communication – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Wade Needham

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It’s been a while since SafetyAtWorkBlog offered a profile on one of its subscribers. Wade Needham was generous enough to answer some questions about himself. His responses are intriguing and he provides excellents links to other resources.

Wade Needham on the far right in 2018 with, from the left, Tim Allred, Andrew Barrett and Naomi Kemp

If you are a SafetyAtWorkBlog subscriber and would like to follow Wade’s lead, email your responses to the following questions:

How did you get into Health & Safety?
What drives you?
What helps you slow down?
Regrets?
Favourite fiction writer?
What is one trend you are watching keenly?
Person/s who you watch and take inspiration from in H&S that you think will have an increasing impact in the sector:
What are you most excited about in our sector?
What’s your favourite quote?
Biggest issue facing the H&S profession?
What do you wish you had understood sooner?
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What should you have been doing whilst you answered this?

Mental health prevention is still glossed over

The latest edition of CEO Magazine contains a brief report of a workplace mental health breakfast seminar. It is written by John Karagounis, the CEO of the CEO Circle, the host of the seminar. Prominent speakers included Julia Gillard, Paul Howes and Georgie Harman, all associated with beyondblue. The prevention of mental ill-health at work is only inferred in this article, which reflects the dominant, and limited, perspective of most of the mental health sector. A deeper and broader analysis of workplace mental health is deserved.

However, the article included two statements of note. Clarification is being sought on this Karagounis statement:

Recognition for hard work and inspiration

There seems to be a spate of intelligent and knowledgeable people talking about the structural changes required by businesses to reduce and prevent psychological harm. Two Australian voices are Lucinda Brogden and Dr Rebecca Michalak. New Zealand has Dr Hillary Bennett who recently received a Lifetime Achievement Award at the New Zealand Workplace Health and Safety Awards. Bennett’s interview with SafeGuard magazine should be obligatory reading.

Bennett is asked about the Human Resource (HR) profession and nails a critical difference in the HR approach to the occupational health and safety (OHS) one:

Awards require a new purpose

WorkSafe Victoria has just contacted attendees at the 2019 WorkSafe Awards for an evaluation of the event. Although my response below relates to the recent event, it relates to many of the various (and expanding) awards for occupational health and safety (OHS). Here is some of my response to the WorkSafe survey and some suggestions on future Awards strategies:

Talk business, talk safety

Successful management of occupational health and safety (OHS) requires reciprocal, active dialogues between workers and their managers. In OHS terms this is Consultation. To provide some structure to that consultation, it is becoming more common to designate some workers as “Safety Champions”.

This October, Safe Work Australia is promoting its National Safe Work Month urging everyone to be a “Safety Champion”. This is more about the act of championing safety than having a Safety Champion title. In the past, SWA has used alternate terms such as “Safety Ambassador” but it still struggles to enliven the conversations about OHS in workplaces, partly because of its passive messaging.

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