On May 11 2020, the Australian Financial Review’s back page ran an article (paywalled)about how “corporates” are becoming aware of mental health risks due to the COVID19 disruption. It is a good article but also one that reveals the dominant misunderstanding about mental health at work and how to prevent it.
The discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) and its relevance to COVID19 has finally touched the mainstream media with an article in The Age newspaper on May 7, 2020. The article is largely a reiteration of statements made by the Australian Council of Trade Unions (ACTU) and the Minister for Industrial Relations over the last few days but it is the first time that Safe Work Australia (SWA) has joined in.
The Chair of Safe Work Australia, Diane Smith-Gander has stated that additional regulations may have unintended consequences. She is quoted saying:
“We’ve got to let that system operate,… If we try to over-regulate and over-legislate, we will have unintended consequences for sure.”
This week Dr Rebecca Michalak wrote that penalties for breaches of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws need to be personal for people to understand the potentially fatal consequences at the work site or decisions that are made in the comfort of the boardroom. In this sentiment she echoes the aims of many who have been advocating for Industrial Manslaughter laws and also touches on the role of deterrence. But when people talk about Jail, are they really meaning Ruin? And do these options really improve workplace health and safety?
The current COVID19 pandemic has presented businesses with a confusing risk challenge. Is the risk of infection a public health issue or an occupational health and safety (OHS) issue? The easy answer only adds to the confusion – it is neither and both.
In relation to epidemics and pandemics these are public health risks within which the OHS risks must be managed. In Australia, many of the OHS regulations and agencies were slow to provide the level of detailed guidance that employers were requesting and this was partly due to the regulators and agencies having to scramble together working groups and experts to rapidly produce such guidance. The situation in the United States offers a useful and reassuring comparison to how the Australian governments have responded but also offers OHS lessons for Australian employers.
Dr Rebecca Michalak is the founder of PsychSafe, a company advising companies on issues related to the interconnectedness of occupational health and safety (OHS), Human Resources (HR) as well as the psychological hazards and structures at work and of work. Her combination of skills and experience is a new one for Australia and Dr Michalak is quickly becoming a strong influence on workplace health, safety, and corporate governance.
Dr Michalak has accepted the opportunity to provide a more personal insight into what she does and why she does it in the latest in a series of articles about humanising OHS.
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The discussion about recovery from the COVID19 pandemic is starting, particularly in Australian and New Zealand where the infection and death rates seem to be declining quicker than in other countries. The Business Council of Australia (BCA) released its recovery plan on 20 April 2020. The media release is entitled “Business crucial to a safe return to normal“. The word “normal” is more loaded at the moment than normal 🙂 because it belies an assumption that what existed before the outbreak of COVID19 is how the world should be, even though the pandemic has illustrated weaknesses in what used to be the “normal”.
SafetyAtWorkBlog will focus on those elements of the BCA plan that directly or indirectly affect the physical and psychological health of workers but there is also some text, and subtext, that illustrates the ideological position of the BCA.
The Peter Sandman quote concerning delivery people and infections that appeared in an earlier SafetyAtWorkBlog article highlighted an issue from 2005 that was taken up in Senator Tony Sheldon‘s questioning of the head of Safe Work Australia, Michelle Baxter, in Senate Estimates on March 4 2020. Sheldon has challenged SWA in earlier committee meetings but his confidence is increasing as he covered more issues than delivery workers and coronavirus.
Michelle Baxter was also questioned on the provision of OHS guidance in languages other than English, silicosis data and the banning of engineered stone.