Australia’s latest Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, has a strong background in technology investment and is urging the country to embrace innovation. This has generated a focus on information technology start-ups but it may also create opportunities for occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, if they are willing to change.
There has been a quick growth in
Zero Harm was an enormously popular motivational aim for OHS. It originated as a response in some large organisations where safety performance was plateauing and who felt that they had achieved as much as they could in redesigning work and improving physical safety. The plateauing led to frustration and a reassessment of safety practices. The remaining variable was seen to be the worker and so slogans were instigated to increase the care (or mindfulness) of workers.
However, this assessment seems to have taken the traditional, and shallow, approach. One variable is, of course the worker but the assessors failed to see that the organisational structure and operations were, or should be, variable too. In the words of the current Australian Prime Minister, Malcolm Turnbull, this variability, this adaptability, could lead to innovation, economic growth and increased sustainability.
The promotion of the zero harm approach to safety could be seen as a safety dead-end and an indication that organisations were fixed on only seeing the dead-end. Safety thinkers, and there are a few, offered ways out of the dead-end by thinking differently about what we know.
The
SafetyAtWorkBlog has had a successful 2015, consolidating itself as a valid independent voice on workplace health and safety, particularly in Australia. But readers don’t get access to some of the statistics for the site and as a year in review exercise below are the top five most-read articles written in 2015, highest readership first:
Impairment argument fails to convince Fair Work Commission over unfair dismissal
Research raises serious questions on SIA’s certification push
Some are losing faith in the Victorian Workcover Authority
Safety learnings from construction Continue reading “SafetyAtWorkBlog’s most popular articles of 2015”
The public submission phase for the Victorian Government’s inquiry into labour hire and insecure work closed last week. Public hearings have occurred this week and will continue in February 2016. One industry association, the Australian Industry Group has released its submission. Its discussion of occupational health and safety (OHS) of labour hire workers and suppliers is very disappointing.
Representing Members
The AiGroup says, in its submission that
“The interests of both groups [labour hire companies and users of labour hire], as well as the interests of the broader community, are best protected by ensuring that a competitive market is maintained for the provision of labour hire services, and that impediments to competition are removed.” (page 4)
It could be argued that the competitive market has allowed unscrupulous labour hire suppliers to succeed as they have been offering the cheapest labour. These suppliers have succeeded, mostly, because there is a ready market for opportunities to maximise profit by reducing the legal rights of workers. A competitive market may help fix the problem but it is also a problem that it helped create. Continue reading “Submission on Labour Hire disappoints on OHS”
At lunchtime today, the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) conducted a short seminar of five 7-minute presentations, predominantly, from academic researchers.
The most significant statistic provided was by Dr Genevieve Grant who said that only 39% of injured workers submit claims for workers compensation. The significance is that the Australian government, OHS regulators and policy makers rely on the number of claims being a measure of the level of workplace safety.
This figure illustrates the absurdity of many of the statements made about which is the safest State in Australia. Continue reading “The 39 (per cent) Steps”
The European Union conducts research into occupational health and safety that, although there may be cultural and legislative differences, deserves attention from outside that geographical region. Recently EuroFound released its annual review for 2014. There are a couple of research projects that deserve consideration, particularly return-on-investment in construction safety, violence at work, psychosocial issues and precarious work risks. Continue reading “EU provides clues for improving safety management”