The 2nd (annual) psych health and safety conference commenced with what was almost a summary of the current play in the workplace psychosocial/psychological sphere. This year, the venue is bigger, and the number of delegates in person and online appears much bigger. But the most significant feature is the blending of different disciplines under the psych tag.
Rob Briner kicked it off
The second in our series of occupational health and safety questions to an artificial intelligence centres on the issue of ISO 45003’s influence on the management and prevention of psychosocial hazards. It was asked:
“How influential has ISO45003 been in achieving systemic and organisational change in Australia?”
Victoria is developing its own Code of Practice for managing (and hopefully preventing) psychosocial hazards in the workplace, ahead of amendments to its occupational health and safety (OHS) laws in late 2025. But how powerful and enforceable can a Code of Practice be? A new book by Arie Freiberg, “Regulation in Australia“, helps explain this, but the future could look better.
Sometimes you need to stop what you’re doing and reflect. This could relate to life, work, values or more. I was invited to talk to the Central Safety Group (CSG) this week on “Challenging Mainstream OHS Views”, so I stopped, thought, and jotted down some personal opinions to discuss. It was a helpful exercise.
Occupational health and safety (OHS) podcasts are increasingly common. They are reaching peak-podcast just as peak-blog may have done a few years ago, BUT the increased attention to workplace psychological health continues to create more. A new, short, informative, and useful one is “Inside Safety” with lawyers Steve Bell and Nerida Jessup.
Over the last couple of decades, the Workplace Health and Safety Show has evolved from a trade show tacked onto occupational health and safety (OHS) conferences to an independent entity. But is it any good? I spent a few hours there last week to find out.
The Workplace Health and Safety Show is a two-day event that travels to major Australian capital cities each year. Its origin was as a trade show that accompanied OHS conferences, offering a clearly commercial counterpoint to the regulators and academic presentations at the conferences. The challenge in attracting conference delegates was that they had usually paid big money to attend the conference and needed to make a trade-off between their commitment to the conference and the opportunity to stroll the trade show. Other than lunchtime, the conferences rarely allocated enough time for the trade shows, which are an important part of demonstrating the practical application of many of the concepts presented at the conference.
Continue reading “From Sidekick to Spotlight: WHS Show Steps Up, But a Few Big Players are missing”SafeWorkSA has published fascinating information about preventing “harmful workplace behaviours.” The webpage’s eye-catching part is the Hierarchy of Controls for Managing the Risk of Harmful Workplace Behaviours, but the article is curious.
The audience for information from occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators is supposedly everyone, but it is rarely read by anyone other than OHS advocates. However, any information about psychosocial risks and hazards needs to be written in a tone that attracts the attention of those in businesses who have established ownership of these hazards, primarily the Human Resources (HR) person. SafeWorkSA’s page fails to reach this target.
