Why your psychosocial risk register is making things worse

The current ‘more is better’ approach to psychosocial risk has sent risk registers out of control. This has resulted in rising costs and an increased administrative burden for organisations seeking to manage psychosocial risks effectively.

In recent years, many organisations have found themselves overwhelmed by excessively long risk registers and complex, impractical risk management processes. These challenges are often driven by overlapping hazards, misidentified control failures and a tendency to catalogue every possible risk rather than address the factors that genuinely drive harm. By shifting focus to the causal relationships between hazards and harm, organisations can establish more effective controls, protect their workforce, and meet their regulatory obligations with confidence.

This paper builds on the framework outlined in Psychosocial hazards – think risks, not lists, providing insights into how organisations can use this model to map, manage and monitor psychosocial risks in line with the EY framework.