Category: Professional standards

Major rethink on Australian Standards needed

A recent download of a “free” guide from the Victorian Building Commission on retrofitting a home for bushfire protection raised the ongoing nonsense of Australian Standards costs.  Sure enough, this free guide is only notionally so; if you don’t hand over $100  then the guide has limited use.

The guide I got, “A guide to retrofit your home for better protection from a bushfire”, is packed with useful info, up to the point you need the nitty-gritty.  Time and time again the reader is sent off to AS 3959 – Construction of buildings in bush-fire prone areas.  Being in OH&S-World we get used to that little double-blind.  Happens all the time with regs and codes and all sorts of guidance stuff.  And it is ridiculous. Its gotta change.

As best as I know a massive cost of development of Australian Standards is born by the participating development organizations.  They are the ones that foot the salary bill to have their staff go off to meetings to formulate the Standards.  Sure, there is going to be lots of other costs, but from what I can see this critical contribution to the development of Australian Standards is a cost to the businesses and government agencies taking part (ultimately a community cost) and the double whammy comes when you want to buy a Standard.

The fact that such an important bit of guidance on protecting homes from bushfire is essentially diminished by the need to spend $100 to get the Standard really slams home the point that change has to happen.

For mine, all PDF downloads of Australian Standards should be free.  A cost recovery cost for a hard copy seems fair enough. I don’t know about the experience of others, but it borders on embarrassing to be giving a punter help on this or that OH&S issue and then have to add “Oh and I think you have no choice but to fork out $XXX for this Standard.”  I hate that, and where I can I avoid it.  But clearly there’s times when it’s impossible.

Perhaps it’s time to get fair dinkum about improved standards of safety, and fair dinkum in way that truly cuts the bullshit?  And that means nationally developed Standards become the nation’s product; PDF copies free to anyone who needs to use ‘em.

Col Finnie
col@finiohs.com

The stress of the wrongly accused

All work is stressful but by educating ourselves and with the support of colleagues and a strong and healthy professional association, it should be possible to function safely.  That is the ideal but reality often seems to fall short.

Recently I was contacted by a person who had heard me speak about workplace bullying and wanted to know what they could do as they have been accused of being a bully.  I contacted the person’s professional association who advised that they have no processes for dealing with those accused of bullying, only victims.  There were few options for the person other than seeking legal advice.

This experience reminded me of how damaging and stressful it can be to be under investigation, regardless of whether the action is justified. Continue reading “The stress of the wrongly accused”

A bitter internal dispute at the Safety Institute gets a public airing

A member of the Safety Institute of Australia, Sue Bottrell, has taken offence at some of the content in this SafetyAtWorkBlog article.  She has claimed, in a proposed legal action against me, that my blog article, based on an article written by Gavin Waugh and published in Australian Safety Matters Magazine, has defamed her.

Similar legal action is being taken by her against Gavin Waugh, who has indicated that he will be contesting the accusations.

I regret that any element of the SafetyAtWorkBlog article was able to be misinterpreted and caused offence to Sue Bottrell.

Kevin Jones

Career fitness program for police has wider impacts

Australian newspapers reported that Victoria Police will be applying fitness criteria not only to police recruits but throughout their career.  Other than giving headline writers the chance for puns about “thin blue lines”, the coverage raises the long existing issue over fit-for-duty.

Workplace health and fitness is not a new issue of Victoria Police.  It used Body Mass Index as an assessment  criteria in 2009 and has politely motivated police to increase their fitness for years.  Other emergency services, such as the fire brigades, have had gyms and other programs  but the nature of the industry allowed for stations that incorporated living and exercise facilities.  Shift rosters and the patrol duties of police never allowed the same options.

Nor is this an Australian phenomenon.  South Africa instigated a similar fitness regime in March 2010.  In a terrific media grab, National Police Commissioner Bheki Cele is reported to have said:

“Police officers should be able to walk with their heads held high, their stomach in, and chest out – not the other way around….” Continue reading “Career fitness program for police has wider impacts”

Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future

The European Agency for Occupational Safety & Health at Work has released its Annual Report for 2009/10.  Most of the content should be familiar to those who follow EU-OSHA through their blogs and publications but it provides a good indication of the future of OHS in Europe and the methods that will applied in that future.

Annual Report - Full

One significant achievement of EU-OSHA is its anticipation of workplace hazards.  Few OHS regulators and agencies have had the resources or will to forecast the next set of hazards.  The nature of regulators has been reactive possibly because they remain largely uncertain of how to step beyond the factory fence to acknowledge OHS as a broad social element and, after decades of compartmentalising safety and health to the workplace, to try to catch up with the spread of new varieties of workplaces. Continue reading “Safety professionals and regulators must think more broadly and for the future”

Australian roundtable podcast on workplace bullying

On 21 May 2010, Boardroom Radio (BRR) released a podcast on workplace bullying that includes opinions from some worthy speakers.

Andrew Douglas, Managing Director at Douglas LPT;

Wayne Blair, Fair Work Australia Commissioner;

Gail Hubble, Barrister; and

Anna Palmer, HR Consultant, at Provenio Consulting

Some of the questions are a little peculiar such as whether current generations are more “vulnerable” to bullying.  Speakers responded that there are more opportunities for bullying now due to new technologies Continue reading “Australian roundtable podcast on workplace bullying”

Gods and Leaders – the fantasy distraction of the safety profession

For years, safety professionals have whinged about their profession and their skills not receiving the attention of Chief Executive Officers and board members.  They take some solace in the occasional missive that executives understand leadership and, by extension, safety leadership but the reality is that OHS professionals do not understand CEOs.

CEOs are Olympian Gods and OHS professionals live amongst the crowd of citizens in the valleys.  Occasionally a God will go slumming and have sex with one of us but it does not mean that they respect us or, even that they will remember our name.  If we are lucky, they may remember that we were welcoming.

CEO attitudes were discussed in the Australian Financial Review on 21 May 2010, in an article about corporate governance Continue reading “Gods and Leaders – the fantasy distraction of the safety profession”

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