Category: state of knowledge

Think Big About Psychosocial Hazards

Occupational health and safety (OHS) has a habit of discovering a useful idea and then asking it to explain everything. (We are desperate for silver bullets.) Systems thinking seems to be the latest candidate. It offers a valuable way to examine how work is organised and how psychosocial harm emerges, but enthusiasm is beginning to blur an important boundary. Systems thinking is a method of seeing how workplaces operate, but Sociology helps explain what is being seen, who shaped it and why it persists.

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A Localised Reassessment of Common Sense

“Common Sense” is a concept all occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals must address, but that doesn’t mean it’s static. My six months on Norfolk Island provided me with a new perspective.

In several blog articles on “common sense”, I found the concept a deeply unreliable foundation for OHS because it is subjective, dismissive, and routinely used to defend and mask harmful organisational habits. As one article notes,

“Common Sense often seems to be the way I think or the way I do something – ‘It’s just common sense’”,

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Wellness Is Not Safety and Employers Can No Longer Avoid Their Duty

For a country with clear health and safety obligations for almost half a century, it’s remarkable how often Australia still hears employers say they’re “unsure” what psychological health and safety requires.  The duty has never been ambiguous.  Employers must provide work that is safe and healthy and free from risks so far as is reasonably practicable.  That obligation to prevent psychosocial hazards, the precursors to psychological ill-health, has been sitting in legislation since the 1970s and 1980s.  It didn’t suddenly appear.  It didn’t evolve spontaneously out of the primordial ooze.  For those of us under the age of 70, it has always been there.

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Safety Work on Norfolk Island Needed a Different Map

Returning to Australia after six months as a health and safety adviser on Norfolk Island has left me thinking hard about what “doing safety” really means in a remote, resource‑tight community. Norfolk Island Regional Council has cycled through several mainland advisers over the years, usually on short contracts and sometimes without an effective handover. That churn created complexity, not culpability. As I wrote in my notes at the time: “There were many safety things the Council could have done differently… but I don’t think it was doing anything wrong.”

The real issue seemed to be differing expectations – what mainland advisers thought was achievable, and what the island’s workforce actually needed.

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Understanding How Work-From-Home Reshapes Psychosocial and Safety Obligations

Yesterday I posed the following questions for Victoria’s upcoming Parliamentary Committee inquiry into proposed work-from-home (WFH) laws.

  • Does WFH increase or reduce psychosocial harm?
  • Does WFH improve or worsen fatigue, workload, or burnout?
  • Does WFH reduce commuting‑related risks (not just monetary costs)?
  • Does remote work affect hazard reporting or supervision?
  • Does WFH change the risk profile for vulnerable workers?

Below I offer some answers.

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The Work-From-Home Right Meets Business Group Anxiety

Based on mainstream media reports of the working-from-home (WFH) debate in Victoria over the last few weeks, Victorian politics has fractured over the proposal to give most employees a right to work from home two days a week. The politics of the WFH initiative came to the fore, even if occupational health and safety (OHS) didn’t.

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Why Context Matters More Than Ever in Psychosocial Risk Management

Day 1 of FlourishDx’s Psych Health and Safety conference ended this year with a flourish, featuring a Family Feud-style contest between Occupational Health and Safety (OHS) and Human Resources (HR). It was a raucous conclusion to a day of mixed safety messages.

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