Category: interview

Podcast of interview on OHS reviews

The recent article into the review of SafeWorkSA caught the attention of the Your Rights at Night radio program and led to an interview on 9 April 2015.  The podcast of that interview is now available online.

Interviews are odd experiences, particularly when they are over the phone.  Although there is a reason someone wants to talk with you, you usually do not know the questions beforehand.

For the interview above, I was in the bedroom, away from noises, with printed blog articles, media releases and OHS statistics across the pillows.  I thought the spread of information was important to have at hand to make sure the information I provided was accurate but one can still get caught out when the pace of the interview has settled. The last question asked in the interview could have been answered better.  Neither of the reviews announced have a fixed end date, regardless of what I said, in fact you can hear the shuffling of papers while I looked for the SA government’s media release. Oh well.

Kevin Jones

Professor Niki Ellis speaks about OHS, CSR and resilience

Next week the National Comcare Conference is held in Melbourne Australia.  One of the keynote speakers at the conference is Professor Niki Ellis, a prominent Australian OHS researchers and consultant  who is also heading up the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR).

On a sunny September 5 2011 I was able to spend half and hour with Niki at a noisy cafe outside Victoria’s State Library talking about:

  • The profile of OHS is Australia as a profession
  • The importance of a practical application for OHS research (what Niki refers to as “interventionist research”)
  • The need for innovation in tertiary institutions
  • The legacy of Dame Carol Black’s UK report “Working for a Healthier Tomorrow“
  • The challenge for OHS professionals to cope  with emerging psychosocial hazards
  • The role and importance of Corporate Social Responsibility to workplace health and safety
  • The deficiencies of applying resilience to workplace mental health issues

Kevin Jones

Interview with Kevin Jones

In a few weeks time SafetyAtWorkBlog will be reporting on the Safety in Design, Engineering and Construction conference to be held in Melbourne.  The conference organisers interviewed me on my thoughts on workplace safety.  The interview is available HERE but you may need to provide your contact details.

The odd thing about the interview is that a safety conference organiser chose me for the interview yet I am not a speaker at the conference they are organising.  IQPC is the company and the August conference in Melbourne is Safety in Design, Engineering & Construction 2011.

Excerpt:

Construction IQ

“It’s very nice to have you here. Now, as a commentator on safety and OHS, you’d know that there’s a lot of talk surrounding the Harmonisation process. How do you think the legislation will change the OHS landscape, and do you think there are any particular areas that will translate into normal practices across all work sites?”

Kevin Jones

“No, I think it will have a particular impact on national companies, those that operate across jurisdictions, so it will be very important to them because that’s where the cost savings are meant to be coming from by reducing the administrative duplication, but that deals with only about 5% to 10% of companies in Australia.  For those companies that operate within just a single state jurisdiction, Harmonisation isn’t going to impact them overly much.  There are going to be some changes to the state legislation because the national model legislation has to be implemented at each State level, so individual States will see some changes. But those changes, by and large, are not radical in terms of how safety is managed.  It’s certainly a considerable shock for some companies – particularly on issues of union right of entry and prosecutions and those sorts of things – but if you have a look at the management of safety in a work site, I don’t think the Harmonisation process is going to change the way it is controlled and managed.”

In my experience many conferences produce a “teaser”, in audio or video, of the keynote speakers, in particular.  This is intended to generate some enthusiasm for the conference in order for people to register but it also introduces speakers with whom the audience may be unfamiliar.  As with any advertising it is difficult to quantify the benefits of such strategies but with the phone interview mentioned above, there is little cost other than 10 minutes of time, once the recording process is established, and so perhaps the return on investment is not of great significance.

Kevin Jones

Clarity of OHS laws in Australia

On 2 September 2010, an interview I undertook with Radio Atticus was broadcast in Australia  (9 minute mark of the podcast)  Radio Atticus is a law program on public radio in Australia.

As well as my comments, the reporter, Nat Cagilaba, interviewed Neil Foster of the  University of Newcastle (referred to as Ian in the podcast I believe).  We discuss the intended role and the current reality of OHS laws.

Comments on the audio are welcome.

Kevin Jones

New UK podcast on drilling regulation

HSE podcasts are almost always worth listening to.  The June 2010 podcast capitalises on the topicality of offshore oil drilling generated by the BP incident in the Gulf of Mexico.

The podcast is available for listening online

The important element of the podcast is whether such deepwater drilling incidents could occur elsewhere?  This is useful not only for the UK jurisdiction but for Europe and Australia.

The interview discusses the value of a “safety case” regulatory regime and the disadvantages of a prescriptive regime.

Interestingly the UK wells are individually notified to HSE almost a month before drilling is due to commence.  This allows for an assessment of the well design and structure prior to activation.

Clearly, this approach stems from the Piper Alpha explosion in 1988.  The BP Gulf incident can be considered the United States’ Piper Alpha.

It raises the question of did BP, an English company that should have been well aware of the usefulness of the safety case approach to drilling, apply a different approach to its Gulf drilling contractors to that applied elsewhere, and why?  Was BP really committed to “best practice” in safety, or as it called it “beyond the best“?

US workplace bullying interview with Gary Namie

Ben Merens of Wisconsin Public Radio interviewed Gary Namie of the Bullying Institute on 26 May 2010 for 45 minutes on his At Issue radio program.  The interview is very timely as new “Healthy Workplace” legislation is being considered in the United States.

What was useful in this interview was that the discussion centred on workplace bullying and Namie summarised how this is substantially different from schoolyard bullying – a  significant difference which requires different methods of control.  Namie says that although bullying in childhood is significant, the impact on an adult of similar treatment may have longer lasting effects.

The broadcast, of course, applies to the US context principally but Namie has a long and strong international reputation in workplace bullying advice and deserves an audience.  Tellingly, Namie says that the comparison for workplace bullying is not schoolyard bullying but domestic violence.

In 2001, Namie provided me with a review copy the 2000 edition of The Bully At Work for the SafetyATWORK magazine.  The review is available HERE.

Kevin Jones

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