Work health and safety feels more complex than ever, but the SafetyAtWorkBlog offers fresh perspectives on managing physical and psychological risks.
For one week only in support of National Safe Work Month, I am offering a 25% discount on the annual subscription. This subscription offers great value, with all new articles and full access to a library of over 4,000 safety-related articles.
Continue reading “Flash Sale – 25% discount”Workplace bullying and harassment are often described as interpersonal problems, such as a clash of personalities, a difficult manager, or a “bad apple” who spoils the barrel. This framing is convenient, familiar, and wrong. Bullying is not an individual defect. It is a systemic outcome produced by organisational structures, cultural norms, and socioeconomic pressures that make harmful conduct predictable. If employers continue to treat bullying as a behavioural characteristic rather than a structural hazard, they will keep missing the causes and potential controls, and fail to meet their legislative duty of care.
Political debates do not stop at the workplace door. When questions of independence, self-government and national identity become highly charged, they can affect employee wellbeing, workplace relationships and an organisation’s ability to operate calmly and fairly. The current discussion around Alberta separatism in Canada, when compared with Norfolk Island’s campaign for greater self-government, offers useful lessons for Australian employers. The constitutional issues differ, but both cases show how distrust of distant decision-makers can deepen division, and why workplaces need practical systems for consultation, respectful communication, and psychosocial risk management.
A LinkedIn colleague said this to me recently in a thread I started:
“I can’t see the logic in not integrating psychosocial hazards into the risk assessment process. The scope and complexity of the org will obvs have an impact but on one hand you’re saying employers have to manage both physical and psychosocial hazards/controls, but not to use the same process. And while we’re at it, that’s HR’s responsibility so it’s not on us. I say engage, embrace and guide the entire leadership team (HR included) in the process. As to why you wouldn’t use the risk assessment process I’m keen to know how you demonstrate you’ve used the hierarchy of control and reduced the risk alarp.” (slight edits)
Here is my response and clarification.
For a country with clear health and safety obligations for almost half a century, it’s remarkable how often Australia still hears employers say they’re “unsure” what psychological health and safety requires. The duty has never been ambiguous. Employers must provide work that is safe and healthy and free from risks so far as is reasonably practicable. That obligation to prevent psychosocial hazards, the precursors to psychological ill-health, has been sitting in legislation since the 1970s and 1980s. It didn’t suddenly appear. It didn’t evolve spontaneously out of the primordial ooze. For those of us under the age of 70, it has always been there.
Returning to Australia after six months as a health and safety adviser on Norfolk Island has left me thinking hard about what “doing safety” really means in a remote, resource‑tight community. Norfolk Island Regional Council has cycled through several mainland advisers over the years, usually on short contracts and sometimes without an effective handover. That churn created complexity, not culpability. As I wrote in my notes at the time: “There were many safety things the Council could have done differently… but I don’t think it was doing anything wrong.”
The real issue seemed to be differing expectations – what mainland advisers thought was achievable, and what the island’s workforce actually needed.
The Victorian government has commenced its Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria. Occupational health and safety (OHS) was mentioned on Day 1 in the opening statements of Counsel Assisting the Commissioner, Chris Young KC, indicating that OHS may feature in the investigations over the next year.
