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Category: safety culture
New workplace bullying report raises awareness in UK
Recently workplace bullying gained increased attention in the United Kingdom due to media report about a discussion paper released by Advisory, Conciliation and Arbitration Service (Acas).
The report called “Seeking better solutions: tackling bullying and ill-treatment in Britain’s workplaces” is a very good summary of thinking on workplace bullying that acknowledges the Australian experience but seems to indicate that Britain remains in the early stages of tacking the workplace bullying situation after a series of false starts on the issue.
SafetyAtWorkBlog posed some questions about this paper to Dr
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Another mental health player joins the discussion
Recently, Ernst Young released a discussion paper about the risks of mental health in the workplace.
Mental health is a very popular topic at the moment and there are thousands of service providers in this sector. During the recent National Mental Health Week,
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Applying a “bullshit filter” during Mental Health Week
This week in Australia is Mental Health Week. Some call it an Mental Health Awareness Week. Either way the Australian media will be full of experts and “experts”. Workplace health strategies will not be excluded but when reading and listening to this media content, one important point should be remembered – “mental health” is significantly different from “mental illness”.
Such differentiation should not be dismissed as semantics because health, illness, problems and disorders involve different levels of analysis and diagnosis and, therefore, different strategies, interventions and control measures.
Recently the
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OHS is in sports but by another name
After writing a recent article about the relevance of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws to sporting clubs, I attended a sports medicine seminar to access a different perspective on workplace safety.
Having never played sports outside the obligatory high school activities, which in my high school also included snooker?!, the world of locker rooms and team sports is foreign. But earlier this week I learnt that where OHS professionals talk about productivity, sportspeople speak of performance, and where factories address line speed, sports physicians talk of load management. I also learnt that professional sportspeople are exempt from workers’ compensation.
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A moderate entry in the IR/OHS conflict
During last week’s conference session on occupational health and safety and industrial relations, Innes Willox of the Australian Industry Group also spoke but was not included in the previous SafetyAtWorkBlog article. However, his speech notes for that session have just been released and deserve consideration. Continue reading “A moderate entry in the IR/OHS conflict”
Death from a well-known hazard – culture is only part of the answer
A coronial finding in Queensland in September 2015 illustrates how daily activities can lead to tragedy but also the role of safety culture.
According to one media report, in investigating the 2009 death of 24-year-old Cameron Cole who was hit as a pipe rack fell from a truck, the Queensland Coroner, Terry Ryan, found that
“…the semi-trailer had been over packed, not properly secured and there was no exclusion zone around the vehicle when the load was being released.”
From this event the Coroner makes many recommendations about the safety management of work practices at that time. Many of these reflect common work practices that exist to this day on many Australian worksites.
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