Until recently, Donna McGeorge‘s book “Red Brick Thinking” passed me by, but her perspective aligns closely with the occupational health and safety (OHS) concepts of “safety clutter” and the Swiss cheese model.
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Category: book
Are emotion and anger also types of energy?
One of my previous employers was highly committed to occupational health and safety (OHS), but always gave the program, the schedule or utilisation a higher priority. Whether that was a justifiable compliance level was of little concern, as long as the auditors recertified the OHS management systems. The company realised their approach to OHS was not working, so it turned its focus on “critical risks”, which were, bluntly, anything that would kill you. But such was the strength of the culture that even this focus on critical risks failed to cut through and give OHS the respect that it legislatively deserves.
Matthew Hallowell‘s latest book, “Energy-Based Safety – A Scientific Approach to Preventing Serious Injuries and Fatalities (SIFs)“, discusses this focus on critical risks.
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Across the Ditch: What New Zealand’s OHS Survey Reveals About Gender, Influence, and Industry
The latest edition of New Zealand’s excellent occupational health and safety (OHS) magazine, Safeguard (long may it reign…. in hard copy), included its annual income survey of OHS professionals. Some Australian organisations also do this, but their findings can be expensive to access.
I ran Safeguard’s data summary through AI to provide a text-based profile of a “typical” NZ OHS professional. It offers an interesting contrast to what we have in Australia.
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When Leadership Fails the Soul
Dean Yates is a prominent Australian speaker on the issue of moral injury. Yesterday, at a WorkSafe Tasmania seminar, Yates brought the 250 attendees up to date on the status of moral injury and its occupational context. Although this seminar was a Safe Work Month event, Yates’ information requires some thought to fit with the occupational health and safety (OHS) and psychological hazards contexts.
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Old news is new news
Recently, parliamentary workplaces in the United Kingdom and Australia have had scandals about inappropriate behaviour – COVID-era parties and sexual harassment and assault, respectively. Official inquiries have repeatedly identified that Ministers and parliamentarians are overwhelmed with paperwork and expectations of being contactable 24/7. These do not excuse poor, unsuitable or criminal behaviour, but they are part of poor work design and contribute to poor psychological health and can be improved. But overwork in parliament is not a new phenomenon.
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What Makes an OHS Law Book Worth Reading?
Neil Foster and Jacqueline Meredith‘s 3rd Edition of Workplace Health and Safety Law in Australia can be seen as a companion to Creighton and Stewart’s Labour Law. Both have excellent occupational health and safety (OHS) content for their respective markets; both have very different tones.
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“reinvigorated in nerve and muscle” – working hours and OHS
Prominent in some of Australia’s political and economic debates are issues related to hours of work. This may be associated with the four-day work week, the five-day work week in construction, working from home, or the general debate about productivity, whatever definition you prefer, and there are many.
With the political backdrop of the government’s Economics Roundtable, a very timely new book by Sean Scalmer – “A Fair Day’s Work – The Quest to Win Back Time” was published.
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