At last week’s Work Health and Safety trade show in Sydney Australia, the most intriguing exhibitor was a mobile optometrist who provides safety eyewear. I was able to talk with Cristy Neilson of PSG Eyewear about how this service works.
Here is a Safety At Work Talks podcast of the interview.
The Safety Institute of Australia continues to rebuild its member services, its finances and its reputation. In fact, it is so confident in its future that it has changed its name and brand to reflect this path. From July 2019 it will be known as the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS). A critical element of the SIA/AIHS strategy is it national conference, the second of which was held in Sydney at the end of May 2019, and it is worth asking whether the conference matched the Institute’s renewed pathway.
Matthew Peacock is an award-winning Australian journalist and one of the very few in Australia who can bring an informed and nuanced perspective to the topic of occupational health and safety (OHS). Last week he was invited to speak at the dinner of the Safety Institute of Australia‘s Conference. According to some delegates, he roasted the OHS profession; to others, he set the profession a deserved challenge.
A week out from Australia’s Federal Election and a major national workplace health and safety conference in Sydney, I produced a video update and a podcast about some recent SafetyAtWorkBlog articles, some new books and what’s coming up in this blog.
If you are able to attend the #safetyscape conference next week, chase me down for a selfie. upload it to Twitter or Instagram and receive a month’s free subscription to the SafetyAtWorkBlog.
The occupational health and safety (OHS) profession is being affected by demographic changes as much as any other profession. Younger people seem to have a very different expectation on how to interpret and apply OHS, and older people are tired of being lectured to, and this is putting pressure on those who organise events, seminars and conferences and those who mentor and educate in a range of ways.
Some organisations and conferences are responding by reconfiguring the provision of information away from the lecture format of an expert to a mix of communication methods. This blog has written about some of those that occurred in the last two years. These conferences are less academic than in earlier days. Rarely is a conference accompanied by a handbook of research-based conference papers; some provide no papers at all and slideshows delivered a fortnight after the event are devoid of context and next to useless.
Continue reading “In order to grow, OHS needs economists, philosophers, ethicists and gender specialists”
I am one of the few freelance writers in Australia who focuses on occupational health and safety (OHS). As a result, my presence is often uncomfortable to those who organise conferences and seminars, even though I operate under the Journalist Code of Ethics. People have had to accept that there is now a media interest in OHS-related events where previously there was very little. This has caused a couple of problems and challenges.
Chatham House Rule
Recently, one seminar organiser suggested I not attend an event because the “Chatham House Rule” was to be applied. They said that as I would not be permitted to report on anything said in the seminar, it may not be worth me attending. This is a corruption of the Chatham House Rule which is best described by Chatham House itself as:
“When a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed.”
One of the hottest occupational health and safety (OHS) issues at the moment is Industrial Manslaughter but this is just one aspect of the enforcement of OHS and prosecution for breaches. In June 2019 a two-day conference on OHS/WHS Prosecution and Enforcement is being held in Melbourne, Australia with a list of respected speakers who are prominent in Australian labour law circles.
The conference is more expensive than some other OHS conferences but the list of speakers is impressive and the theme could not be more topical. (A brochure is available for download) Until March 15 2019, Criterion Conferences is applying an Early Bird discount of $500 for each delegate. SafetyAtWorkBlog has negotiated a further discount applicable to Subscribers only.