Psychological safety dominated the 2025 WorkSafe Victoria Awards held in late February 2026. (At somepoint, WorkSafe is going to have to bring the awards back to the Safety Month schedule of October) This is perhaps not surprising, as psychological safety and psychosocial hazards remain hot issues in Victoria, but some other important finalists shone.
Many internet search engines and browsers offer an Artificial Intelligence (AI) search function. The answers seem palatable, convenient and accurate, but are they? I tested the AI search function to see for myself.
Continue reading “Why AI Still Can’t Tell What SafetyAtWorkBlog Really Thinks”Canada’s Institute for Work & Health (IWH) has produced a bold forecast of the future of occupational health and safety (OHS) in its new report, “Work & health 2040: Anticipating changes impacting the futures of occupational health and safety”. The seven trends identified are not greatly surprising. Change is needed to address these trends, but who should, and how to, make the changes is unclear.
Ask someone to depict occupational health and safety (OHS) in a drawing, and the image is likely to include a hard hat, maybe some safety glasses, or hearing protection. Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) dominates the concept of OHS and how people perceive OHS, even when PPE is the last hazard control option to be considered in providing safe and healthy work.
Our relationship with PPE has forever been changed by everyone’s experience of the COVID-19 pandemic. The survivors of the pandemic are loath to reflect on those few intense years, but OHS needs to talk about the pandemic and what went right and what went wrong. Here’s a short start to the conversation.
Earlier this week, I was a panellist at an occupational health and safety symposium organised by the Victorian Branch of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. We were asked to be challenging and provocative in our perspectives on the evolution of OHS and OHS law in Victoria since the start of the century.
There are several ways to write about Safe Work Australia’s recent Research Summit. This is the first article and will discuss a couple of features of the summit and ask if the summit achieved its aims.
I asked an artificial intelligence program to identify Australian instances where politics may have led to institutional changes related to psychosocial hazards. It revealed numerous actions related to government inquiries and activities, but did not address politics as I intended. Clearly, my question needed clarification, but the response remained informative and deserves attention.
This time I asked:
Continue reading “Political Reforms Drive Some Systemic Psychosocial Hazard Changes”“Most Australian discussions of psychosocial hazards appear to focus primarily on causes that can be controlled at work. Is there any activity in the political sphere for institutional changes?”
