Michael Plowright and I have launched a new limited-series podcast in support of National Safe Work Month.
Safe Work, Real Talk offers a plain-English discussion of the major issues around managing psychosocial hazards and psychological safety at work, bridging the HR and OH&S silos.
We bring together OHS practice, bullying research and real workplace stories to unpack how mental harm happens and how organisations can prevent it.
Continue reading “Psychosocial Conflict & Confusion”Earlier this week, I heard a person repeatedly say that Victoria was the last Australian jurisdiction to introduce obligations to prevent psychosocial hazards under occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. That is not strictly true.
Contrary to the established understanding, TWO Australian jurisdictions have not joined the harmonised Work Health and Safety (WHS) model laws: Victoria and Norfolk Island. Norfolk Island employers still regulate occupational health and safety (OHS) under an Act from 1988 created by its own legislative assembly, which existed at that time – the Norfolk Island Employment Act. “Psychosocial hazards” are not mentioned.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) people talk a lot, but often they preach to the choir when they need to reach a new audience. Last night, philosophy academic Dr Peter Brace provided a lecture on psychosocial hazards and psychological safety to over 50 members of a diverse audience in an upstairs room of a Richmond pub. This is what he said and what I learned.
Australian employers continue to struggle to understand #psychosocial hazards and psychological harm. A lot of advice competes, conflicts and confuses. So, Michael Plowright and I are joining the effort to make sense of this #mentalhealthatwork challenge in a lively, plain-English way.
You may already follow me through this blog’s SoundCloud account, but this new four-episode podcast series – Safe Work, Real Talk – offers new plain-English perspectives and, we hope,m solutions, or at least pathways.
We’ll talk about #Leadership, what went wrong, what went right, the unhelpful conflict between #HR and #OHS, and return-to-work.
The first episode will be out shortly, with the remaining three episodes rolled out in support of National Safe Work Month.
If you have any questions about work-related psychosocial and psychological issues, email them to this link, and we will try to answer them “on-air”.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) has a habit of discovering a useful idea and then asking it to explain everything. (We are desperate for silver bullets.) Systems thinking seems to be the latest candidate. It offers a valuable way to examine how work is organised and how psychosocial harm emerges, but enthusiasm is beginning to blur an important boundary. Systems thinking is a method of seeing how workplaces operate, but Sociology helps explain what is being seen, who shaped it and why it persists.
“Common Sense” is a concept all occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals must address, but that doesn’t mean it’s static. My six months on Norfolk Island provided me with a new perspective.
In several blog articles on “common sense”, I found the concept a deeply unreliable foundation for OHS because it is subjective, dismissive, and routinely used to defend and mask harmful organisational habits. As one article notes,
“Common Sense often seems to be the way I think or the way I do something – ‘It’s just common sense’”,
Every book by Ellen Pinkos Cobb deserves close attention, as her perspective and approach to examining sexual harassment and psychosocial hazards in the workplace are unique and valuable. Her new book, “The Global Evolution of Bullying, Harassment, and Discrimination Laws” is a great addition to one’s library.
