The CEO of Safe Work Australia, Marie Boland, told delegates of the Psych Health and Safety Conference in Sydney on June 19 2024 that psychosocial injuries are likely to be notifiable to occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators, including instances of work-related suicide.
According to a preliminary transcript of Boland’s presentation
“….. Safe Work Australia recently agreed on the proposal to send to work health and safety ministers …. that they’re recommending that work related suicide should be notifiable and assault, there’s recommendation around occupational violence, and there’s a recommendation around a certain amount of days leave ….. I think that’s with work health and safety ministers at the moment, but it is imminent that there will be triggers put into the Model law and for notification [of] psychological injury.”
This news was widely applauded by the conference delegates but is likely to generate debate at, firstly, the meeting of the work health and safety ministers and then in local jurisdictions that are largely responsible for work health and safety. Business groups will likely see this action as unjustifiable red-tape and an unfair administrative burden, as is the standard response to any increase in OHS regulation. It also puts some additional pressure on the Victorian Government who has delayed its own psychosocial regulations to an extent that they are likely to be out of date, especially in light of these new notifiable incidents.
The issue of notifying OHS regulators of workplace- and work-related suicide is a hot topic in the United Kingdom with a trade union campaign on this very issue.
This bombshell-to-some was the most newsworthy tidbit of the morning session. One of the afternoon sessions brought the delegates to tears of empathy, but that’s for another article.