Last week at the Safety In Action Trade Show I participated in a live web interview on safety. The video of my interview is available below. Many thanks to Digicast for making this and other OHS videos available.
Other video interviews are available with:
Tooma is a leading figure in Australia’s analysis and application of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. He has also been a regular author for publisher CCH. His latest book on workplace health and safety is entitled “Due Diligence: Duty of Officers”.
The process for harmonisation of OHS laws in Australia continues to be a rocky one but there are some elements emerging that, even if the laws are not applied in each State, will change the way that OHS is perceived in workplaces. The increased involvement and accountability of senior managers has been a prominent concern through the review process and is a valid starting point for this new series of books.
Tooma writes in the Preface that the series is designed for the “busy executive” (Is there any other kind?) as an explanation for the tone and structure of the book. The book is what has been traditionally described as an “easy read”. I take this as meaning a clean, well-spaced font, minimal footnoting and cross-references. There is a good use of graphics and tables but sometimes the short case studies or examples break up the page too much in such a small formatted book. Continue reading “New Tooma OHS book augurs well for the rest of the series on due diligence”
The High Risk OHS Summit 2012 (why it’s high risk, no one seems to know) started with a bang with a detailed presentation from Dame Carol Black, a major instigator of work health reforms in the United Kingdom. Dame Black was able to provide several case studies and some data that provided a fresh perspective on what work and health and safety means to the British workers. For instance, she stated that of those employed in the UK, 26% are working with a health condition or disability. Black also said that 2.4% are off sick at any one time
Black also adds the personal to her presentations and admitted that she had not been aware of what makes “a good job” until beginning her review over five years ago. It is a terrific question to ask one’s self and colleagues. What makes a good job?
David Gregory of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry also spoke at the conference and, as usually, was very cautious in what he said and how he said it. Continue reading “What makes a good job? What makes a safe job?”
An article in the Weekend Australian newspaper and magazine (not available fully online) provides some statistics that raise serious questions about the level of bullying in workplaces in Australia, with particular focus on Victoria. Of the 2,080 complaints lodged with WorkSafe Victoria in 2010-11
“only eight were deemed serious enough to warrant possible prosecution.”
Yet the OHS regulator received 7,050 inquiries about bullying. There is clearly a problem in Victorian workplaces but it is not always bullying, as defined under OHS law. Something else is happening and it has been happening for some time.
As reported previously in SafetyAtWorkBlog, the issue of workplace relationships is broader than can be handled by one regulator under one law. There are human rights issues, mental health issues, harassment and potential suicides – a range of social issues that should have taken the prevention of “workplace bullying” out of the workplace sometime ago.
The newspaper article, by Richard Guilliatt, draws on several significant cases of proven workplace bullying beyond the more familiar case of Brodie Panlock. Christine Hodder’s suicide in 2005 following bullying in the New South Wales Ambulance Service generated a review of the organisation that found systemic bullying. Sixteen year old Alex Meikle committed suicide in 2008 after many workplace “pranks” that included being set on fire. Continue reading “Workplace Bullying is a significant challenge even if the reality is smaller than expected”
Contemporary safety training is increasing discussing the core values of employees and managers. This focus can be very confronting for many people as core values are rarely discussed or even acknowledged, yet they could be central to the modern approach to safety management and safety compliance.
New safety legislation in Australia applies a common obligation across jurisdictions and industries to consult about health and safety, to communicate, to listen. But personal and corporate OHS obligations are well established so will the reiteration of these obligations in the consultative process have the impact expected? Does this conversation make safety more important, more “front of mind?
A better result may come from discussing core values in the workplace safety and health context. Some may look for these core values to be exposed via expensive training courses and awareness gurus but the first step could be to simply ask one’s self, or discuss with one’s partner, the question “what are my core values?” or “what do I believe?” or “what is most important to me?” Continue reading “Examining core values may benefit safety”
In November 2001, prominent risk communicator, Peter Sandman, examined the 9/11 attacks in a long article trying to clarify the impact and the context of the attacks. Shortly after the attacks I had the chance to interview Peter Sandman for the online magazine I was then publishing, safetyATWORK. Below is the text of that 2001 interview.
“SAW: As a resident of New Jersey and a risk communicator, what effect has the September 11 attacks had?
PS: I was very lucky. I live a sufficient distance away, that neither I nor anyone really close to me was lost. But lots of people close to people close to me were lost. Everybody in this part of the country is one or two steps removed from someone who died that day. But, professionally, I’m trying to think through, as I assume anybody in risk communication would be trying to think through what we can say to our countrymen and countrywomen about living in a dangerous world. This is obviously a situation where the outrage is entirely justified. The last thing I want to be doing is telling people they ought not to be outraged. But it’s also a situation where the hazard is serious. Most of my work is in either a high-outrage low-hazard situation, where the risk communication job is to reduce the outrage, calm people down; or a high-hazard low-outrage situation, where the job is to increase the outrage, get people to protect themselves. September 11 and its aftermath have to be described as high-hazard high-outrage. Neither paradigm works. And yet clearly the message to people has got to be you need to live your life. You need to take what precautions you can take and recognise that you’re not going to be completely safe and live your life anyway. You need to get on aeroplanes, and go to ball games. You need to go into big cities. I think in the months ahead people like me are going to be trying to figure out how to say that and say it honestly and honourably and credibly to a population that desperately needs to hear it and understand it. Continue reading “Peter Sandman interview in the aftermath of 9/11”