On the morning of day one of the Australian Labor Law Association (ALLA) National Conference, the Fair Work Ombudsman, Anna Booth, mentioned a “culture of compliance.”
She explained the culture of compliance by revealing data in several industry sectors about significant non-compliance based on the activities of the Fair Work Ombudsman inspectors. So, it’s perhaps more important to talk about a non-compliance culture rather than a compliance culture.
Prominent investigative journalist, Matt Peacock, has died from pancreative cancer. Few of us are lucky enough to save people’s lives, some of us change the world. Matt did both. He was never an occupational health and safety (OHS) specialist but his impact on the world of work, especially in Australia was profound and, probably, unmatched.
In 2019, I was helping the (then) Safety Institute of Australia with its conferences. I approached Matt to speak at the 2019 national conference dinner in Sydney, hoping he would be provocative. (Here is an article from that time) He shocked many in the audience when saying:
“..my message tonight is that if you were all doing your jobs properly, then I wouldn’t have had anything to report on in the first place.”
He did not let up on his challenging criticism that night. Below is the full transcript of his presentation, available for the first time.
“If it cannot be done safely, it should not be done at all.” I have heard this phrase repeatedly over the last 12 months in particular. It is a truth, but it also avoids all of the flexibility our occupational health and safety (OHS) laws, institutions and interpretations have allowed for decades. Perhaps our tolerance of this flexibility is fading.
I was reminded of the quote above when reading an article (paywalled) in The Times on October 17, 2024, written by Will Humphries titled “Army sexual harassment: ‘People wouldn’t join if they knew the truth’”.
Is it reasonable to apply the findings of a coronial inquiry into a theme park disaster to a “low-risk” administrative office environment? Well, one occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) is much like another.
Administrative and office work environments are much less likely to experience work-related traumatic deaths as there are few unguarded conveyor belts or forklifts darting around, so coronial inquiries are few. However, the requirements imposed by OHS laws are the same in both types of workplaces, and audits do not assess workplaces, only the OHSMS operating in those workplaces. For instance, an analysis of the OHSMS in place at Dreamworld in 2016 is relevant to an office or warehouse for a construction site or childcare centre in another Australian State.
The workplace culture of EY and other major consulting companies came under scrutiny several years ago following an apparent work-related suicide at the offices of EY in Sydney. EY’s workplace culture is again being examined after the death of a young EY employee in India, allegedly due to work stress.
Tasmanian politicians recently discussed Industrial Manslaughter laws in Parliament. As with similar debates in other jurisdictions, occupational health and safety (OHS) appears to justify these amendments, but the OHS principle of preventing harm is rarely discussed. Deterrence? Yes, but Prevention? Not really.
For many years, occupational health and safety (OHS) has been fixated on “Culture” as an encompassing term for what management activity does not work and what does. The focus has faded slightly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Culture made an important reappearance this week with the delivery of the final report of Australia’s Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. However, some of the most telling analyses of the safety culture in the Australian Defence Forces occurred in 2021 with the work of Samantha Crompvoets.
NOTE: this article discusses suicides
