Seminars on workplace mental health must always offer solutions and not only (always) the solution that the host wants to promote. Occupational health and safety (OHS) needs to be more altruistic (Yes, it may be hypocrisy from a subscription blog). Recently I spoke on the issue of psychosocial hazards at work and offered this slide on “What can be done?” [Note: This article discusses suicide]
Continue reading “What to do about workplace mental health? Talk, Listen, Examine”Category: training
Chalk and Cheese – legal seminars on mental health at work
Over the last few months, various seminars from law firms and others have focussed on how to comply with new and impending occupational health and safety regulations related to psychosocial hazards at work. Over the last fortnight, I attended two such seminars; they were as different as chalk and cheese, even though both had strong voices from lawyers, illustrating the sources of some of the confusion over the issue felt by some employers.
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OHS and management courses
Research findings that a sample of business and management courses have little to no OHS content are not surprising and match what has now become fashionable to call “lived experience”. Part of the reason for the findings is that the number of undergraduate courses in OHS has declined, and those that did exist were not often recognised as “management” courses, although OHS can be little else. They were certainly not “integrated” with other traditional management approaches.
Part of the reason, I like to think, is because OHS principles challenge the ethics underpinning business management courses and concepts. OHS would say that workers are people and not “units of labour”. If workers are people for whom we are supposed to apply dignity, respect and care, how can Business exploit the worker’s labour, loyalty and goodwill in order to maximise profits or shareholders’ returns, which are supposed to be the main purposes of modern business?
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Stress reenters the research vocabulary and we are all better for it
Work is making people sicker, according to a recently published research report from the University of Melbourne. The “2023 State of the Future Work – A Work Futures Hallmark Research Initiative Report” said:
“Critically, we find almost three-quarters of people with a chronic illness (73 percent) say that their health condition was caused or worsened by the stress associated with their job.”
page 15
It is good to see the various incarnations of work-related mental health conditions being brought back to the collective and specific term of Stress.
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The next stage of OHS analysis?
“One of our key roles as the regulator is to understand why workplace injuries happen” –
Dr Natassia Goode. Worksafe Victoria, February 9, 2023.
Dr Goode made this statement at a research seminar for the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research. She went on to explain those “widely acknowledged” causes in an expansive discussion about “systems thinking“.
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Online training, offline training. What gives?
Occupational health and safety (OHS) training has been forced to revolutionise over the last couple of plague-ridden years from face-to-face in a room to face-to-face online through Teams, Zoom and many other variations. Traditional “in-Room” training is sneaking back, but the majority remains online. However, OHS training providers in Victoria feel they are being pulled from pillar to post by WorkSafe Victoria.
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Federal Safety Commission embraces mental health
The Office of the Federal Safety Commission is a weird beast. It originated from Royal Commission in the Building and Construction Industry which many at the time and since saw as a politically motivated exercise. But whereas the Australian Building and Construction Commission which also originated in the Royal Commission, is mired in political and media back and forth, the OFSC has remained relatively clean. This may illustrate the difficulty of arguing against workplace health and safety even when the Commission has a fair bit of safety clutter.
Recently the OFSC joined the workplace mental health movement, a legitimate occupational health and safety element. It will offer little that is new, but the results of its November 2021 member survey do provide a useful insight into the major construction projects and contractors.
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