Over the last few months, SafetyAtWorkBlog has received several new OHS-related books for review. There’s not enough time to undertake a deep review of each book so here is the first of a series of quick reviews.
Already a member? Log in here
Category: book
Acts of God, the morality of safety – interview with Sidney Dekker
The latest episode of Safety At Work Talks is a return to the sequence of interviews with Professor Sidney Dekker. In April 2017, Dekker published a book called The End of Heaven which discusses suffering. This book has a very different tone from his previous books and is intriguing.
The breadth of the discussion was also surprising with concepts and references rarely talked about in relation to occupational health and safety, such as morality, Acts of God, train disasters and the Bible. If this sounds heavy, it is useful to follow the discussion that leads to this statement from Dekker:
“Safety Culture is the new Human Error”.
This latest episode is available at
Soundcloud: https://soundcloud.com/safetyatworkblog/safety-at-works-talks-episode-03
Podbean: https://safetyoz.podbean.com/
How much attention should we give to gender in OHS?
I once had to stop a potential fight on a construction site between a works supervisor and a safety professional. The verbal abuse and niggling occurred for several minutes before the men’s chests were inflated like roosters and it was at this point I stepped in to diffuse the situation by asking some questions as…
Already a member? Log in here
Bullying, evidence, ethics and solutions
Safety people love evidence, particularly evidence of hazards because evidence can validate what we thought we saw. Perhaps of more importance is evidence about what types of interventions work. A recent study into the prevention of workplace bullying (abstract only) held the promise of solutions, even though it was a literature review and of some…
Already a member? Log in here
Dummies can equal clarity
It took a long time but Wiley has published a Dummies guide on Health and Safety At Work. The lack of an occupational health and safety (OHS) book in this series has always been a mystery particularly when the Dummies” market seems to be, primarily, small- to medium-sized businesses. This edition is written for the UK market but the vast majority of the book is applicable to any jurisdiction that is based on the original UK OHS laws. But is it any good?
SafetyAtWorkBlog dipped into several chapters of the book to see if it was on the right path.
Already a member? Log in here
More books on the Christmas list
There were three books that I left off my Christmas/Summer reading list. Each of them important for my occupational health and safety (OHS) professional development and personal curiosity.
The first is Rethink – The Surprising History of New Ideas by Steven Poole. This books looks at what we think are new ideas and sees the precursors or the ideas’ previous appearances. I was attracted to this perspective because I am seeing a lot of new ideas in OHS that are familiar and similar to what has come before. Continue reading “More books on the Christmas list”
SafetyAtWorkBlog’s Christmas reading list
The media is full of lists of Christmas reading, usually in order to sell books. Below is a selection of the safety-related books that are in my Summer reading pile. (No, I am not going to list the Batman comics or Star Trek books. That would be embarrassing.)
I first met Robert Sams at a book launch of one of the Rob Long’s books. Sams’ approach to risk has some similarity to Long’s, which is acknowledged in the Forewards, but those who develop or apply a theory are often more interesting than those who created the theory. The the format of the book is a “reflective journal” also makes this nook more intriguing. It is part diary, part blog, part journal but above all it is a journey of learning with the occasional epiphany. Continue reading “SafetyAtWorkBlog’s Christmas reading list”