SafetyAtWorkBlog and others have been critical of some of the products and practices of Australia safety company SafetyCulture. However Luke Anear, SafetyCulture’s CEO invited me to speak at a briefing for his staff and this seemed a good opportunity to better understand his company.
At the 2017 SafeGuard conference in Auckland,
The SafeGuard conference in Auckland this week has provided some excellent occupational health and safety (OHS) insights but the standout, on Day 1, was the end of the day panel. Often these are dull and given to less than half the audience who have either had children to collect or choose to go to the casino next door.
This panel comprised two representatives of Contact Energy,
Every government releases a great deal of information, particularly around budget time and occupational health and safety (OHS) funding often gets missed in the overviews and media discussion. The Victorian Government’s budget papers (Budget Paper No. 3 – Service Delivery) for 2017 included A$3 million to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for
“Addressing occupational violence against health workers and workplace bullying” (page 78)
There is no doubt that such funding will help improve OHS but it also seems odd, given some of the recent incidents and riots, the corrections and prison services received no specific OHS funding. The introduction of “a trial of independent workplace facilitators” is also intriguing.
Continue reading “How will “independent workplace facilitators” improve OHS?”
Almost every occupational health and safety (OHS) inquiry by the Australian Government has acknowledged the inadequacies of data on workplace injuries, illnesses and deaths. The 1995 Inquiry into Occupational Health and Safety (Volume 2) (pages 377-378) by the (then) Industry Commission acknowledged the lack of empirical evidence and made up its own. The situation has barely improved.
However a new project by West Australian academic,
Recently I recorded my contribution to an online conference called the RTW Summit. This conference is first to Australia although other organisations have proposed such a format previously but never eventuated.
The conference has been devised and organised by Mark Stipic, a young Return To Work professional who started a podcast recently. He is intelligent and one of those people who is not afraid to take risks in the emerging world of social media.
Continue reading “Free online safety conference – RTW Summit”
Kirstin Ferguson has been an amazing advocate for occupational health and safety (OHS), good governance, Board responsibility, and gender diversity. She is receiving a great deal of media attention lately for her Celebrating Women campaign on social media. Ferguson has inspired, and been inspired by, many people in the OHS profession in Australia and is an example of how OHS blends with issues of leadership and governance in a way that is very different from the Trojan Horse analogy recently discussed by John Green.
On March 8 2017 Australia’s