Occupational health and safety (OHS) and Human Resources (HR) disciplines continue to, mostly, operate in isolation and, sometimes, in conflict. Part of the reason is that workplace matters are often seen as either OHS or HR, even though they are both.
SafetyAtWorkBlog looks for why Australian workers have four weeks of Annual Leave. Continue reading “Annual Leave is an institutionalised mental health break”
Australia, as are many other countries, is in the transition phase for the latest Standard for Occupational Health and Safety Management Systems – ISO45001. The Standard has been accepted by Australia as relevant to its jurisdiction and discussion seem quiet. However, the work of the technical committee on this Standard (SF-001) continues. The Head of the Delegation for Standards Australia responsible for the 45001 series of Standards, David Solomon, provided the following status update.
ISO (International Organization for Standardization) has formed a new International Technical Committee (TC283) that has been charged with the responsibility of developing the following standards that are in the suite of international Standards that ISO45001 leads.
This blog has a policy of linking to source documents wherever possible. Recently I investigated the origin of the statement and its variations:
“In a 12 month period, 20 per cent of Australians will experience a mental health condition.”
Clarity on this is going to be important as Australia has several formal inquiries relating to mental health and this statement often crops up in strategy documents and policies related to occupational health and safety (OHS).
The Australian Human Resources Institute (AHRI) has recently published an article about the significant Human Resources trends for 2019. The trends identified include
SafetyAtWorkBlog will be more specific in its occupational health and safety (OHS) “trends” for 2019.
At the end of September 2018 the Australian Psychological Society held its 2018 Congress. As conferences do, various media statements are released to generate interest in the speakers. One caught the attention of this blog. It was released on September 25 2018, and was called:
“Resilience isn’t enough to combat the effects of burnout, world renowned psychology expert says”
This sounded like it may look closely at the prevention of harm and SafetyAtWorkBlog was able to interview that world-renowned psychology expert,
Some organisations struggle to understand the prevention of harm. In September 2018 the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development (CIPD) released its “People Managers’ Guide to Mental Health“. The guide is intended to address
“…the whole lifecycle of employment, from recruitment, through keeping people well and managing a disability or ill health at work, to supporting people to return to work after a period of absence.” (page 3)
It includes the prevention of psychological harm but in words and phrases that are very unhelpful.
One of the fascinating elements of this year’s National Comcare conference is the conflict between the Human Resources (HR) approach to occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers compensation, and the OHS approach to psychosocial hazards. This is not the fault of Comcare as the audience is a peculiar mix of both professions.
The difference was on display when some presenters focused on the post-incident care and, almost entirely, on interventions on the individual. Other presenters focused on the prevention of physical and psychological injuries – the OHS approach. The former seemed warmly embraced by the HR professionals. There were other speakers, or parts of their presentations, where prevention was almost mentioned as an afterthought and even then omitting references to their organisation’s own OHS publications.
There has always been a structural and ideological separation of the professions