executives – Page 2 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

The Socialisation of Work Health and Safety

We like to pretend OHS begins with a regulation or a checklist, but the truth is far less glamorous: it starts with the basic childhood lesson of “don’t hurt people.” Everything else is just the paperwork society builds around that idea. Part of that “paperwork” is the process of socialisation.

There are several definitions of socialisation:

learning how to live in a way acceptable to one’s own society,
interacting with others, of being social, and
implementing socialism.

Occupational health and safety (OHS) is part of all three (the third is more debatable). Socialisation is often seen as a personal experience, but in most instances, socialisation is imposed on us.

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Soldiering on to Burnout is Nonsense, Unsafe and Unwise

One of the best summaries of burnout was an article in The Guardian on February 15 2026, written by Zing Tsjeng, titled “Facing meltdown? Over 75% of people suffer from burnout – here’s what you need to know” (paywalled). It has its flaws, but the selection of sources, including Christina Maslach, is impressive.

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The American Approach to Psychological Safety

Harvard Business Review (HBR) is an active publisher of articles on business management. In 2024, it released a collection of essays on psychological safety as part of its Emotional Intelligence series. HBR’s psychological safety advice is written for a U.S. corporate audience. It largely ignores the legislative duties that shape psychosocial risk management in Australia, so the advice should be considered with great caution.

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When Ideology Masquerades as Analysis

I pride myself on listening to a broad range of views, so I purchased a recent book called “The Dark Legacy of Daniel Andrews – Assessing the Social and Economic Costs of Australia’s Most Controversial Premier“. Reading it stretched my patience as few of the various writers acknowledged that Premier Dan Andrews saved many lives during the COVID-19 pandemic, even though his very long lockdowns were economically and psychologically damaging.

I read this book looking for factual accuracy, analytical rigour, ideological framing, and relevance to OHS. It missed almost all my expectations.

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OHS keeps getting sidelined and everyone knows it

Recently, occupational health and safety (OHS) lawyer Steve Bell issued a challenge to all those who provide leadership training to executives.

At the annual breakfast for the Australian Health and Safety Institute, supported by Herbert Smith Freehills Kramer, Bell shared this leadership training scenario with his panel of experts:

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Why Modern Leadership Can’t Deliver Safe Work

The most popular solution to physical and psychological occupational health and safety (OHS) problems is leadership. Leadership is crucial to implementing changes to work processes and policies that can prevent harm, yet we often view leadership as executive benevolence, without really examining executive leadership in modern workplaces.

Looking at current leadership traits through a different lens may help us understand why it continues to be so difficult to improve worker health and safety.

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Wellbeing Budgets Sound Good but Workplaces Show the Truth

Citizen and worker well-being will not be a major focus of the Australian government’s budgets, but it will still influence them. Recently, Professor Paul Read assessed the Wellbeing Budget concept in The Australian Fabians Review (issue 8). His optimism is notable and helps us understand well-being in an occupational and psychological context.

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