During last week’s conference session on occupational health and safety and industrial relations, Innes Willox of the Australian Industry Group also spoke but was not included in the previous SafetyAtWorkBlog article. However, his speech notes for that session have just been released and deserve consideration. Continue reading “A moderate entry in the IR/OHS conflict”
Category: executives
Unfair expectations on the individual
Harvard Business Review (HBR) is a justifiably respected business publication but it often sells occupational health and safety (OHS) short. A new HBR article, “Stress Is Your Brain Trying to Avoid Something“, is a case in point.
Too much of the contemporary approaches to psychosocial hazards at work focus on the individual without addressing the organisational. This often compounds the struggles of individual workers and encourages managers to blame workers instead of analysing the organisational and cultural factors that lead to a hazard or incident.
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Analysing safety leadership can be distracting
Any blog about occupational health and safety (OHS) will write repeatedly about leadership. Safe Work Australia advocates leadership as beneficial to OHS:
“When leaders make sure all business risks, including work health and safety, are effectively managed, and continually monitor and review all areas of their business’ performance, they will be open to opportunities for innovation, and alert to emerging hazards.”
But leadership requires someone to apply it and often, in the OHS sphere, people wait for others to show leadership rather than seeing their own potential.
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National OHS performance indicators needed
Since the release of the 2015 Citi report into the occupational health and safety (OHS) performance of the companies in the ASX200 stick exchange rankings, this blog has received many requests for a copy of the report to assist in the benchmarking of performance. Clearly performance indicators for OHS remain contentious and difficult but this does not need to be the case.
Citi’s recent report stated that key performance indicators (KPIs) should meet three needs:
- “internal monitoring for continuous improvement to reduce incidents;
- benchmarking and sharing lessons within the industry; and
- transparent disclosure to stakeholders.”
Continue reading “National OHS performance indicators needed”
Conversation about work-related grief
Recently SafetyAtWorkBlog was able to spend some time with Bette Phillips-Campbell, the Manager of GriefWork, a unit of the Creative Ministries Network in Melbourne. GriefWork provides a range of support services to families of those who have died at work or due to work factors.
The conversation touches on issues including
- how GriefWork operates and is funded,
- work-related suicide,
- worker memorials,
- the application of restorative justice in the workplace context,
- how a workplace death affects company executives,
The interview can be accessed at Bette Phillips Interview 2015
If you want more information about GriefWork or how you may be able to help this service, please contact Bette on (61) 03 9692 9427 or by email.
Workplace bullying report lost in the political frenzy
Earlier this year Victorian MP and Minister for Small Business, Adem Somyurek, was accused of bullying his Chief of Staff, Dimity Paul. This week, Somyurek resigned from his Cabinet position but not without a press conference in which he stated that the issue was political payback and that his resignation is no admission of guilt.
As you can see from this very brief summary, party politics has infested this instance of workplace bullying, and to such an extent that the important and solid investigation report into the incident is being missed. The reports are publicly available and deserve to be carefully considered rather than relying on some of the current media coverage. Continue reading “Workplace bullying report lost in the political frenzy”
Learning safety and leadership from drama
Most professionals, including occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, support the use of stories or narratives or case studies to explain complex scenarios and situations. Recently, at the ProSafe 2015 conference in Melbourne, acting and theatrical skills were used to illustrate the humanity behind the nuclear disaster of Fukushima.
To the uninitiated this may sound like quantitative risk assessment of underground mining being explained through interpretative dance by bandicoots, but the actors in the Fukushima disaster scenario were captivating and the power of theatre, even in this small-scale and on a conference podium, was powerful, stimulating and engaging. And with a
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