Model for improving safety reporting

A lot of safety professionals “froth up” about aviation safety. Challenging occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts have originated in this sector so it is worth keeping an eye on aviation safety research.  A new article has been published called “A holistic approach to evaluating the effect of safety barriers on the performance of safety reporting systems in aviation organisations” (not Open Access, sorry) by Muhammad Jausan, Jose Silva, and Roberto Sabatini from RMIT University’s, School of Engineering – Aerospace and Aviation Discipline.

Jausan, Silva and Sabatini developed a new model that

“… can help to determine the cumulative effect of organisational, working environment and individual barriers on the performance of a safety reporting system in an aviation organisation.”

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Acts of God, the morality of safety – interview with Sidney Dekker

The latest episode of Safety At Work Talks is a return to the sequence of interviews with Professor Sidney Dekker.  In April 2017, Dekker published a book called The End of Heaven which discusses suffering.  This book has a very different tone from his previous books and is intriguing.

The breadth of the discussion was also surprising with concepts and references rarely talked about in relation to occupational health and safety, such as morality, Acts of God, train disasters and the Bible.  If this sounds heavy, it is useful to follow the discussion that leads to this statement from Dekker:

“Safety Culture is the new Human Error”.

This latest episode is available at

Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/safetyatworkblog/safety-at-works-talks-episode-03 

Podbean: https://safetyoz.podbean.com/

Kevin Jones

What’s coming and what’s going

advertisements - national-safe-work-month.pngOctober 31 is both Halloween and the end of Australia’s Safe Work Month which also means that being able to get a year’s subscription to SafetyAtWorkBlog for only $100 (plus GST) is ending.  Click on the image on this page to get the specific discount code for this special offer.

Over the next couple of months, SafetyAtWorkBlog subscribers will be able to access:

  • Exclusive reports from the 2017 conference of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia, and
  • An exclusive interview with author and PhD student Tom Doig about his investigations into the Hazelwood mine fire and its aftermath.

Continue reading “What’s coming and what’s going”

Extraordinary, quiet, policy change at WorkSafe Victoria

In April 2017, WorkSafe Victoria created consternation in the farming sector by stating that farmers who own quad bikes must fit operator protection devices (OPDs) to the vehicles in order to operate them safely. The quad bike manufacturers took WorkSafe Victoria to the Supreme Court and, according to various media statements, the issue was dismissed before getting to Court and everybody won! On 26 October 2017, the current policy position of WorkSafe Victoria on operator protection devices (OPDs) was clarified.

Continue reading “Extraordinary, quiet, policy change at WorkSafe Victoria”

Industry group expresses concerns about new safety Standard

An odd media statement was released by the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) on 23 October 2017 regarding the new international occupational health and safety (OHS) management system Standard ISO45001.  Several days later Standards Australia released a statement that supported and clarified ACCI’s position

ACCI states that

“….the draft standard is still several months away from being finalised”.

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

Important little OHS steps in latest Productivity Commission report

Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC) released a 5 year productivity review called “Shifting the Dial“. It is one of those large government reports from which lots of people draw lots of conclusions. Chapter 3 in this report addresses Future Skills and Work within which occupational health and safety (OHS) is mentioned in a useful and important context.

The PC acknowledges the changing types of work that have been written about copiously elsewhere with varying degrees of alarmism.  The Commission contextualises this rate of “transformative” change as the latest in a continuum of change and recommends this policy approach in relation workplace safety:

Login or subscribe to SafetyAtWorkBlog to continue reading.

New quad bike safety taskforce has a mid-2018 deadline

On 24 October 2017, Australia’s Ministers for Employment and Small Business announced a new taskforce led by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that will conduct an investigation into quad bike safety.  What is different about this taskforce is that it is

  • a Federal taskforce,
  • looking at the introduction of a “quad bike product safety standard”, and
  • coordinated by the ACCC drawing on the experience of State and Federal workplace safety authorities.

Continue reading “New quad bike safety taskforce has a mid-2018 deadline”