadmap. You’re working at the system level, where the problem lives.
Three Pillars: Building Sustainable Change
As you move through this work, anchor everything to three outcomes:
1. Continuity
The changes you make stick. You’re not relying on one person or one initiative. The system itself supports the behavior you want.
2. Scalability
What works in one team or one site can move to another. You’ve designed it to scale, not to depend on heroic effort from one manager.
3. Legal Defensibility
You can show a regulator that you identified the hazard, assessed the risk, and implemented controls. You have documentation. You have evidence.
All three together create a sustainable operational improvement, not a wellness initiative that fades when priorities shift.
The Path Forward
You now understand the scope of the problem and the regulatory requirement. The cost of inaction is quantified. Research from Tripney Berglund demonstrates that organizations investing in quality psychosocial training can expect sustained improvements in psychosocial safety, reduced turnover, and measurable financial returns, validating that building internal capability creates lasting change that protects both your people and your bottom line.
About the Authors
Dr. Marvin Thompson, Ed.D. is President of TeamsynerG Global Consulting. His work focuses on psychosocial hazard prevention, leadership execution, and policy-aligned operating systems in complex, people-intensive environments including mining, construction, healthcare, and education. He is the co-developer of the Whole Person Safety® framework.
Dr. Deborah Tolulope, Ph.D. is Chief Researcher and Data Analyst at TeamsynerG Global Consulting, where she leads the firm’s research and evidence strategy. Her work spans applied research design, data analysis, framework development, and knowledge translation. She specializes in converting complex findings into actionable insights for consulting strategy, leadership development, and organizational performance. She is a contributing researcher on the Whole Person Safety® framework.
Research Sources
This article draws on the International Labour Organization’s 2026 report, Ensuring a Healthy Psychosocial Working Environment, particularly presentations by Manal Azzi (Team Lead, Occupational Safety and Health Policy and Systems, ILO) and Vera Paquete-Perdigao (Director, Labour Governance and Sectoral Policies Department, ILO). It also incorporates findings from the peer-reviewed 2024 study by Tripney Berglund, Kombeiz, and Dollard, Manager-driven intervention for improved psychosocial safety climate and psychosocial work environment, published in Safety Science, Volume 176, 106552.
