This newspaper article on the current status of Working from Home (paywalled) was satisfying on at least two levels: it was a sensible report on most of the benefits of this type of work arrangement and showed the limitations of newspaper publishing....
In December 2024, WorkSafe Victoria released “Office Health and Safety – A Guide for Employers“. Sadly, it seems to have (half) dumped the Officewise brand. If WorkSafe had kept it, the guide would have been part of an illustrious history stretching to the last century when the first edition was published in 1995. The new …
When Australia harmonised its occupational health and safety (OHS) laws, the management focus broadened to include work, and not just workplaces. Some “knowledge” or white-collar work can be done anywhere, and employers have often struggled to understand how to extend their OHS management systems and duties to apply to this revised or expanded system of work. Current OHS …
Last week WorkSafe Victoria followed some of the other Australian States by requiring employers to report positive COVID19 cases as “notifiable incidents”. (If they can do this fro COVID19, shouldn’t it be possible to do the same for mental health disorders?) Expanding the pool of notifiable incidents is of little practical consequence but it is …
[Guest Post] By Simon Longstaff (reproduced with permission from Crikey) Each week, The Ethics Centre’s executive director Dr Simon Longstaff will be answering your ethics questions [in Crikey]. This week: “ My employer sent me a questionnaire designed to test if my home working environment meets basic standards. If I’d answered truthfully I would have …
The second of a series of articles based on support from academics at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) focuses on the occupational health and safety (OHS) issues related to Working From Home (WFH), a situation that many Australians face at the moment. SafetyAtWorkBlog put some questions on WFH to ACU and Dr Trajce Cvetkovski, senior …
“WFH is probably good for productivity” was a headline in the Australian Financial Review (AFR) of May 29 2025. The online version (paywalled) added “if it’s part-time”. The Productivity Commission‘s examination of the COVID-19 pandemic in its “before-and-after” report presents some new perspectives on occupational health and safety (OHS) aspects of working from home....
