Bill Kelty believes employers have an absolute duty to provide workers with a safe, healthy workplace. He asked how any company can operate without giving occupational health and safety (OHS) its highest priority.
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Category: health
When Burnout Is Framed as a Systems Problem But the Questions Remain Personal
Organisational psychologist John Chan recently launched his company’s 2026 State of Workplace Burnout Report, presenting burnout as a consequence of work design rather than individual resilience. While many of the findings of this grey literature will be familiar to OHS professionals, the audience questions offered interesting insight into how burnout is understood outside the safety profession.
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Real Work, Real Talk podcast
Michael Plowright and I enjoyed completing our 4th episode of the “Real Work, Real Talk” podcast. My background is occupational health and safety (OHS); Michael’s is consulting on workplace bullying and some Human Resources issues. These two disciplines need to talk with each other if employers are going to effectively manage psychological safety in their workplaces. We thought we should get things started.
Below is one review we have received:
“Safe Work, Real Talk is a coherent, engaging four-part podcast series that explores psychosocial hazards, leadership, workplace conflict, and organisational responsibility through the combined perspectives of OHS and HR.
While some episodes would benefit from stronger evidence, more workplace examples, and more debate between the hosts, the series succeeds through its authenticity, practical relevance, and willingness to challenge accepted assumptions, earning an overall rating of 8.5/10″
Episodes can be accessed at:
Stream SafetyAtWorkBlog | Listen to podcast episodes online for free on SoundCloud
SafetyAtWorkBlog – Podcast – Apple Podcasts
Safe Work, Real Talk at Working Well Together
Back Pain Data Still Falls Short of What OHS Needs
Back pain is a serious, ongoing occupational health and safety (OHS) challenge. A recent survey by the Australian Chiropractors Association (ACA) provides some indication of the scale of the problem, but it could have been so much more.
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Useful Seminar but a Couple of Missed Opportunities
Wellbeing programs and resilience training can support employees, but they aren’t a substitute for addressing workplace risks at their source. That was a key message from WorkSafe Victoria’s webinar on psychological health and safety for small and medium businesses.
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Safe Work Australia’s Big Bet on an Expanded OHS System
The release of Safe Work Australia’s Best Practice review left me wondering whether Australian work health and safety policy has reached regulatory overreach, or whether it is finally catching up with the realities of contemporary work.
Much of the discussion has focused on the report’s individual recommendations. What interests me more is an assumption that seems to underlie almost every recommendation: that occupational health and safety (OHS) should become the nation’s principal framework for preventing workplace harm in all its forms, not merely physical and psychological injury.
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Why don’t US employers focus on preventing psychosocial hazards?
Many Australian employers, managers and executives take inspiration from counterparts in the United States. When it comes to occupational mental health, they are looking in the wrong direction and could benefit from looking more locally. But there is merit in evaluating the US perspectives.
Below are responses provided by several Artificial Intelligence (AI) agents on my own PC to the question in this article’s title. There is considerable overlap in many, but I start off with the most confronting response, provided by the World Socialist Web Site‘s Socialism AI:
Continue reading “Why don’t US employers focus on preventing psychosocial hazards?”