From Sidekick to Spotlight: WHS Show Steps Up, But a Few Big Players are missing

Over the last couple of decades, the Workplace Health and Safety Show has evolved from a trade show tacked onto occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences to an independent entity. But is it any good? I spent a few hours there last week to find out.

The Workplace Health and Safety Show is a two-day event that travels to major Australian capital cities each year. Its origin was as a trade show that accompanied OHS conferences, offering a clearly commercial counterpoint to the regulators and academic presentations at the conferences. The challenge in attracting conference delegates was that they had usually paid big money to attend the conference and needed to make a trade-off between their commitment to the conference and the opportunity to stroll the trade show. Other than lunchtime, the conferences rarely allocated enough time for the trade shows, which are an important part of demonstrating the practical application of many of the concepts presented at the conference.

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The 2024 WorkSafe Victoria Awards night

At the end of February 2025, WorkSafe Victoria held its annual awards night. The event met all of its requirements on the night—recognizing excellence and rewarding it—but it should also be a launching pad for innovation in occupational health and safety (OHS) and a media event in the broadest sense.

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Is Victoria still committed to its psychosocial regulations?

Victoria’s Minister for WorkSafe, Danny Pearson, has emerged from the occupational health and safety (OHS) wilderness to restate his commitment to introducing legislative amendments on psychosocial hazards at work. He has been stalling on these for a very long time, but he has recently provided an update to Parliament.

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Quad Bike Safety Standard compliance and media accuracy

It is reasonable to claim that the quad bike safety controversy has been resolved in Australia through the intervention of the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) and the imposition of a national safety standard. However, the occupational health and safety (OHS) message continues to be murkier than necessary when quad bikes are advertised in some of the agricultural media without critical safety devices.

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Engineered stone and The Block

One supplier of synthetic stone products to Australia, Cosentino, is in the mainstream media after an appearance on a popular television home renovations show on the Nine Network, The Block. Several occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals and organisations have raised concerns about how the product was discussed and presented on a recent episode. The best coverage of this matter has been by an ABC television program, MediaWatch.

MediaWatch revealed the importance of listening to how dangerous products are described and how the guidance of OHS Regulators can be interpteed or manipulated.

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RUOK? needs a refresh

RUOK? Day is held in September each year in Australia. The workplace suicide awareness campaign has been very successful, but over time, I have observed a decline in effectiveness, certainly at the local communication level. It may be a victim of its own success as almost all awareness campaigns struggle to maintain their original freshness. Perhaps it is time for a change. Perhaps that change is being forced upon us.

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Burnout is the new Stress

Burnout will continue to be a trend for discussion papers and marketing brochures for some time to come.  A recent one, from Udemy Business is a good example of discussion without action.  If we were to replace the word “burnout” with “stress”, the paper could easily have been produced over twenty years ago.

Many of the data sources will be familiar – Gartner, Gallup, McKinsey, Deloitte.  The Gallup Research included these top five causes of burnout:

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