Poor organisational justice means a lack of:

• procedural justice (fair decision making processes)
• informational fairness (keeping everyone up to date and in the loop)
• interpersonal fairness (treating people with dignity and respect).

Examples of poor organisational justice may include:

• poor handling of workers information: for example, not keeping personal information private, having performance discussions in front of others, using information for a purpose other than what it was provided for
• policies or procedures that are unfair, biased or applied inconsistently: for example, favouritism when assigning ‘good’ shifts, or applied to some workers but not others (especially if managers are seen to be exempt)
• blaming or penalising workers for things that aren’t their fault or they can’t control: for example, not making enough products when they didn't have access to the required materials
• not accommodating workers’ reasonable needs: for example, not making the workplace accessible
• not appropriately addressing (actual or alleged) issues such as underperformance, misconduct, bullying, or other inappropriate/harmful behaviour
• decision-making processes that are poor or which workers aren’t told about.

Identify and assess the risks

To learn if there is poor organisational justice in your workplace (or the potential for it) look at everything from the work environment to work tasks, how they’re carried out, and the way work is designed and managed.

• Consult your workers. They may be feeling stressed, frustrated, resentful or cheated. They may raise concerns about how they are being treated and whether it is fair. Talk with your health and safety reps and committee too.
• Observe work and behaviours. Gossip about decisions or other workers’ private information, unresolved issues or divisions among workers can be caused by poor organisational justice.
• Review information such as overtime records, time off, injuries, incidents and near misses, and workers compensation claims.
• Use surveys and tools. If you have more than 20 workers may find the People at Work psychosocial risk assessment tool useful. Head4Work is suitable if you have 20 or less workers (see Psychosocial hazards resources).
• Have a way for workers to report their concerns, and treat these seriously and respectfully. That will encourage reporting and help you fix the problem.
• Identify other hazards present and consider them together. Hazards can interact and combine to create new, changed or higher risks. For example, poor organisational justice may create a higher risk in workplaces with low role clarity if it isn’t clear who should be making decisions.
• Consider how long, how often and how severely workers are exposed to hazards. The longer, more often and worse the exposure to poor organisational justice, the higher the risk that workers may be harmed.

Practical control measures

Here are some ideas for control measure that can help you prevent and manage poor organisational justice.

Review your control measures

You must review your control measures to check they are working as planned. If your control measures aren’t managing the hazards or is creating new risks, you must make changes.

Get feedback from those affected by the changes, and include them in any modifications to their workplace or work routines. Look at your incident records to see if numbers are going down.