guidance – Page 31 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Considering organisational violence may provide a more effective path to controlling psychosocial issues at work

Vaughan Bowie is an Australian academic who has chosen workplace violence as his major area of interest. Bowie came to general prominence earlier this century with several books and his contribution to the WorkcoverNSW guidance on workplace violence.

Cover from Proceedings_3rd_Workplace_Violence_2012 His research has taken him to look at “organisational violence” and in October 2012, he addressed the 3rd International Conference on Violence in Healthcare (the proceedings are available HERE) on the topic in a presentation called “Understanding organizational violence: The missing link in resolving workplace violence?”

Bowie writes, in the conference proceedings (Page 155), that

“Initially much of the workplace violence (WPV) prevention and management responses focused on criminal violence from outside organizations. At the same time there was also a growing concern about service user violence on staff especially in the human services area. A later stage of this development was a growing recognition of relational violence at work. This includes staff-on-staff violence and aggression, bullying, horizontal violence, sexual harassment and domestic violence.

Models based on these areas of WPV have been developed by the International Labor Organisation (ILO), the World Health Organisation (WHO), the Injury Prevention Research Center (IPRC) and the California Occupational Safety and Health Administration (Cal/OSHA) and other regulatory bodies. This presentation will show that the current models and responses based on these types of WPV are inadequate and ineffective because they largely ignore the fact that organizational culture and management style have a direct contributory effect on the types of violence experienced by employees, third parties, and service users. The findings demonstrate that what at first appears to be criminal, service user or relational violence at work may in fact be the outcome of a type of ‘upstream’ organizational violence trickling down in a toxic way triggering further violence.” (emphasis and links added) Continue reading “Considering organisational violence may provide a more effective path to controlling psychosocial issues at work”

Safe Work Method Statement templates cause concern

On 30 November 2012, SAI Global announced a commercial arrangement with SafetyCulture for the sale of generic Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS), particularly for high-risk industries. This has caused something of a stir with some Australian safety professionals who claim that this runs contrary to good safety practice. The controversy of SWMS in Australia is a hot topic and one that is unlikely to be resolved soon, as it goes to the heart of some of the safety red-tape objections from the business sector.

SAI Global announced:

“SAI Global Limited (ASX: SAI) has signed a distribution agreement with SafetyCulture Pty Ltd one of Australia’s leading providers of Occupational, Health and Safety information and materials, to publish and sell their “Safe Work Method Statements”.

These Safe Work Method Statements, developed by SafetyCulture, are templates documenting procedures and methods for safely executing common tasks and operations on construction sites.

These templates cover a wide range of potentially dangerous tasks and activities which:

Save construction companies time and effort drafting various OH&S procedures for different applications.
Are available in Word format and can be easily tailored to meet the requirements for specific construction sites.
Are based on industry expertise and latest OH&S best-practice for high-risk construction work.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog has written previously about the commercial situation and strategy of SAI Global and its relationship with Standards Australia. SAI Global has always been a commercial organisation that has marketed the work undertaken by Standards Australia. This has never sat well with many safety professionals as some, including SafetyAtWorkBlog, have argued that any Standards referenced in workplace safety legislation should be free or at a reduced cost due to their role in preventing incidents and harm. Continue reading “Safe Work Method Statement templates cause concern”

NSW follows Victoria’s lead on construction industry safety code

Tower Crane In 2012, the Victorian Government introduced a construction industry compliance code intended to control industrial relations in that industry sector. Significantly, this Code included specific work health and safety (WHS) obligations. On 6 December 2012. the New South Wales Government, led by the Liberal Premier Barry O’Farrell proposed a similar code with exactly the same WHS obligations.

In Premier O’Farrell’s media release, the Minister for Industrial Relations Mike Baird made no mention of the WHS obligations. The statement focuses on containing wages, controlling potential cost blowouts on infrastructure projects and, without mention it by name, productivity. Minister Baird missed a golden opportunity to argue both the economic and moral positions; an opportunity that was not missed by the Victorian Minister for Finance Robert Clark when he announced his State’s construction compliance code in July 2012. Continue reading “NSW follows Victoria’s lead on construction industry safety code”

First look at Australia’s workplace bullying report

Australia’s Parliamentary Inquiry into Workplace Bullying has released its report that includes 23 recommendations and a dissenting report from the Coalition (conservative) committee members.

The first recommendation that most will look forward is the latest workplace bullying definition. The committee suggests:

“repeated, unreasonable behaviour directed towards a worker or group of workers, that creates a risk to health and safety”.

This is no great shake from most of the previous definitions but illustrates further the isolation of Victoria from nationally harmonised work health and safety laws as WorkSafe Victoria’s preferred definition is

“… persistent and repeated negative behaviour directed at an employee that creates a risk to health and safety.”

Regardless of which definition is “better”, Victoria will be further out-of-sync.

The Committee also recommends the Government

“develop a national advisory service that provides practical and operational advice on what does and does not constitute workplace bullying..”

This is sorely needed and will relieve State OHS regulators of the pressure and the resources. No timeline is mentioned but it is likely that the Federal Government will move to establish such a service quickly, as the recommendation is not surprising.

However, the opposition political mantra for any government initiative is how it will be funded. Continue reading “First look at Australia’s workplace bullying report”

Increased productivity and dignity at work are achievable

David Yamada, in his blog Minding the Workplace, states that

“the more we can get the concept of human dignity into our everyday discussions of work, the better.”

SafetyAtWorkBlog is a supporter of dignity at work and it is heartening to see that the concept is being discussed globally. Dignity, as an activator for change, seems to be a missing element in not only The Hedgehog Review but also very recently released reports, OHS guidances and Australia’s debate on productivity.

The Australian Human Rights Commission released a report last week about sexual discrimination called Working Without Fear. A quick word search for “dignity” shows no results, nor do searches for “bully” or “bullying”. This is disappointing but perhaps should not be a surprise as this report indicates again that the Australian Government considers sexual discrimination and workplace bullying to be separate issues although lawyers and the media often overlap the two.

The Working Without Fear report, based on a large telephone survey concludes that

“…. targets of sexual harassment are most likely to be women and less than 40 years of age. Consistent with previous surveys, the 2012 National Survey also shows that the harassers are most likely to be male co-workers, though women were at least five times more likely than men to have been harassed by a boss or employer. Men Continue reading “Increased productivity and dignity at work are achievable”

Challenges for WorkSafe Victoria at WorkSafe Week

As part of the annual WorkSafe Week, WorkSafe‘s Ian Forsyth presented the organisation’s OHS strategy to a large crowd at the Melbourne Convention Centre on 28 October 2012.

Harmonisation

Clearly Forsyth anticipated questions about the Victorian Government’s decision not to implement the model Work Health and Safety laws that will exist in all but two States and territories from 1 January 2013. He stressed that the government is adamant that the WHS laws will not be introduced “in the foreseeable future” and therefore Victorians need to refocus on compliance with the existing Victorian laws. He effectively shutdown any discussion on those laws before they started. The laws are off the Victorian table so let’s start working with what we have.

His stance has great significance for Victorian businesses and almost projected isolationism as a positive move. Part of his, familiar, justification was that the model WHS laws were based largely on the Victorian occupational health and safety laws and so there is little need to change, particular if the change would increase the regulatory cost burden to Victorian businesses. Continue reading “Challenges for WorkSafe Victoria at WorkSafe Week”

John Darley speaks to SafetyAtWorkBlog

Independent Member of the South Australian Parliament, John Darley, provided SafetyAtWorkBlog with some background to the package of amendments he has for that State’s Work Health and Safety laws currently before Parliament.

Darley acknowledged that he delayed the Work Health and Safety Bill since December 2011 and admitted that the Bill looked like common sense but his approach is to jump ahead an consider how the Bill would look as an Act and determine its social impact. The opposition parties in South Australia believed the Bill was so bad that it should have been defeated before it proceeded to the committee stage but Darley knew that could imply that he was not interested in workplace safety. Darley believes that the reassessment of the WHS Bill over such a long time indicates his commitment to the safety of workers.

Darley said that union right-of-entry was not an issue of concern in December 2011 but he came to see the significance of the issue after delegations and meetings with people affected by workplace deaths but who were also very dissatisfied with the operations of the OHS regulator, SafeWorkSA. The union OHS representatives offered an alternate but Darley felt that union access needed Continue reading “John Darley speaks to SafetyAtWorkBlog”

Category: guidance

Considering organisational violence may provide a more effective path to controlling psychosocial issues at work

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Safe Work Method Statement templates cause concern

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NSW follows Victoria’s lead on construction industry safety code

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First look at Australia’s workplace bullying report

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Increased productivity and dignity at work are achievable

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Challenges for WorkSafe Victoria at WorkSafe Week

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John Darley speaks to SafetyAtWorkBlog

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