WellbeingHuddles February 2025

**Postponed, new date to be advised**

WellbeingHuddles

In 2013, Leading Safety hosted its first Huddles. The initial aim of Huddles was to provide our valued clients and others committed to safe and healthy workplaces an opportunity to explore emerging safety issues, challenge existing assumptions, and provoke new thinking. This aim hasn’t changed, although the focus of Huddles has shifted from safety compliance to the wicked challenges associated with leading health, safety, and wellbeing at work. In 2017, we hosted our first WellbeingHuddles. In 2023, we explored the principles and processes of designing better work. This year, we will explore (i) the challenge of developing effective controls to manage psychosocial risks and (ii) the leadership mindset and practices necessary to foster psychological safety.

We invite you and your colleagues to attend one or both of this year’s WellbeingHuddles on Friday 14 February 2025 at Wharewaka Function Centre, Taranaki Wharf, 2 Taranaki Street, Wellington.

**This event has been postponed. A new date will be advised.**

WellbeingHuddle #1: Designing Out Psychosocial Harm (9:30am-12:30pm)

Too often organisations focus on individuals and lower order controls such as training and mindfulness, rather than focusing on job design, job demands, and organisational resources.

There is a growing awareness of the obligation to identify those aspects of work – known as psychosocial hazards – that have the potential to cause mental harm. Once these psychosocial hazards have been identified and the associated risks assessed, the challenge is to develop appropriate controls to manage those risks. The purpose of control measures is to eliminate or – failing that – minimise the risk associated with these workplace psychosocial factors. Control measures should follow the same hierarchy as for the traditional health and safety principle. In other words, focusing first, where possible, on changing the work before focusing on what the workers can do to prevent harm.

A wide range of factors need to be considered when determining these controls, such as the duration, frequency, and severity of the exposure of workers and other persons to the psychosocial hazard, how psychosocial hazards may interact or combine, the design of work (including job and task demands), the systems of work (including how work is managed, organised, and supported), the design, layout, and environmental conditions of the workplace, and workplace relations.

WellbeingHuddle #1 will use Leading Safety’s Better Work By Design framework to explore possible controls for two key psychosocial hazards, being work overload and abusive behaviour.

Please also join us for lunch at 12.30pm and take the opportunity to network with other participants.

WellbeingHuddle #2: Psychological Safety – the Work of Leaders (1:30pm-4:30pm)

Psychological safety is the soil not the seed (Amy Edmonson).

Psychological safety is a condition in which people feel included and safe to learn, contribute, and challenge the status quo, without fear of being embarrassed, marginalised, or punished (Clark, 2020).  As much as psychological safety can be a key protective factor supporting employees to thrive at work, a lack of psychological safety can harm employee wellbeing. The presence of psychological safety is associated with a range of positive organisational outcomes including increased reporting and learning, greater job satisfaction, improved relationships at work, enhanced collaboration and knowledge sharing, better employee engagement, more innovation and creativity, a greater sense of belonging, connection, and inclusion, and lower staff turnover.

Leaders foster psychological safety by demonstrating – and creating in their teams – the right climate, mindsets, and behaviours. Doing so takes self-awareness, focus, and deliberate effort.

Psychological safety isn’t a silver bullet, and it doesn’t happen by magic; it requires a shift in the mindset and practices of leaders and supportive organisational processes. Unfortunately, many leaders lack the mindset and practices necessary for their people to feel included and safe to learn, contribute, and challenge.

WellbeingHuddle #2 will explore the stages of psychological safety and the leadership mindset and practices necessary to foster psychological safety at each stage.

If you are only attending the afternoon WellbeingHuddle, please join us for lunch at 12.30pm and take the opportunity to network with other participants.

Facilitators

Dr Hillary Bennett, Dr Philip Voss, and Keri Woods – partners at Leading Safety – specialise in health and safety governance, leadership, and culture and have implemented improvement and development processes in organisations from a wide variety of high-hazard sectors in New Zealand and Australia.

Leading Safety also works closely with the Business Leaders’ Health and Safety Forum, which brings together 400+ business and government CEOs committed to improving the performance of workplace health and safety in New Zealand.

Programme dates:
**Postponed, new date to be advised**

Session times:
9:300am – 12:30pm (WellbeingHuddle #1: Designing Out Psychosocial Harm)
1:30pm – 4:30pm (WellbeingHuddle #2: Psychological Safety – the Work of Leaders)

Venue:
Wharewaka Function Centre,
Taranaki Wharf,
2 Taranaki Street,
Wellington

Price:
$550+GST* to attend one WellbeingHuddle (includes lunch)
$850+GST* to attend both WellbeingHuddles (includes lunch)
* Not including travel, etc.

Please confirm your attendance at the WellbeingHuddle(s) by completing the registration form on this page by Monday 3 February. It is possible for more than one person from an organisation to attend. If you are not able to attend, please feel free to pass your invitation on to a colleague. But be sure to secure your place soon as each Huddle is limited to 30 people.

Register Now!

**This event has been postponed. A new date will be advised.**

Once we’ve received your registration details, we’ll send you an email confirming event details and including a request for payment.