I have been writing about how occupational health and safety should apply to professional contact sports for a few years. The emergence of concussion, traumatic brain injury, and CTE has changed how sports are managed and the sports themselves.
I hope when you have 14 minutes to spare, perhaps on your smoko, walking at lunchtime or on the gym’s treadmill, that you get a chance to listen. Afterwards, please post some comments or message me on the socials.
BHP has just released its Annual Report for the latest financial year, which includes occupational health and safety (OHS).
The report places Safety as the opening chapter of the Annual Report. Symbolically, this matters even if the issues don’t feature in some of the preceding executive statements. If Safety is a number one priority, or even just a top priority, OHS shouldn’t be shunted to a sustainability supplementary report, as many employers do. So a Gold Star to BHP, but I would take back that praise when looking at how sexual harassment was reported.
In September 2026, I will be reporting from the Psych Health and Safety Conference (PHSCon) in Sydney. It is the pre-eminent workplace mental health conference in Australia and is it its third year.
In support of the 2026 conference, I have opened some of my PHSCon articles from 2024. These articles illustrate the high calibre of speakers this conference attracts and, hopefully, shows the worth of subscribing to the SafetyAtWorkBlog for these exclusive reports.
The risk of concussion in professional sports is getting an increasing amount of attention, and the prevention of harm is starting to be considered, but the consequences of the changes required are being resisted or, perhaps more accurately, dreaded.
A recent article by John Hennessy of the Community Concussion Research Foundation (CCRF) in the Australian Financial Review highlights progress toward serious consideration of harm prevention in sporting workplaces.
I have been writing about concussion and CTE prevention in professional sports, especially the Australian Football League (AFL), for a while. The current controversy in Australia is concerning a risk waiver. This debate should generate interest in workers’ compensation and occupational health and safety. This guest post from Eric Windholz (there have been others) is a major part of that conversation catalyst.
The reality of needing to provide psychologically healthy and safe work seems to have been widely accepted, if not still well understood, if the number of corporate work-related psychological assessment and management programs is any indication. One of the most recent is “The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint” published by Culture Plus Consulting’s Felicity Menzies. The blueprint is interesting until the document’s marketing purpose starts to dominate.
I want to be optimistic about workplace mental health in the lead-up to my reporting on a sihgnificant psychological/psychososcial conference in September – PHSCon. But reading the newspapers demoralises me, as burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design. I suppose I could eliminate the psychological hazard by stopping reading the newspapers (like many others have), but then how would I know what others think about occupational health and safety (OHS) and what is being said and advised to employers and the community?
Recently, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers contained an article called “Hidden cost of our burnout culture” – a typical example of a Human Resources (HR) and leadership-based perspective. Burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design.
