Assessing, mitigating and controlling psychosocial hazards: a scoping review protocol to map the current state of knowledge.

Abstract

<h4>Background</h4>Psychosocial hazards are increasingly recognised as critical factors affecting employee health, safety, and well-being, arising from how work is designed, organised, and managed. In the European Union, employers are legally obliged to address these hazards as part of workplace risk assessment. While much is known about what constitutes a psychosocial hazard, the core risk management steps-assessment, mitigation, and control-are addressed only scarcely and inconsistently across studies and practices. This limits current understanding of how these steps contribute to reducing the risk of psychosocial hazards, hindering efforts to evaluate effectiveness and guide future research. This scoping review aims to map current knowledge related to these three foundational steps and explore their role in overall risk management.<h4>Methods</h4>Guided by the Joanna Briggs Institute and PRISMA-ScR recommendations, this scoping review will be divided into three sub-reviews, each focusing on one step in psychosocial risk management: assessment, mitigation, and control. Comprehensive searches will be conducted in Scopus, Web of Science, PubMed, PSYNDEX, and APA PsycINFO for peer-reviewed publications since 2000 aligning with the EU legal framework. Grey literature sources will also be explored. Two independent reviewers will perform a multi-stage screening of titles, abstracts, and full texts using predefined inclusion and exclusion criteria. Data extraction will capture study characteristics, methods, and findings related to the three risk management steps. Narrative synthesis and tabular summaries will be used to present results, delineate knowledge gaps, and inform research and practice.<h4>Discussion</h4>This review will provide a comprehensive overview of current knowledge on the assessment, mitigation, and control of psychosocial hazards, while identifying key research gaps. Its findings aim to inform policymakers, practitioners, and researchers on strategies to enhance worker well-being and support cohesive risk management. Although the EU focus enables an in-depth look at regulation-driven approaches, it may limit generalisability to non-EU contexts. Additionally, the scoping methodology, which prioritizes breadth over depth, will not allow for full evaluation of methodological quality or effectiveness. Nonetheless, the review will serve as a foundational map of the current state of psychosocial risk assessment and management, fostering dialogue and guiding future global research efforts.<h4>Systematic review registration</h4>OSF number osf.io/t5cnu.  https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/GNAMH .