I once had to stop a potential fight on a construction site between a works supervisor and a safety professional. The verbal abuse and niggling occurred for several minutes before the men’s chests were inflated like roosters and it was at this point I stepped in to diffuse the situation by asking some questions as…
Today the SafetyAtWorkBlog has evolved into a more contemporary OHS media website. 
Most of the future articles and some of the past, will be available as exclusive content to those who choose to subscribe on a monthly or annual basis. There are many reasons for this change including reducing the likelihood of unauthorised use of the articles and the need to cover some of the costs of producing the blog.
If you are one of the 1500 followers the blog has accumulated over the last 9 years, I hope you consider subscribing and staying with me for the next 9.
You may already have seen the “launch” article about OHS and the Trump Presidency. I am working on other article on issues concerning gender diversity in the OHS profession and am chasing up exclusive interviews with a range of people who have not, necessarily, spoken about safety before.
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SafetyAtWorkBlog will also be accepting limited advertising for the first time. So, if you have a product or service that you want to let OHS professionals and regulators know about, contact me. We intend to have no advertising in the subscriber articles.
I would really like to hear from you and hope you will continue to support the SafetyAtWorkBlog in its new form.
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Jen Jackson is a communications adviser who has come to prominence in the occupational health and safety (OHS) sector in Australia over the last 12 months for lots of reasons. She is young, female and talks clearly and sensible – all elements that many do not associate with OHS. Jackson is always worth listening to…
Corporate maturity, especially in the area of workplace health and safety, is an increasingly important consideration in determining the preparedness of an organisation to change and embrace OHS as a crucial element of its business operations. There are several advocates of determining corporate maturity usually based around Hudson’s five levels of maturity, the most recent seems to be the Australian Constructors’ Association (ACA) in conjunction with RMIT University (see parts 8-7 of the document pictured below), but these tools are often aimed at the upper levels of an organisation.
Recently the Center for Construction Research and Training (CPWR) produced a series of handouts that apply a variation of the maturity matrix to separate components of safety culture.
These levels include:
Continue reading “Technical and practical advice on applying the maturity matrix”
Next month Australia hosts the G20 but there is always a lot of activity leading to this meeting and labour relations is part of that preparation. In September 2014 the G20 conducted its Labour and Employment Ministerial meeting at which a Declaration was released that includes some occupational health and safety (OHS) information. The Declaration is full of “weasel words” and “soft verbs” but it is worth noting so that the actions of governments on OHS in the future can be referenced, even though tangible results will be few.
On promoting safer workplaces, the Declaration states:
“Improving workplace safety and health is an urgent priority that protects workers and contributes to increased productivity and growth. We agree to take further steps to reduce the substantial human and economic costs associated with unsafe workplaces and work-related illnesses. We endorse the attached G20 Statement on Safer and Healthier Workplaces (Annex C), and we commit, as appropriate, to implement its recommendations in collaboration with governments, international organisations and social partners.”
If we were to deconstruct this statement, accepting that the paragraph is extracted from the labour relations context, the Australian Government, and other parties, does not accept that OHS is an “urgent priority”, only that improving it is. Any government can prove that it is “improving” OHS even when controls are removed due to red tape reduction or by the ideological strategy of increasing employer control through increased flexibility.
Australia’s Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) spent a great deal of time looking at the design of what started as an environmental initiative delivered in one way to an economic stimulus package delivered another way. The HIP, and the people working with it, struggled to accommodate these changes. A new book from Baywood Publishing in the United States, coincidentally, looks at the growth in ‘green jobs” and, among many issues, discusses how such jobs can affect worker health.
In “Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases” Vesela R Veleva writes
“Green jobs, however, are not necessarily safe jobs, and, any of the current green technologies pose significant health and safety risks to workers. A life-cycle approach and greater emphasis on worker health and safety is necessary when promoting future policies and practices. (Page 7)
The advantage of looking at the HIP inquiries as green jobs is that it provides a broader, even global, context to the scheme. Veleva writes:
“While there is no universally accepted definition of a green job, several organisations have proposed working definitions. The United Nations Environmental Program defines a green job as “work in agriculture, manufacturing, research and development, administrative and service activities that contribute substantially to preserving and restoring environmental quality”…. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics defines green jobs as jobs involved in producing green products and services and increasing the use of clean energy, energy efficiency and mitigating negative impacts on the environment…” (page 9)
Continue reading “Book review: Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases”
Australian recruiting firm, Sacs Consulting, has released the findings of a survey entitled “Dangerous Personalities making work unsafe“. Such surveys are predominantly marketing exercises and usually, as in this case, there is a limited amount of data available but the results are often broadly distributed and add to the discussion about workplace safety.
The headline itself is a red flag to occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals who are old enough to remember the debate about “blaming the worker” for OHS breaches, injuries and illnesses. Most safety managers and corporate safety programs are applying a “no blame” philosophy to combat the worker focus but the reality is that workers are still being blamed and being dismissed for safety breaches. The Sacs Consulting survey confirms the growing worker focus by looking at the personal rather than the organisational.
The Sacs study found:
“…that some people still ignore OHS rules and act unsafely in the workplace, whereas others value their own safety and that of their colleagues so actively that they try to improve the safety of their workplace. Using personality and values testing, the study was able to predict whether an individual is more or less
likely to be safe at work.” (page 1) Continue reading “Dangerous personalities making work unsafe – really?”