Category: ethics

The Real Reasons Workload Harm Persists in Modern Workplaces

This year, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) has released excellent information on psychosocial hazards at work to support the World Day for Safety and Health at Work. (Australian researchers seem to have been instrumental in the report) I read the report, looking for more upstream concerns, such as political and socioeconomic factors that lead employers to create or allow work overload, the most significant contributor to work-related stress. This is what I found.

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When Everyone’s a Leader and No One’s Accountable

Business management advisers keep calling everyone a “leader”, but the term has become so vague it obscures who actually holds the power — and therefore the accountability — to prevent work-related harm. Psychosocial hazards aren’t fixed by slogans or culture talk; they’re shaped by decisions about workload, staffing, supervision and resources.

This article is based on my presentation to the Central Safety Group members on May 12, 2026, about leadership and occupational health and safety (OHS).

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The Legacy of Denial That Still Haunts Psychosocial Hazard Management

In the mid‑1970s, I arrived at Dandenong High School still clinging to the small importance I’d felt as a primary‑school Prefect. That confidence evaporated the day a student yelled “bums to the wall” as Science Teacher and Year 7 Coordinator Tim Richardson walked past. I didn’t yet know what a paedophile was, but Richardson would not be prosecuted for sexual offences until 2018, dying in jail a year later.

This experience reflects a broader cultural pattern of denial that still shapes how organisations respond to psychosocial hazards today. Australian companies, executives and employers are grappling with “new” duties to prevent psychological harm, yet Richardson’s story shows just how long our institutions have excused what should never have been excused.

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“Words and gestures … can only be genuine when they are backed by doing”

As I write this, hundreds of workers’ memorial services are taking place around the world. I usually attend the Melbourne, Victoria, event and wish I could have been there today because one speaker, Lana Cormie, transcended the usual politics and platitudes to outline a broader strategy for occupational health and safety (OHS) reform.

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A Workplace Death. An Upheld Conviction. And a Standard Every C-Suite Officer Should Understand.

A post written by Wade Needham (April 15, 2026), and reproduced with permission.

Two judgments totaling 75,000 words were handed down across 2024 and 2026. Not everyone will read them. Everyone should understand what they establish.

Years ago, during commissioning work at Port Hedland for the Roy Hill project, someone asked me how I knew the night shift crew were following the isolation procedure for livening the sub stations. I could name the critical risk. I could point to the training records, the procedure, the sign-off sheet, the safety advisor on shift. And when they asked how I knew it was being followed at 2am when nobody was watching, I paused. Long pause. Then I said something like “Well, the reports don’t show any issues.”

I have never forgotten that pause. Because I knew, in that moment, that I was describing paperwork. Not reality.

That is the most dangerous sentence in safety governance. The reports don’t show any issues. It is the sentence that sat underneath everything that went wrong at the Port of Auckland. I wanted to distil down elements of the judgement I found insightful.

But first, a too-long, don’t-want-to-read summary for those short on time.

Continue reading “A Workplace Death. An Upheld Conviction. And a Standard Every C-Suite Officer Should Understand.”

Why Safety Culture Is Not Enough

I don’t know which professional discipline has had the most effect on the management of work health and safety in Australia, but I do know that accounting has been neglected. Accounting and its companion discipline, Governance, have several research concepts that Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) should consider.

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Stop Blaming Workers for Problems They Didn’t Create

Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) is moving from a focus on interventions at the individual worker level to examination of the operational and managerial systems that may cause or encourage harm and incidents, especially in relation to psychological safety at work.

Although a new book from the United States does not address OHS specifically, its long title indicates its relevance – “It’s On You – How the Rich and Powerful Have Convinced Us That We’re to Blame for Society’s Deepest Problems”.

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