harm – SafetyAtWorkBlog

Odd sexual harassment guidance

Safe Work Australia has released an important national occupational health and safety (OHS) guidance called “Preventing workplace sexual harassment.” The advice included is very good, but the presentation is so plain and vanilla as to be unattractive – unattractive in that there is little to encourage anyone from reading what is very important information. No images, no flowcharts, no graphics, no infographics but perhaps most importantly – no case studies.

This is not to suggest that SWA guidance needs to look like a “Dummy’s Guide”, but readability is more than grammar, understanding comes from more than just information.

‘No Bystanders Rule’ Bullshit

Guest Post by Dr Rebecca Michalak

About couple of weeks ago, the Australian Financial Review (AFR) featured a piece on a law firm that had introduced a mandatory approach to reporting sexual harassment – referred to as a ‘no bystanders’ rule.

To be clear upfront, here is my disclaimer – I am not directly commenting on the law firm in question; there isn’t enough information in the articles to make any objective judgements on that front. The references used from the two media pieces are for illustrative purposes only. Call them ‘conversation starters.’

In the AFR piece, the contractual obligation was outlined to involve:

“…chang(ing) ‘should’ (report) to ‘must’ – so any staff member who experiences, witnesses, or becomes aware of sexual harassment must report it,”

with the affiliated claim being,

“That shift really reinforces that there is zero tolerance – and there are no confidences to be kept; it needs to be outed – bystanders [staying silent] will no longer be tolerated.“

Concussed sportspeople are workers too

David Michaels devoted a whole chapter to sport-related concussions and brain damage in his 2020 book “The Triumph of Doubt“. He wrote about how the National Football League obfuscated over the appearance of concussions and chronic traumatic encephalopathy, and how the the NFL downplayed the injury’s significance by referring to repeated head trauma as Mild Trauma Brain Injury.

The Australian experience is different and this was examined recently in an excellent edition of the ABC radio program, The Ticket. Significantly several interviewees mentioned the injuries in relation to occupational health and safety (OHS) and workers compensation.

A wicked start to a virtual safety conference

Recently the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) conducted an online conference under the title SafeFest. The intention was to challenge the established orthodoxy of workplace health and safety. One of the conference’s first speakers was David Whitefield talking about safety as a “wicked problem”. It is a perspective that occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals have heard before but it is one that is an important reminder.

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