Human Resources (HR) professionals must start thinking of worker mental health in occupational health and safety (OHS) as obligations under OHS laws are being refreshed throughout Australia. But the reverse is also true; OHS people must give HR professionals more respect than in the past. As such, new words for psychosocial hazards, job design and workload management may be needed. One of those words could be “busyness”.
Julian Baggini is a philosopher less well-known in Australia than in the United Kingdom but his writings can add to some of the current discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) and business ethics.
In his 2010 book, Complaint, he analyses our grievance culture and how complaints can and should result in positive outcomes. OHS often seems to run on complaints and to understand how to respond to complaints, it is necessary to understand who is responsible for that response and why.
Advisory books about how to manage Burnout continue to be published. Another one that, due to the format and publisher, could be influential is Burnout for Dummies by Eva Selhub. Sadly, Selhub consciously downplays the occupational health and safety (OHS) role in preventing Burnout. Her choice sidelines OHS, the organisational context and the employer’s duty of care, but that seems typical for Burnout authors from the United States.
This year the South Australian Parliament will likely pass that State’s Industrial Manslaughter (IM) legislation as the introduction of these laws was an election commitment of the new Labor government. The consultation period on the draft Bill closes on February 10 2023 after being open for just over two months.
New South Wales may follow if the Labor Party wins the March 2023 election
Industrial Manslaughter laws under the broader occupational health and safety (OHS) continue to be contentious as a new research paper by Professor Richard Johnstone shows. However, the introduction of IM laws will forever be a political act at its core.
Continue reading “Industrial Manslaughter laws are spreading in Australia but are inconsistent [Open Access]”One of the best books about burnout is Jennifer Moss‘ “The Burnout Epidemic“, which this blog wrote about in April last year. A recent book on burnout and self-help caused me to revisit Moss’ book, and one of the chapters that I missed last year seems to explain the popularity of the self-help approach.
Moss writes about the organisational and structural workplace factors that create and perpetuate workplace stress and related poor mental health. However, one of the last chapters is titled “Take Care of Yourself, Too”. Moss writes:
“Self-care won’t fix broken organizational systems, but it’s the part we can control in a world full of the uncontrollable.”
page 213
Some of the recent guidance on mental health at work from occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators is not scintillating or even engaging. Their purpose is to provide information with the hope it is presented in a workplace by someone super-communicative and influential. (C’mon, really? We’re talking about OHS here.)
Luckily there is a recent easy-to-read book of fewer than 150 pages that reads like a conversation over a single afternoon with the reader about Mental Health At Work.
Continue reading “Mental health book should be influential due to lack of bullshit”Two new books about burnout arrived on my doorstep this week. They could not be more different. They reflect the mess of approaches to this type of psychosocial injury. Only one provides valid, useful evidence and advice.
Bev Aisbett released a book that I found unreadable – partly because of the advice offered but mostly because of the atrocious formatting where she YELLS almost all the time in the most annoying social media way. Below is a random example.
![Industrial Manslaughter laws are spreading in Australia but are inconsistent [Open Access]](https://safetyatworkblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/02/cover-of-journal_of_work_vol1_no1_edited.jpg)
