WorkSafe Victoria has just concluded a Safe Work Month webinar on psychosocial hazards and psychological risks, attended by around 14,000. The content was familiar to anyone who has been following the development of Victoria’s new occupational health and safety (OHS) over the last four years, but it was an important communications opportunity for WorkSafe with useful insight into employers’ perspectives on mental health at work.
Niru Tyagi recently wrote on LinkedIn about Denmark’s regulatory approach to work-related psychosocial hazards, comparing it the current Australian approach, framing Denmark as creating an industrial obligation. It is a perceptive comparison but downplays the significance in Australia of the criterion of reasonably practicable.
Just over a week ago, RMIT University’s research funding program, SHINe, conducted its inaugural symposium. This symposium was both new and fascinating. It was overbooked with a considerable weight list, I think, because of the international safety research guests, but the fact that an event in Safe Work Month was free might have helped. The research by the Construction Safety Research Alliance (CSRA) for the United States was a highlight.
The latest edition of New Zealand’s excellent occupational health and safety (OHS) magazine, Safeguard (long may it reign…. in hard copy), included its annual income survey of OHS professionals. Some Australian organisations also do this, but their findings can be expensive to access.
I ran Safeguard’s data summary through AI to provide a text-based profile of a “typical” NZ OHS professional. It offers an interesting contrast to what we have in Australia.
Dean Yates is a prominent Australian speaker on the issue of moral injury. Yesterday, at a WorkSafe Tasmania seminar, Yates brought the 250 attendees up to date on the status of moral injury and its occupational context. Although this seminar was a Safe Work Month event, Yates’ information requires some thought to fit with the occupational health and safety (OHS) and psychological hazards contexts.
Prominent occupational health and safety (OHS) lawyers Dale McQualter and Catherine Dunlop have just concluded the first of two online seminars about Victoria’s new psychological/psychosocial regulations and compliance code. Many employers will have a lot of work to do to comply, but the overall sense was one of reassurance.
Recently, parliamentary workplaces in the United Kingdom and Australia have had scandals about inappropriate behaviour – COVID-era parties and sexual harassment and assault, respectively. Official inquiries have repeatedly identified that Ministers and parliamentarians are overwhelmed with paperwork and expectations of being contactable 24/7. These do not excuse poor, unsuitable or criminal behaviour, but they are part of poor work design and contribute to poor psychological health and can be improved. But overwork in parliament is not a new phenomenon.
