Senator Jacquie Lambie has been a staunch advocate for improving the occupational health and safety (OHS) of Australia’s defence force personnel. In 2022, she gave a confronting presentation to the Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide, and she continued her advocacy on day 1 of the 48th session of the Australian parliament by asking reasonable questions that could also be posed in non-military industries.
Danielle Griffiths is a health and wellbeing manager who will appear at this week’s Psych Health and Safety conference in Sydney. In response to my question below, Griffiths offered her personal opinion.
“There seems to be a strengthening demand for a new socioeconomic approach that respects the humanity of workers. How did we lose the focus on our humanity? What is stopping us from redesigning work to be more respectful?”
Elements of Andrew Hopkins’ latest book have been spinning in my head for a couple of weeks as they echo my thoughts on occupational health and safety (OHS) over the last few years. I cannot shake his discussion of stakeholder capitalism and shareholder capitalism. These two elements of business management are crucial to our understanding of OHS and how we should proceed, particularly in relation to psychological health.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) laws establish duties on employers (and employees) to provide safe and healthy workplaces. These duties reflect the social morals of the time, but the morality of employers is rarely challenged.
Below is a selection of OHS-related questions that all employers should be asked and able to answer. How would you or your employer respond?
Starting January 1, 2025, Australia will have new laws and penalties for intentional wage theft beginning January 1, 2025. The usual business lobby groups are bleating about the unfair imposition of costs and time on their members. But what about the significant impact on workers’ health, safety and dignity?
The latest edition of OHS Professional magazine carried a long article by Kerry Smith titled “Understanding and Combating Complacency in the Workplace.” The article uses examples at the worker level when the greatest risk posed by complacency is likely to be with managers, executives, their attitudes to safety, and their own safety management systems.
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.
