Safety Culture and/or safetyculture

SafetyAtWorkBlog and others have been critical of some of the products and practices of Australia safety company SafetyCulture. However Luke Anear, SafetyCulture’s CEO invited me to speak at a briefing for his staff and this seemed a good opportunity to better understand his company....

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safetyculture clarifies its approach to SWMS

On May 1 2017 safetyculture released an e-book called “Confused about Workplace Safety?” intended to address questions commonly asked of them.  The topic of most interest is their advocacy of Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS), an activity discussed earlier by SafetyAtWorkBlog. safetyculture states up front that SWMS are for “high risk construction work” as defined …

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Lymph v Blood – OHS at the Jobs & Skills Summit

If Industrial Relations is the lifeblood of the economy and the nation, then Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) is the lymphatic system, a less well-known supplementary system without which blood circulation fails and the body stops working. Australia’s Job and Skills Summit that has just concluded focused on the blood. Media analysis offered mixed interpretations. …

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SWMS on hairdressing is not enough

Part of the reason that workplace safety seems complicated to many business owners is that, sometimes, occupational health and safety (OHS) consultants over-complicate safety.  Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS) are safety documents designed for high risk work activities that this blog has written about previously. Recently SWMS have begun to be sold through a major office stationery …

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Safe Work Method Statements – their role, their use and their curse

Paul Breslin caused a stir in Australia’s OHS sector in 2013 with his costing of one element of managing high risk workplaces, the Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS).  In 2014, an update of Breslin’s research was published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Health, Safety and Environment (only available through subscription), in which …

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Safe Work Method Statement templates cause concern

On 30 November 2012, SAI Global announced a commercial arrangement with SafetyCulture for the sale of generic Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS), particularly for high-risk industries. This has caused something of a stir with some Australian safety professionals who claim that this runs contrary to good safety practice. The controversy of SWMS in Australia is … Continue reading “Safe Work Method Statement templates cause concern”

Workplace safety apps reviewed

Workplace safety apps are a fairly new addition to smart technologies and they are of variable quality and application.  Below is a quick review of some. Glossary One of the earliest OHS-related apps and most basic was Derek Viner‘s  Safety101.  This is essentially nothing more than a glossary of risk and safety terminology.  It has not been … Continue reading “Workplace safety apps reviewed”