Agricultural safety has come to the fore in Australia and New Zealand over the last few weeks. Safe Work Australia (SWA) has commenced a public consultation on the safety of using a quad bike for work. It is quite revealing and limited.
In the 1990s, there was a significant discussion about “Big Data”. Organisations had begun working digitally due to rapid technological growth and the digitisation of historical records. But the data was so large at the time that its usefulness was questionable. Big Data was of only historical and archival importance until artificial intelligence (AI) tools were developed. Now organisations can turn their Big Data into commercial products and services. International law firm Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer may be a model of the future.
By now, SafetyAtWorkBlog readers are well aware that the ways to prevent psychosocial hazards and manage psychological harm and safety are well established. A brand-new global report from the International Labour Organisation in support of next week’s World Day for Safety and Health at Work provides excellent information on psychosocial hazards, but I wanted to know more. I wanted to know why these hazards exist and thought the ILO report may offer some answers or clues.
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.”Australian lawyer Michael Tooma is always worth listening to, and he recently participated in a webinar titled “When AI Watches Work: Monitoring Workers and Psychosocial Risks!” hosted by the Global Initiative for Industrial Safety. Tooma reinforced warnings about overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI) in occupational health and safety.
LinkedIn is an enormously inhumane software, but it does have some positive uses. One of them is being invited to meet people who might find you interesting or admire your work. Earlier this year, I jumped at the chance to have coffee with Dr Kat Page, who lived only a few suburbs away, as an exercise in mutual admiration. Last week, Page released her book called “Good Work: Transform Your Work from the Inside Out“. Finally, a book by an organisational psychologist on redesigning work, aimed at preventing harm.
Lately, I have been very critical of some self-published OHS books. I am not against this form of publishing, but the books need to be high-quality and professional; otherwise, they are, at best, short-term marketing and, at worst, vanity publishing.
Continue reading “Self‑publishing: credibility and context”
