Category: Burnout

Fool me once; shame on you. Fool me twice; shame on me. Fool me thrice?!

The Australian Broadcasting Corporation recently published a curious article about workaholism and burnout – the latter being an occupational mental health condition recognised by the World Health Organisation.

It is curious because the catalyst for the article, Sally McGrath, claims to have experienced burnout three times. Once is understandable as job stress can creep up on anyone. Twice should result in external assistance to investigate the work environment, work practices and personal mental health to identify contributory factors.  But the third time…??? Burnout is not something that is usually a repeated experience and its prevention may present a significant challenge for the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession and employers.

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Stress reenters the research vocabulary and we are all better for it

Work is making people sicker, according to a recently published research report from the University of Melbourne. The “2023 State of the Future Work – A Work Futures Hallmark Research Initiative Report” said:

“Critically, we find almost three-quarters of people with a chronic illness (73 percent) say that their health condition was caused or worsened by the stress associated with their job.”

page 15

It is good to see the various incarnations of work-related mental health conditions being brought back to the collective and specific term of Stress.

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A European counter to the United States’ OHS propaganda

One of the most useful occupational health and safety (OHS) publications is HesaMag, “the health and safety magazine with a European view”. (It is a hard copy, free and excellent. A must-have) Its latest edition has a feature on psychosocial risks (PSR) at work. I know that some of us are “over it”, but it is unavoidable and, as COVID did recently, may become the OHS matter that dominates our work. We must understand the risks to control them and prevent harm.

Anyway, back to HesaMag. One of its features is that much of its data relies on sources other than workers’ compensation and, so, is more accurate about trends. One example in the current issue, Pierre Bérastégui writes:

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The well-being and psychosocial “wild west”

With the new Psych Health and Safety regs/codes of practice, it seems many corporate ‘wellness’ providers are now branching out into the now topical, psychosocial risk management domain.  As someone who supports several national/multinational organisations, I am seeing a big gap between the academic research, provider capability, corporate understanding, and real-world activity.  I am also seeing some very questionable tools/approaches/programs and activities emerging in the race to sate the increasing corporate psych risk appetite.

[Guest post by David Burroughs]

Continue reading “The well-being and psychosocial “wild west””

Violence against teachers

Unless you are a teacher, it is difficult to comprehend the extent of stress and pressure teachers can face at school. A recent court case in Queensland involving an appeal against a decision by the Regulator not to accept a workers’ compensation claim provides some insight into the teacher’s lot.

The case, Roberts v Workers’ Compensation Regulator [2023] QIRC 76 (6 March 2023), was won by Ms Karen Roberts as the Commissioner decided that Roberts’ experiences at work, over time, were the major contributor to her post-traumatic stress disorder. There are statements in this decision that the school’s management practices did not worsen her experiences, and there are arguments over the degree of influence of other factors, but there is no occupational health and safety (OHS) perspective here. Even though it is not an OHS prosecution, there is an important OHS context.

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Hubris, thy name is HR

The Human Resources (HR) sector often feeds off itself, reinforcing what it has always done, rather than seriously looking at opportunities to improve from outside its own experience and discipline. Workplace mental health is a particular example.

Recently the Human Resources Director (HRD) website promoted a new well-being survey from AON with the headline:

“Want to boost company performance? Invest more in wellbeing – Higher wellbeing scores can enhance performance by up to 55%: Aon report”

My initial response was WTF?! But after giving up some of my identity data to the website and reading the AON Report. My surprise diminished as I realised the report was just another example of comforting a profession on a workplace issue about which it is losing control.

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Good construction and mental health article that fails to go far enough

A recent article by Aurora B. Le, Doug Trout, Ann Marie Dale, and Scott Earnest is a good introduction to the psychosocial hazards faced by construction workers in the United States.  It is typical of many articles written about work health and safety generally – good information but with weak or timid solutions.

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