Category: law

The Australian Institute of Health and Safety embraces AI

The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (formerly the Safety Institute of Australia) recently launched an Artificial Intelligence tool for the institute’s members to access its extensive data sources. I posed SPARK a couple of questions to evaluate its effectiveness.

According to the September 25 2024 media release:

“The “Safety Professional Assistant and Resource Knowledge-Base” tool, known as SPARK, … has been trained on State-based legislation and regulations, OHS Body of Knowledge content, OHS Professional Magazine content, and general organisational information stored on the AIHS website.”

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Another alleged work-related death at EY. This time – India

The workplace culture of EY and other major consulting companies came under scrutiny several years ago following an apparent work-related suicide at the offices of EY in Sydney. EY’s workplace culture is again being examined after the death of a young EY employee in India, allegedly due to work stress.

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”take safety seriously”

Tasmanian politicians recently discussed Industrial Manslaughter laws in Parliament. As with similar debates in other jurisdictions, occupational health and safety (OHS) appears to justify these amendments, but the OHS principle of preventing harm is rarely discussed. Deterrence? Yes, but Prevention? Not really.

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Useful psychosocial case study

Employers and health and safety professionals are desperate for case studies of companies that have successfully applied the recent occupational health and safety (OHS) emphasis on managing and preventing psychosocial hazards at work. Safe Work Australia has released a case study on this in the retail industry.

“Managing the risk of psychosocial hazards in retail” is a very good idealisation of the health and safety risk assessment process, but some items are missing.

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Regulations are guardrails

One of the learnings from the recent report into the Grenfell Tower Fire was the failure of regulations and their enforcement. Much attention was given to many of these failures happening during the UK Government’s “red tape challenge” where two (or more) regulations were removed for every one introduced.

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“How can I make my workers safer?”

Most of the Australian occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators have released their calendars of events for October.  There are many invaluable events, especially for those in small- to medium-sized businesses or who have been delegated as “responsible” for OHS in those companies. There are several special events and symposiums for those of working in OHS full time, but here are three themes that I would like to see discussed during the 2024 National Safe Work Month?

Continue reading ““How can I make my workers safer?””

“…the system isn’t broken. It was built this way” – Grenfell Tower and OHS

The inquiry report into the Grenfell Tower fire has yet to be seriously considered from the other side of the world. However, the report is being mentioned in Australia’s emergency services and fire sectors.  The inquiry has been thoroughly followed and analysed in the United Kingdom, and many excellent summaries have been published in newspapers, books, and podcasts. Australia’s cladding debate has not been to the same extent as the UK. Still, the UK’s structures, policies, processes, business ethics and neglect are certainly mirrored in Australia, which directly impacts how workplace health and safety operates here.

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