risk – Page 5 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

BHP Puts Safety First but Reports Sexual Harassment Under Sustainability

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.

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Businesses Want Maximum Productivity, But Will Workers Get a Maximum Temperature?

In the Northern Hemisphere, workers are again facing dangerous summer heat. In a few months, it will be the Southern Hemisphere’s turn. Climate extremes are producing droughts, wildfires, and crop failures. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s becoming easier to see how the world ends, and how work and business will be affected. As with most catastrophes, occupational health and safety (OHS) sits quietly in the background. It needs to step forward because it has tools that can help.

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Concussion Reform Won’t Happen Until We Stop Pretending Sport Is Exempt from OHS

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.

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Why Are Victoria’s WFH Laws Still Causing Executive Stress?

The occupational health and safety (OHS) dimensions of working from home (WFH) are routinely misrepresented in public debate, often drowned out by managerial preference, corporate culture, and political posturing. Remarkably consistent evidence shows that WFH does not reduce productivity. In many cases it improves it, largely because autonomy, reduced commuting, and better control over work rhythms lower psychological risks such as stress, burnout, and fatigue. From an OHS standpoint, that makes WFH a legitimate and effective control measure that is certainly not a threat to organisational performance.

Yet employers frequently resist WFH, invoking vague claims about collaboration, culture, or “team cohesion”. (This article was written before the postponement of the Victorian laws)

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AFL Concussion Chaos Shows Why Players Must Be Returned to Workers’ Compensation

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.

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Psychosocial hazards, dignity and the unfinished legacy of Brodie Panlock

By 2013, the debate over workplace bullying in Australia had moved from outrage to regulatory detail. That is often the stage where social reform either matures or dies. The draft code on preventing and responding to workplace bullying being developed at that time attracted submissions from industry and employer associations, many of which were troubling. The concern was not simply that business groups opposed a code. It was that several appeared to miss the code’s central purpose of preventing psychological harm to people at work.

Please note that this article discusses suicide and mental trauma.

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Farm Safety Messaging Works Best When It Confronts Risk Honestly

Every year, Australia conducts a Farm Safety Week. The latest has just closed. Every year, the safety information is fundamentally the same: deaths, serious injuries, tractors or quad bikes, middle- to old-aged workers, mental health, the protection of children and more. But there are a couple of interesting variations this year from WorkSafe Victoria.

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