The investigation of work-related incidents needs to be considered from a broad multidisciplinary perspective. But occupational health and safety (OHS) itself, applies a much narrower and, some may say, insular perspective. It hasn’t “played well with others”. At the recent Comcare conference in Melbourne, Australia, writer Tim Dunlop (pictured right) challenged this type of perception. He said:
“My point is that it is hard to break out of certain habits of thinking. Governments pay lip service to the idea that technology will change everything, but then they start talking about jobs and growth as if we were still living in the sixties, where the economy was based on manufacturing, where manufacturing was carried out of factories, employing millions of workers, where the workers were men and where the women stayed at home and looked after the kids. Those days are gone, and in the future they will be ever more gone. But the norms of that era I think still informing how we think about the future of work.”
OHS, and some of the safety regulators, may acknowledge the changing future of work
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Every man is aware of his penis and scrotum from a very early age. Male genitals do not feature often in discussions about occupational health and safety (OHS) but there was a workplace incident in the United States around 1970 that gained considerable attention but not really from the OHS perspective. I have always thought this incident would be a useful case study for discussing how this scenario would be managed today.