Category: research

Why does the Human Resources profession struggle with preventing psychological and psychosocial harm?

I am not immune to the worries and potential of using Artificial intelligence (AI) tools in my occupational health and safety (OHS) work and writings. As with millions of others, my relationship is a work in progress.

I have long used the transcription software Otter.ai to transcribe short interviews. It remains less accurate than human transcription, but it remains useful. One of its new AI tools is that it can analyse all of the conversations recorded through Otter.ai or uploaded to it for transcribing. I have years of recordings at OHS conferences, seminars, webinars, and interviews, so I asked this question:

“Why does the Human Resources profession struggle with preventing psychological and psychosocial harm?”

This was its response:

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Plenty of what and how with a little bit of why

Psychosocial hazards are gaining attention online, but the pace of change remains sloth-like. Two recent online events provide good, basic occupational health and safety (OHS) and organisational psychology information and some insight into the slow pace.

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Significant workplace culture investigation but OHS missed again

Australia’s news media is reporting a shocking report about the workplace culture of parts of the Nine Entertainment organisation – bullying, sexual harassment, abuse of power – all the elements of organisational culture that can be found in any company if one scratches the surface. Scratching is one of the aims of the occupational health and safety (OHS) discipline – investigating the causes of harm at the source.

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Learn about OHS through alternative perspectives

On the iconic discount table in Readings Carlton bookshop is one of the most interesting occupational health and safety (OHS) books – The Careless State by a Professor of Political Science at Melbourne University, Mark Considine. This book was not written by an OHS specialist with all the associated ideological and philosophical baggage. And really, it is mainly one chapter that justifies the description “Worker’s Health and Safety.”

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New shining stream of safety research funds

Last week, RMIT University launched the Safety and Health Innovation Network (SHINe), a new safety, health, and wellbeing research fund that will work collaboratively with the University of Colorado’s Construction Safety Research Alliance (CSRA) and others. This is a promising source of funds for new occupational health and safety research in the construction industry. SafetyAtWorkBlog attended the launch and was able to talk exclusively about the program with Distinguished Professor Helen Lingard.

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HWSA’s manual handling challenge

Recently, Australia’s Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities (HWSA) produced a position paper that said:

“‘How to lift’ training programs do not reduce the incidence of musculoskeletal disorders. Despite this, a recent survey found that almost 80 percent of employers had provided ‘how to lift’ training to their workers in the past two years…

Providing ‘how to lift’ training does not prevent work-related musculoskeletal disorders. ‘How to lift’ training does not change any of the hazardous manual task risk factors that workers are exposed to, nor does it address the source/s of the musculoskeletal disorder risk…”

This is a further example of employers being sucked into occupational health and safety (OHS) related programs that do not work. Wellness has been seriously questioned, gym ball seating, back belts… and more. However, it seems that research is less of a challenge than communication.

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The Australian Institute of Health and Safety embraces AI

The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (formerly the Safety Institute of Australia) recently launched an Artificial Intelligence tool for the institute’s members to access its extensive data sources. I posed SPARK a couple of questions to evaluate its effectiveness.

According to the September 25 2024 media release:

“The “Safety Professional Assistant and Resource Knowledge-Base” tool, known as SPARK, … has been trained on State-based legislation and regulations, OHS Body of Knowledge content, OHS Professional Magazine content, and general organisational information stored on the AIHS website.”

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