There is a legislative basis for occupational health and safety (OHS) but before the laws, there was morality and it is this morality to which most OHS professionals will refer when asked why they work in Safety. But I know no more about morality than anyone else. So what do I do in these situations? I get a book.
The book I chose was by
The Health and Safety Representatives’ Conference, organised by the Victorian Trades Hall Council as part of Victoria’s WorkSafe Week, was notable for the lack of politics. Previous conferences have often focussed on political campaigns such as Your Rights At Work but this was largely absent from the presentations. There were some political questions from the floor but that was expected.
The conference had some particular highlights relevant to the broader Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) profession.
I was honoured to speak recently at the monthly meeting of the Central Safety Group. As the meeting occurred during Safe Work Australia Month it seemed appropriate to stir debate about the nature of occupational health and safety (OHS) and how it applied.
Here is a selection of points that I intended to make. Discussion developed in a manner that allowed for many of these to be only touched upon but that was the intention of the presentation – to encourage OHS professionals to talk about OHS rather than about specific hazards. Continue reading “Stirring the OHS pot”
Occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals are being encouraged to think differently about safety and to focus on the positives instead of the failures, the leads instead of the lags. This needs to be supported by how we describe workplace incidents and in this context the profession can learn from one aspect of the debate on family violence in which Australia is currently engaged.
One example is available in this article from Women’s Agenda. In it Editor Jane Gilmore writes about how the death of a women, murdered by a man, was described poorly by a newspaper. The headline removes the perpetrator from the action. Continue reading “Beware the power of words”
2015 has been a big year for public attention on the exploitation of workers. In May, the Four Corners program revealed the exploitation of, largely, migrant or illegal workers in the food processing and vegetable growing sectors. In the last month, 7Eleven workers have featured, also after a Four Corners investigation in conjunction with Fairfax Media. In both cases, workplace safety has been mentioned but not featured.
In September 2015, the Victorian (Labor) Government released the
Professional organisations need to maintain personal contact between members and stakeholders even when social media allows for almost constant contact. Such events benefit from having thoughts challenged and recently one such event in Melbourne, Australia challenged its audience about psychological health and wellbeing.
A recent NSCA Foundation event heard from Andrew Douglas, one of the few workplace relations lawyers who can bridge the law and the real world. He began by describing wellness or wellbeing in a fresh context.
“Wellbeing is that equilibrium that is achieved between challenge and resources.”
This perspective addresses business operations and personnel management as challenges – situations that arise that need controlling or managing. This is a useful perspective as long as people feel up to the challenge and are not defeatist.
Recently there have been several local Australian kerfuffles about freelance writing. I have experienced similar issues and many readers I meet ask me this question – “do you make money from the SafetyAtWorkBlog?”
The short answer is “No”. But this is too simple. Readers do not pay me for access and there is no advertising on the blog. However, what the SafetyAtWorkBlog has done has increased my professional profile in the Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) sector so that my consulting and writing has a higher value.
Last week a content provider contacted me to discuss me writing articles for them. They read my blog articles and liked what they saw. They offered a “word rate” of A$0.40 – a word rate is a rate that, for instance, would offer A$200.00 for a 500 word article. Such a word rate may have been legitimately offered twenty years ago but small business costs have increased enormously since then. Continue reading “Do you make any money from this blog?”