safety culture – Page 9 – SafetyAtWorkBlog

History Lessons

The latest report/history of occupational health and safety (OHS) in Victoria and the role of the OHS regulators written by Barry Naismith was released last week. (Available HERE for a short time) There are few histories written, and those are primarily written through the legal and legislative prism. Naismith was an employee of the OHS regulator during the period of this publication (as was I). Localised and recent histories are rare, especially in topics like OHS. Yet, these perspectives are vital for new entrants to the OHS sector to understand the experiences of their immediate forebears and, perhaps more importantly, to understand the current priorities of OHS regulators.

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OHS is a journey but does it have to be so long?

Commitments to occupational health and safety (OHS) not only appear in Parliamentary debates on workplace safety. Last week, Labor Party politician Will Fowles reiterated the Victorian government’s OHS commitment in a speech about justice amendments and the police.

“This justice legislation amendment bill also establishes a legislative framework for the restorative engagement and redress scheme to support current and former Victoria Police [VicPol] employees who have experienced past workplace sex discrimination or sexual harassment.

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Psychological regulations and control

Recently International SOS conducted a webinar on workplace psychosocial hazards and controls. Parts of it were clearly marketing and promotional, but some of the speaker’s content was fascinating and useful.

The seminar’s structure was good because it included a global perspective and a local Australian. The speaker from a worldwide standpoint, Dr Rachel Lewis, used financial figures to illustrate the seriousness of workplace mental health risks. These involved annual costs to employers, costs of workplace stress and other figures in the billions. This approach encourages a misunderstanding of the audience for workplace mental health seminars and the occupational health and safety (OHS) approach to the hazard.

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A new, safer work schedule or continuing employer “flexibility”?

SafetyAtWorkBlog has kept a watching brief on the Australian construction industry and its attempts to improve its workplace culture. On the initiative of no weekend work, there seems to be some dissatisfaction from Brookfield Multiplex, even though that company is a “contributing member ” of the Construction Industry Culture Taskforce (CICT), which advocates for no weekend work and a cap of 50 hours.

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Vaccine mandates and omission bias

Over the last two years or so, occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals seemed to have been the go-to people for handling the workplace impacts of the coronavirus pandemic. Whether that is fair or not is debatable, but it is likely to repeat reality as workplaces continue to face labour shortages, production and supply disruption and variable exposure to the virus. At the moment, many politicians are uncertain about how to proceed. Employers need to have an operational plan, but they, or their OHS advisers, also need to step back occasionally and look at the larger context.

That step-back perspective is just what Dyani Lewis has done in a small but useful book called “Unvaxxed – Trust, Truth and the Rise of Vaccine Outrage“.

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“the job is never done”

Every so often, there are sufficient numbers of workplace deaths and injuries that a government feels the need to act. In 2019, the Queensland government closed down its mining sector for a “safety reset”, which required every mine worker to be retrained in occupational health and safety (OHS). Recently Western Australia needed to act on deaths in its farming sector and has established an inquiry into the issues.

Farming is perhaps the hardest industry in which to affect change. It is dominated by male workers and farmers. It has next to no union presence. OHS inspectors rarely attend farms except after a severe injury or death.

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Victorian sexual harassment recommendations protect workers – sort of

In light of many workplace sexual harassment scandals in Australia, the Victorian Government established a task force to look at the issues and make recommendations. That task force has released its findings, the government has responded, and the media has focused on mainly one issue – non-disclosure agreements (NDAs) – missing out on other important information. And questions like, why did Victoria have the task force at all?

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