Foundation: What are the five Foundations of organisational capability series™?
Annick Rogiers Founder, Sustainable Wellbeing Solutions - Connecting Psychological Safety, Psychosocial Risk and Organisational Practice
What are the five Foundations of organisational capability series™?
Psychosocial risk management does not fail for lack of effort. It fails when what an organisation already knows is not connected, owned and acted on.
Most organisations already do a lot. They run surveys, offer support, carry out risk assessments and write policies. Yet HR, HSE and wellbeing each see only one part of the picture, and nobody connects the parts.
The Organisational Capability Framework™ rests on five Foundations. Together they describe what lets an organisation move from signal to understanding, decision, action and learning.
Why Foundations and not another initiative?
More activity does not create more capability. The Foundations are not new programmes. They are the capabilities an organisation already needs, and they work only when they reinforce one another.
What are the five Foundations?
1. Organisational signals. What do employees, HR, HSE, wellbeing and managers each see, and does it ever come together?
2. Leadership & accountability. Who owns the response, and can that person act on it? Accountability needs six conditions: clarity, authority, independence, connection, follow-through and repair.
3. Governance & systems. Is responsibility backed by mandate, independence and authority? Without them, a risk assessment still lacks an owner.
4. Measurement & insight. Can you tell isolated data from patterns, and understand what lies underneath the numbers?
5. Learning & adaptation. Does identifying a problem change how work is designed, led or managed?
What happens when one Foundation is missing?
Imagine an assessment finds excessive workload. Without signals, nobody connects the absence data to the finding. Without accountability, nobody owns it. Without governance, nobody has the authority to change the workload. Without learning, the work is allocated exactly as before.
The risk may be psychosocial. The gap is organisational.
How do the Foundations connect to ISO 45003?
ISO 45003 asks for a management system, not a policy. The Foundations describe what that system needs in practice. Read more on the webpage: psychosocial-risk-management-iso-45003
Where should you start?
Ask one question: if a serious psychosocial risk emerged tomorrow, which Foundation would fail first?
Continue reading: Are organisations ready for Europe's growing focus on psychosocial risk? →
