The human resources (HR) discipline is often criticised for not considering the interests of workers as its primary consideration. This is not a recent phenomenon. To understand the origins of this criticism, looking at some of the research into the discipline from before the wellness industry dominated many of the HR approaches to occupational health and safety (OHS) is helpful.
LinkedIn is often used to promote new business and workplace health and safety books, many of which have been self-published. Before Christmas, I acted on a LinkedIn post and purchased “The Pracademic’s Handbook“. I had heard many conference delegates in 2024 describe themselves as “pracademic” or express a wish to be more of one, and a handbook could be instructional. I was both disappointed and pleased with the book, but mostly disappointed.
Continue reading “Not a Pracademic’s Handbook”Self-help books often include a nugget of useful information related to occupational health and safety. Paul Taylor‘s “Death by Confort – How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It” offers a recent example.
Congratulations to Richard Franklin and Rebecca Michalak on winning a copy of John Brogden’s “Profiles in Hope” book. Please email me your mailing address, and I will despatch the books.
Thank you to all the subscribers who entered. I hope to do this again soon.
I know the basics of occupational health and safety (OHS), but I struggle to integrate those basics into the changing world of work. As such, I have been reading about work’s socioeconomic, political, and philosophical context and how I can adapt OHS to workers’ needs and employers’ desires. Two books I purchased last week are challenging my understanding of work and OHS. Unsurprisingly, neither of them is about OHS. We often learn more about our own OHS discipline from how others see it.
[The following article discusses suicides]
Suicide has been a running thread in this blog for many years, and the occupational health and safety context will continue to be examined. The issue appears in unlikely locations, such as a book translated from French called “The New Spirit of Capitalism”.
The study of suicide is finally overcoming the social stigma to accept that the causes are many, in work and in life, and that mental illness is not always present when people decide to die by suicide. Statistics have helped enormously in this by showing that rates of suicide have not declined, even with millions of government dollars going to mental health organisations.
Here are Luc Boltanski‘s and Eve Chiapello‘s thoughts on those causes and statistics:
On the iconic discount table in Readings Carlton bookshop is one of the most interesting occupational health and safety (OHS) books – The Careless State by a Professor of Political Science at Melbourne University, Mark Considine. This book was not written by an OHS specialist with all the associated ideological and philosophical baggage. And really, it is mainly one chapter that justifies the description “Worker’s Health and Safety.”
