Category: design

New quad bike safety taskforce has a mid-2018 deadline

On 24 October 2017, Australia’s Ministers for Employment and Small Business announced a new taskforce led by the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission (ACCC) that will conduct an investigation into quad bike safety.  What is different about this taskforce is that it is

  • a Federal taskforce,
  • looking at the introduction of a “quad bike product safety standard”, and
  • coordinated by the ACCC drawing on the experience of State and Federal workplace safety authorities.

Continue reading “New quad bike safety taskforce has a mid-2018 deadline”

Is the future of OHS based on a flawed past?

It seems that we are constantly being urged to innovate, to be creative and to think differently.  This is equally true in the discipline of occupational health and safety (OHS), but part of thinking differently in the future should also involve reassessing the past.

It is often said that many the OHS performance indicators, predominantly Lost Time Injury (LTI) calculations, have shown a “plateau-ing” of safety performance.  From this common position, companies have moved to new OHS training strategies that involve behaviours, values, cultural norms, safety culture and other employee and organisational recalibrations.  But what if the case in support of these strategies was not as strong as first thought?  What if the “plateau-ing” did not exist or the increase in performance was not as strong as the LTI-based data seemed to indicate?

Academics,

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Half time at the Future of Leadership

This month the “Future of Leadership” conferences are travelling Australia.  The Melbourne stop, on 21 September, started really well with three on-topic speakers but declined strongly after morning tea with at least one speaker who had nothing to say about leadership.  At the half-time break, one hopes that the conference gets back on track because when it was, it was very good.

This leadership conference is very different from occupational health and safety (OHS) conference because it talks about a concept in such general terms that the audience can impose whatever context it chooses.  As this blog is about workplace safety, predominantly, OHS context was paramount.

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Cancer survivors returning to work

If occupational health and safety (OHS) is to include the “whole-of-life” for workers, companies, products and projects, OHS professionals need to expand their pool of knowledge to meet the demands for an inclusive organisational culture.  One recent research paper supports this approach by looking at the return to work of cancer survivors.

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Zero, health and people – themes of the World Congress on Safety & Health

In front of thousands of delegates and dignitaries, the 21st World Congress on Safety and Health was officially opened yesterday by the Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

There are three themes of this conference:

  • Vision Zero – From Vision to Reality
  • Healthy work—Healthy life
  • People-centred prevention
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Tassie Coroner releases his safety findings on 7 quad bike deaths

Coincidentally, as an article about quad bike safety was being uploaded to this blog, details of the release of Tasmanian coronial findings were received.  The findings were released by Coroner Simon Cooper on August 25 2017 and were not reported widely.

The Coroner investigated seven deaths related to quad bikes but only two occurred on workplaces or as part of performing work – Heather Richardson and Roger Larner. Curiously, WorkSafe Tasmania did not investigate these work-related deaths.   Continue reading “Tassie Coroner releases his safety findings on 7 quad bike deaths”

New OHS management elements in ISO45001

Following yesterday’s article on the impending international occupational health and safety (OHS) management Standard, ISO45001, some readers have asked for more details. David Solomon, the Head of the Australian International Delegation of ISO45001 provided a table that compares the elements of ISO45001 with AS4801 and OHSAS18001.

According to Solomon there are several elements that are new to ISO45001, ie. not included overtly in AS4801:

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