St John Ambulance made a bold statement on the cover of The Age newspaper on 22 October 2013:
“87% of businesses are not FIRST AID READY. This puts your employees, customers and business at risk.”
This statement repeats some of the inaccuracies that SafetyAtWorkBlog pointed out in March 2013. Continue reading “First aid marketing campaign deserves analysis – again”
Today the Victorian Coroner has released the findings into the 2007 Kerang rail disaster and other level crossing fatalities. SafetyAtWorkBlog has written about issues related to level crossings those articles may help when reading the many media articles that the inquest findings will generate.
Already family members of the Kerang victims have expressed their dissatisfaction with the findings. Continue reading “Coronial findings into level crossing fatalities released”
Defining safety culture is still a tricky proposition. Definitions can vary from what Global Safety Index quotes:
‘the product of individual and group values, attitudes and beliefs, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management’.
to the, arguably more functional, definition of
‘the way you work when nobody’s looking”.
Safety culture comprises a mix of personal values, corporate values, laws, norms, expectations, hopes, respect, dignity, care, amongst others. By assessing and linking these elements it should be possible to map or pictorialise a company’s safety culture.
Several years ago at a Comcare conference in Canberra, one speaker outlined leadership and safety culture of some sections of the public service in web, spider or radar graphs (example above). The image stuck with me, particularly after additional sets of data allowed for animation to show the evolution of culture and leadership in relation to specific interventions. The importance of being able to provide a visual image of safety culture should not be understated. Continue reading “Measuring a safety culture”
In early September 2013 I was invited to participate in a panel discussion on the issue of working at heights. The “crisis summit” was reported on recently by Marian Macdonald. The videos of this panel are now available through the WAHA YouTube channel and all the separate videos are worth viewing. The video in which I first advocate for a focus on safety is embedded below.
The questions from the floor are included in the last video of the panel discussion. If the issue of working at heights seems dry it is worth looking at the video from the 4.30 minute mark. Several members of the audience take the Workcover NSW representative to task.
As the 1 January 2014 implementation date for new workplace bullying processes approaches there is an increasing amount of legal, HR, and safety seminars, and newsletters and alerts being produced. Most reiterate the amendments to Australia’s Fair Work Act but occasionally there is additional information.
In a recent seminar, it was suggested that the draft Code of Practice for the Prevention and Management of Workplace Bullying, developed by Safe Work Australia, is to be released as a guidance note rather than a Code of Practice (see below). Continue reading “No code of practice for workplace bullying but hope remains”
Recently Queensland’s Attorney-General Jarrod Bleijie has been asserting that a review of union right-of-entry provisions is needed because unions have been using occupational health and safety (OHS) issues as an excuse for industrial relations (IR) action. Such assertions have been made for decades in Australia to the extent they have become fact. Below is an article looking at one of the sources of the Attorney-General’s assertions.
In a media statement dated 5 October 2013, Bleijie stated:
“For too long, we have seen construction unions using safety as an industrial weapon in this State… Quite frankly, their abuses of the current right of entry provisions are designed to bully contractors until they get their way. Sites are being hijacked and workers held to ransom.
“I have personally heard of stories from hard working Queenslanders who have been locked out of their workplace because of militant union activity.
“Earlier this year, a major contractor lost 42 days of work due to illegal strike activity in the first year of their enterprise agreement. This practice will end.”
Some of this statement was quoted in a Sunday Mail article on 6 October 2013 following the minister’s speech at an awards ceremony with the Master Builders. Like most political media statements there is a large amount of hyperbole but this article’s focus will be on the OHS elements of the statement. Continue reading “OHS as an industrial relations tool”
The article below has been written by Marian Macdonald and is about an event that I recently attended in Sydney about fall protection.
When a plumber perched on the rooftop of a skyscraper clips a safety harness onto the point that anchors him to the building, there’s a one-in-three chance the anchor itself is unsafe. Remarkably, the installers being held to blame are pleading for greater scrutiny of their work from the regulator.
The Working At Heights Association (WAHA), which represents fall prevention equipment installers, today sent a call to action submission (not available online) to the Heads Of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA). It follows an industry crisis summit held last month where, with a sea of upstretched hands, hundreds packed into a stifling conference room demanded urgent action from governments. Continue reading “Hundreds plead with government to save lives while those to blame beg for scrutiny”