Category: Uncategorized

Businesses Want Maximum Productivity, But Will Workers Get a Maximum Temperature?

In the Northern Hemisphere, workers are again facing dangerous summer heat. In a few months, it will be the Southern Hemisphere’s turn. Climate extremes are producing droughts, wildfires, and crop failures. It’s not the end of the world, but it’s becoming easier to see how the world ends, and how work and business will be affected. As with most catastrophes, occupational health and safety (OHS) sits quietly in the background. It needs to step forward because it has tools that can help.

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Open Access to PHSCon articles

In September 2026, I will be reporting from the Psych Health and Safety Conference (PHSCon) in Sydney. It is the pre-eminent workplace mental health conference in Australia and is it its third year.

In support of the 2026 conference, I have opened some of my PHSCon articles from 2024. These articles illustrate the high calibre of speakers this conference attracts and, hopefully, shows the worth of subscribing to the SafetyAtWorkBlog for these exclusive reports.

I David Daniels’ US perspective on psychosocial risks at work
Slow progress on mental health at work
Psychosocial incidents to be notifiable in Australia

Concussion Reform Won’t Happen Until We Stop Pretending Sport Is Exempt from OHS

The risk of concussion in professional sports is getting an increasing amount of attention, and the prevention of harm is starting to be considered, but the consequences of the changes required are being resisted or, perhaps more accurately, dreaded.

A recent article by John Hennessy of the Community Concussion Research Foundation (CCRF) in the Australian Financial Review highlights progress toward serious consideration of harm prevention in sporting workplaces.

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Why Are Victoria’s WFH Laws Still Causing Executive Stress?

The occupational health and safety (OHS) dimensions of working from home (WFH) are routinely misrepresented in public debate, often drowned out by managerial preference, corporate culture, and political posturing. Remarkably consistent evidence shows that WFH does not reduce productivity. In many cases it improves it, largely because autonomy, reduced commuting, and better control over work rhythms lower psychological risks such as stress, burnout, and fatigue. From an OHS standpoint, that makes WFH a legitimate and effective control measure that is certainly not a threat to organisational performance.

Yet employers frequently resist WFH, invoking vague claims about collaboration, culture, or “team cohesion”. (This article was written before the postponement of the Victorian laws)

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The Psych Blueprint That Knows the Research but Misses the Workers

The reality of needing to provide psychologically healthy and safe work seems to have been widely accepted, if not still well understood, if the number of corporate work-related psychological assessment and management programs is any indication. One of the most recent is “The Psychosocial Safety Blueprint” published by Culture Plus Consulting’s Felicity Menzies. The blueprint is interesting until the document’s marketing purpose starts to dominate.

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Myth Construction and the Limits of Union OHS Influence

Australian trade unions rarely campaign solely on the basis of occupational health and safety (OHS), meaning without supplementary aims such as increased wages or remuneration. Below are some examples, but they are few and usually in the wake of an industrial disaster. There are a couple of prominent union OHS campaigners, but we rarely hear of them after their passing, and many of their contributions are remembered more through internal mythologising than through documented reform.

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Burnout Isn’t Complex When You Look Through an OHS Lens

I want to be optimistic about workplace mental health in the lead-up to my reporting on a sihgnificant psychological/psychososcial conference in September – PHSCon. But reading the newspapers demoralises me, as burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design. I suppose I could eliminate the psychological hazard by stopping reading the newspapers (like many others have), but then how would I know what others think about occupational health and safety (OHS) and what is being said and advised to employers and the community?

Recently, The Age and Sydney Morning Herald newspapers contained an article called “Hidden cost of our burnout culture” – a typical example of a Human Resources (HR) and leadership-based perspective. Burnout stories framed through HR ignore OHS obligations and preventive design.

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