Australia’s news media is reporting a shocking report about the workplace culture of parts of the Nine Entertainment organisation – bullying, sexual harassment, abuse of power – all the elements of organisational culture that can be found in any company if one scratches the surface. Scratching is one of the aims of the occupational health and safety (OHS) discipline – investigating the causes of harm at the source.
One area where human resources (HR) and occupational health and safety (OHS) do not overlap in practice is diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI), but they should. OHS cannot operate without effective consultation, and part of that effectiveness comes from a diversity of information, respectful conversations, and the inclusion of sometimes uncomfortable perspectives or truths.
Recently, the Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission (VEOHRC) published a guideline on race discrimination in the workplace, which illustrated the need for HR and OHS to begin talking (and listening to) the same language.
For many years, occupational health and safety (OHS) has been fixated on “Culture” as an encompassing term for what management activity does not work and what does. The focus has faded slightly since the COVID-19 pandemic. Still, Culture made an important reappearance this week with the delivery of the final report of Australia’s Royal Commission into Defence and Veteran Suicide. However, some of the most telling analyses of the safety culture in the Australian Defence Forces occurred in 2021 with the work of Samantha Crompvoets.
NOTE: this article discusses suicides
Human Resources (HR) is on a slow journey to fully understand the efforts and strategies for preventing workplace psychosocial hazards. This article from Phoebe Armstrong in HRMonthly is a good example. It will nudge HR readers in the right direction. Still, the article has many curiosities and a reticence to fully accept the legislative occupational health and safety (OHS) approach.
Recently, Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) conducted a seminar on internal workplace investigations and ESG (Environmental, Social, and Governance) frameworks. Occupational health and safety (OHS) seems to be gaining more attention as an ESG element, but it must compete with so many other elements that it may always be seen as a side issue.
On the afternoon of Friday, August 1, 2024, Safe Work Australia (SWA) announced important changes to the incident notification obligations in Australia’s Model Work Health and Safety laws. These changes are particularly relevant to the issues of psychological harm in workplaces and work-related suicides. I asked SWA for some clarifications on the changes and the promised guidance.
Below are the questions that I submitted to Safe Work Australia and CEO Marie Boland‘s responses.
Warning: this article discusses suicide
An article garnering some attention on LinkedIn (Yeah, I know, the Facebook for corporate self-promotion) has called for a different path to reducing occupational health and safety injuries. “A new view of safety culture measurement” is written by safe365’s cofounder Nathan Hight. As with most articles on the Internet, the primary aim is marketing or selling (this blog is a good example); in this case he is promoting an upcoming webinar. He writes:
“In order to quantify and manage the impacts of behaviour and attitudinal-based attributes in safety, we need a more consistent approach to both the primary measurement, but also the ongoing assessment of progress and performance.”
