The cost of work-related illness and injuries is a significant economic burden on the community. It has a tangible impact on Australia’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP), but no one really gives a shit about this. The GDP impact is a nonsense statistic in the illustration of how injuries and illnesses affect Australian businesses. The economic arguments need reframing if an improvement in workplace health and safety is the intention.
Recently, WorkSafe ACT posted the latest episode of its Safety Spotlight podcast in which occupational health and safety (OHS) experts share their knowledge. There is commonality with much OHS advice, but there are slight variations of data and emphasis that are useful to note.
This episode included Jacqui Agius, the Australian Capital Territory’s Work Health and Safety Commissioner, and Professor Helen Lingard of RMIT University. According to the show notes:
“….they discuss the crucial importance of workplace safety, not just in preventing injuries but also its economic impact. The episode covers the hidden costs of cutting corners on safety, the significance of a proactive safety culture, and the benefits of consulting workers and employing safety by design.”
The Victorian Government has yet to respond to a report on occupational health and safety (OHS) sentencing and penalties that it received over the Christmas period. The longer it takes to respond to the Sentencing Advisory Council recommendations, the more delayed the action required to improve the systems, which can deter employers from ignoring their OHS obligations and the longer unnecessary risks to work health and safety persist.
In 2018, before the introduction of Industrial Manslaughter laws, Dr Gerry Ayres of the CFMEU and I spoke about the importance of deterrence. In that interview, he pointed out that financial penalties fail as deterrents for several reasons:
Late last year, Tim D’Ath added to the occupational health and safety management (OHS) literature with a modern, open-minded (and short) book called “Humanising Safety”. His perspective cuts across many of the heady discussions of Safety I vs. Safety II, safety cultures, and organisational versus individual approaches… I found his clarity of advice refreshing, as he focused on core harm prevention principles while acknowledging the difficulty of communicating these principles to employers who have been taught to view OHS as a nuisance to be avoided whenever possible.
Any new book from Sidney Dekker is worth reading. His latest is called “Safety Theater – How the Desire for Perfection Drives Compliance Clutter, Inauthenticity, and Accidents”. I am not sure that this book, the third in a series, offers solutions, but it reframes many of the contemporary perspectives on occupational health and health and safety (OHS), and with some intriguing connections.
The New South Wales (Labor) government has amended its work health and safety and industrial relations laws. These changes have been described as “substantial” in one legal opinion, but the changes reflect the management of company liability more than preventing harm.
Australia now has a Rural Media Farm Injury Dashboard, which shows the location of agricultural injuries and deaths from 2020 onwards. This is the type of publicly available information required to help reinforce an awareness of the dangers of farm work and demystify and destigmatise occupational health and safety (OHS) in this sector.
There are limitations, though, so one must be careful not to hyperbolise the data.
Note: This article mentions suicide.
