Category: culture

Psychosocial Safety Gets Serious When the Wellbeing Fluff Is Stripped Away

Day Two of PHSCon was likely to be uncomfortable. Day One covered context, community and curiosity. Day Two asked a more difficult question. Now that employers know more about psychosocial hazards, are they prepared to change how work is designed, managed and measured? The broad answer from the speakers and case studies was “not really”. Genuinely managing psychosocial hazards and psychological safety is not a wellbeing campaign, a mindfulness app, a webinar series or another glossy page on the intranet. It is occupational health and safety (OHS), and it requires the same attention to hazards, controls, governance, and review that employers claim to routinely apply to physical risks.

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Rediscovering the “Radical” Power of Ordinary Conversation

Day one of PHSCon felt less like the unveiling of a new paradigm and more like a reminder that the fundamentals of good work have been obvious for a long time. The opening session positioned the conference as part of a broader push to move beyond bare compliance and towards more humane, evidence‑based ways of organising work. Conference chair and author Dr Kat Page set the tone by describing how her book Good Work emerged from watching COVID‑era decisions about job design, workload and leadership either amplify or buffer psychological harm. She framed both the book and the conference as an attempt to offer collective agency and hope, a space where practitioners, leaders and academics could connect stories, research and practice in ways that make better work design feel possible rather than theoretical. Conference delegates received a free copy of the book.

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Why Context Matters More Than Ever in Psychosocial Risk Management

Day 1 of FlourishDx’s Psych Health and Safety conference ended this year with a flourish, featuring a Family Feud-style contest between Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Human Resources (HR). It was a raucous conclusion to a day of mixed safety messages.

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Trade unions, OHS and the hard question of representation

Trade unions have always had a substantial role in Australian occupational health and safety (OHS), particularly in the construction industry. That role should not be dismissed, minimised or romanticised. The history of union involvement in workplace safety is one of pressure, persistence and, at times, confrontation. But the more difficult question is whether trade unions should automatically control worker representation on health and safety matters. The answer is not as simple as many union advocates would like.

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Systems Thinking Remains the Blind Spot in Australia’s Leadership Conversation

Australian employers keep saying they’re improving how they manage mental health at work, yet the basic problem remains: HR and OHS still operate in silos. You can see it in every psychological injury case where HR handles the person, and OHS handles the paperwork, but no one fixes the work. A recent episode of The Caring CEO featuring a conversation between Graeme Cowan and Kat Page showed how close we are to integrating people management and work design — and how far we still have to go.

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The Royal Commission Needs Strong Consideration of OHS Actions and Consequences

The Victorian Government, under its new leader, Ben Carroll, has announced the “Royal Commission into the Integrity of Major Public and Civil Infrastructure Construction Projects in Victoria“. The Terms of Reference (ToR) have largely been praised for their breadth, but do they have any occupational health and safety (OHS) relevance? Early reporting of the government’s announcement often mentioned that the

“…lawful, legitimate and appropriate actions taken by parties under occupational health and safety laws and regulations.”

But there is more to consider.

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Save the Player, Save the Game: Rethinking Brain Injury in Australian Football

I have been writing about how occupational health and safety should apply to professional contact sports for a few years. The emergence of concussion, traumatic brain injury, and CTE has changed how sports are managed and the sports themselves.

I hope when you have 14 minutes to spare, perhaps on your smoko, walking at lunchtime or on the gym’s treadmill, that you get a chance to listen. Afterwards, please post some comments or message me on the socials.

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