Category: accountability

Why Modern Leadership Can’t Deliver Safe Work

The most popular solution to physical and psychological occupational health and safety (OHS) problems is leadership. Leadership is crucial to implementing changes to work processes and policies that can prevent harm, yet we often view leadership as executive benevolence, without really examining executive leadership in modern workplaces.

Looking at current leadership traits through a different lens may help us understand why it continues to be so difficult to improve worker health and safety.

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“Whom Do Soft Skills Really Serve?”

Every summer in Australia, it seems we are in crisis. Somewhere there is a bushfire, and somewhere else there are cyclones and floods. Somewhere, there are places that experience these two extremes almost at the same time. In all these circumstances, Australians expect strong, effective and compassionate leaders. These expectations affect how corporate executives behave and employ their “soft skills”.

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Has Having Safe and Healthy Work as a Human Right Improved OHS in Australia?

When the International Labour Organisation declared safe and healthy work a fundamental human right in 2022, Australia quietly joined a global shift that reframed workplace safety from a technical discipline to a matter of human dignity. It didn’t make headlines. It didn’t trigger a legislative overhaul. But it did change the ground rules.

The question is whether this shift has improved worker health and safety in Australia—or whether it risks becoming another layer of symbolic language sitting comfortably above the realities of work.

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Inside the Psychosocial Safety Challenge: A Conversation with Ian Neil SC

“[Psychosocial hazards] is not coming, it’s arrived, and prosecutions will happen unless [employers] take serious steps to address the issue.”

Recently, I had the opportunity to interview Ian Neil SC on some occupational health and safety (OHS) matters related to psychosocial health.

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We let people off the hook when we keep talking about organisations and corporations

Over the last few decades, occupational health and safety (OHS) thinking has emphasised that the tangible hazards and risks at work are primarily created by unsafe systems of work or by poor organisational culture or maturity.

I am not sure that “organisational” is the most appropriate adjective. There are better alternatives: terms that re-humanise the decision-making process and acknowledge that culture comprises people.

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What changes does Leadership Require

In the landscape of occupational health and safety (OHS), executive leadership is often framed through the lens of compliance. However, as I and others have long argued, the law is the minimum; leadership must aim higher. Across hundreds of SafetyAtWorkBlog articles, a consistent theme emerges – safety leadership must evolve from bureaucratic oversight to moral accountability.

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Unsafe Back Then, Unsafe Now. Why Leadership Must Change

To truly understand occupational health and safety (OHS) issues, it is necessary to examine OHS concerns beyond one’s own industry. Recently, this blog has reported on some parliamentary debates on OHS in the horse racing industry. The November edition of The Monthly includes an exposé of the OHS of Australia’s horse racing industry by freelance writer, Madison Griffiths, with lessons for all of us on morality, Godliness, accountability and leadership. The article is paywalled but well worth the purchase.

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