The OHS of Working from Home remains problematic

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 …

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Liability, COVID19, Manslaughter and Working from Home – Welcome to the new 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 …

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Is it OK to lie to your employer while working from home?

[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 …

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The health and safety of working from home

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 …

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Latest OHS News from Maddocks

Last week, Maddocks law firm conducted an end-of-year summary of its workplace relations issues and a forecast for 2025. Occupational health and safety (OHS) are almost inseparable from industrial relations (IR), so the overlaps between the four or five topics discussed were enlightening and provided a good contrast to the information from other law sources....

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Sick leave entitlements miss the OHS justification

Australia is currently in the Winter season of sniffles, colds, and influenza, which generates illness and workplace absences. In the northern hemisphere, excessive heat may be causing a similar level of workplace absences. A recent article from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation discussed workplace absences due to illness....

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Don’t be a slouch on workstation ergonomics

Office ergonomics is one of the most misunderstood and misrepresented areas of occupational health and safety (OHS). The issue of posture was discussed in an article in the New Yorker on April 15, 2024, based on a new book – “Slouch: Posture Panic in Modern America” by Beth Linker. Rebecca Mead writes that Linker analyses …

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