Already a member? Log in here
Category: Premium
Inspectors and Health and Wellbeing Advisers
On 30 September 2015, SafetyAtWorkBlog highlighted a conversation about inspector numbers from the Tasmanian Parliament. The information was confusing but crucial in understanding WorkSafe Tasmania’s occupational health and safety enforcement capacity and strategy.
Below are some questions posed to WorkSafe Tasmania in an attempt to clarify the issues and the OHS regulator’s replies. Two responses prompted comment on workplace health and wellbeing strategies.
Already a member? Log in here
Psychology of aggression and risk control
Recently an Australian law firm, Herbert Smith Freehills, conducted a series of seminars that provided a different perspective on issues related to workplace mental health and safety.
Already a member? Log in here
Scissor Lifts and safety
Workers in scissor lifts often step on railings or overreach placing themselves at risk of falling. These actions are contrary to the use of plant as usually recommended by manufacturers and to the usual requirements in an occupational health and safety (OHS) management plan for working in the rail environment.
The actions in these photographs occurred on a Melbourne railway station and in an industry that this author has worked in for the last six years. Photographs never show the entire facts of a situation and there are many assumptions and what-if scenarios about which these photos could, and should, start discussions. The following discussion of occupational health and safety management issues focuses on the facts presented by the photos*.
Already a member? Log in here
Safety learnings from construction
I have recently finished some years of full-time work as a safety adviser on a range of construction projects in Australia and below is a list of some of what I have learnt (in no particular order).
Ask questions
People may initially think you are an idiot but, if you are genuinely interested, they will explain what they are doing (usually with some pride in their tone) and offer suggestions of how to do it better or safer.
Follow through
If you have said that you will look into an issue or provide additional information, do it. If you do not, your credibility with the worker you were talking with and, likely, their supervisor and workmates, is gone.
Already a member? Log in here
Drug and alcohol testing does not improve workplace safety, so why have it?
Testing for drug and alcohol effects in workplaces sounds sensible but what do you do when there is no evidence that it improves worker safety or reduces risk? Apparently ignore the evidence, create industrial tension and impose unnecessary costs on industry.
The Australian national government and the Victorian (State) government have both pledged to introduce drug and alcohol testing for the construction sector. The Victorian Government also promised to introduce drug and alcohol testing for parliamentarians but everyone expects a backdown on that election pledge.
Recently two researchers in Adelaide, Ken Pidd and Anne Roche published a research paper in Accident Analysis & Prevention asking “how effective is drug testing as a workplace safety strategy?“. The abstract states:
“…the evidence base for the effectiveness of testing in improving workplace safety is at best tenuous.”
Already a member? Log in here
Applying a “bullshit filter” during Mental Health Week
This week in Australia is Mental Health Week. Some call it an Mental Health Awareness Week. Either way the Australian media will be full of experts and “experts”. Workplace health strategies will not be excluded but when reading and listening to this media content, one important point should be remembered – “mental health” is significantly different from “mental illness”.
Such differentiation should not be dismissed as semantics because health, illness, problems and disorders involve different levels of analysis and diagnosis and, therefore, different strategies, interventions and control measures.
Recently the
Already a member? Log in here