A recent SafetyAtWorkBlog article promoted in LinkedIn has generated many responses, mostly from people who have not read the whole original article, about whether sexual harassment is or is not an occupational health and safety (OHS) matter. Below is a summary of some of those comments. Continue reading “Commenters split on who manages sexual harassment”
Category: bullying
Sexual harassment may be an OHS issue but what priority should it receive?
One online news site in Australia has suggested that sexual harassment is an occupational health and safety (OHS) issue. At first blush, it should be. Sexual harassment can create mental ill-health and can certainly be harmful. But from the early days of discussions about workplace bullying and occupational violence in Australia, sexual harassment has been consciously excluded from OHS.
Is It or Isn’t It?
Some of the best discussion on bullying, harassment and violence was written by Dr Clare Mayhew for the Australian Institute of Criminology in 2000. These included a practical handbook on prevention. (It’s peculiar that some of the most perceptive works on OHS occur outside the OHS profession. Well perhaps not so surprising.) In the handbook, Mayhew points out that harassment has always been an element of workplace bullying but excludes sexual harassment from her discussion:
“The Australian Institution of Criminology believes that prevention, rather than post-incident reaction, is the key to improved outcomes. However, the handbook needs to be adapted specifically to each organisation for best results. The discussions exclude activity that could be described as sexual harassment, which is extensively dealt with elsewhere.” (page 1)
This position is reflective of the OHS literature yet, on reflection, this position may have been wrong for it contributed to a fractured approach to managing workplace psychosocial hazards.
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Action demanded on sexual harassment in the entertainment industry
On 12 December 2017, part of Australia’s screen and television industry held a forum in Sydney about sexual harassment in the sector and what could be done to reduce this workplace hazard. This initiative occurred a day before an open letter was published about sexual harassment in the music industry. There is a momentum for change on sexual harassment in the workplace, but it is at risk of resulting in a fragmented approach which will generate turf wars, confusion and, ultimately, ineffectiveness.
The
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What do Weinstein, Spacey and others have to do with OHS?
“Then I went, ‘Oh hang on, I’ve normalised so much of this as part of my industry…. This last three months has really made us all take a long hard look at what we have even let ourselves think is acceptable.” – Sacha Horler
Such a statement is familiar to those working in the field of occupational health and safety (OHS). This normalisation, or habituation, has underpinned much of the discussion of what builds a safety culture – “the way things are done round here”. As a result of revelations and accusations pertaining to Gary Glitter, Rolf Harris, Jimmy Saville, Robert Hughes, Harvey Weinstein, and Kevin Spacey, the entertainment industry around the world has been forced to assess the fundamental ethics on which sections of its industry are based. Continue reading “What do Weinstein, Spacey and others have to do with OHS?”
Workplace mental health and wellbeing strategies must consider suicide
There is an increased blurring between the workplace, work and mental health. In the past, work and life were often split implying that one had little to do with the other except for a salary in return for effort and wellness in preparation for productiveness. This split was always shaky but was convenient for lots of reasons, one of which was the management of occupational health and safety (OHS). However that perceptual split is over, now that mental health has come to the fore in many OHS considerations.
Recently
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Baked Beans and Bullying
Workplace bullying has a strict and clear definition in Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) laws:
“…repeated and unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety.”
According to Mr Peter Katsambanis, a Liberal Party member of the West Australian Parliament, the slashing of tyres, paint damage on a car and an exploding tin of baked beans is a
“terrible issue of workplace bullying”.
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Workplace mindfulness? The jury is still out
At a well-attended La Trobe University alumni seminar in May 2017, researchers discussed the reality and the hype surrounding mindfulness. They explained the varieties of mindfulness, the clinic research history over the last four decades and the personal advantages of living mindfully. However in the workplace and organisational context, they said that there was insufficient evidence to show benefits from workplace mindfulness in this “emerging area of research”.
The seminar was hosted by Latrobe University with three speakers
- Dr Jennifer Arnold-Levy, Director of Making Emotions Work
- Josh Marsden, Manager, Health and Wellbeing La Trobe University and
- Dr Eric Morris, Director of Psychology Clinic, La Trobe University (pictured above.
Many mindfulness advocates have developed programs that they claim can offer substantial benefits to workplaces by increasing productivity and reducing injury and illness, primarily, by changing the behaviours and attitudes of employees. This individual approach is often dropped into a workplace and promoted as an organisational opportunity. But the La Trobe researchers mentioned that this is a very recent perspective.
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