In January 2009, SafetyAtWorkBlog reported on the end of a political saga involving parliamentarian Paula Wriedt. Ms Wriedt has since become a spokesperson for the treatment of depression and on 10 August she spoke with the Australian Broadcasting Corporation about more resources for the treatment of mental health issues in the young.
Category: wellness
Leadership, stress and performance reviews – interview
Graham Winter is an Australian psychologist 
who was the chief psychologist for the Australian Olympic team and is now an author and business adviser. In August 2009 he has a book released entitled “The Man Who Cured the Performance Review”.
SafetyAtWorkBlog managed to interview Graham last week about the book, stress and safety leadership. The SafetyAtWorkBlog podcast is available for download.
Does a new mobile telephone equal productivity increases?
The largest Australian telecommunications company, Telstra, announced the release today of a new service for mobile telephones aimed at the business sector. Below are some excerpts from the media release:
“Telstra launches new smartphone to power workforce productivity
August 3, 2009 – Business professionals have a powerful new productivity tool at their disposal with the launch of the new HTC Snap on the Telstra Next G™ network.
Available from 11 August, the Snap is a Windows Mobile®-powered smartphone that helps users get the most out of every hour by connecting them with email, their office calendar and the mobile internet in real-time….
Telstra Business Executive Director, Cathy Aston, said the HTC snap was the ideal productivity device for busy business people who need to respond to clients and manage their email on the go.”
The email-ready HTC Snap lets users steal back otherwise lost work time by keeping them
connected to email on the commute to work, on the way to the airport or when waiting to attend a
meeting.
“The email-ready HTC Snap lets users steal back otherwise lost work time by keeping them connected to email on the commute to work, on the way to the airport or when waiting to attend a meeting.”
“Telstra Product Management Executive Director, Ross Fielding, said this remarkably slim smartphone set a new benchmark for productivity device affordability and would appeal to business people who demand always-on email, as well as consumers who are increasingly interested in messaging capabilities on the go.”
The words emphasised above indicate a dominant thought that business people are obliged to be contactable at all times of the week. Research is beginning to show that this is becoming an unsafe practice, if it is not already (see below). The “steal back otherwise lost work time” is of concern. What time is being referred to going to the toilet, spending time with one’s family, countering fatigue and stress through sleep?
In December 2008, Telstra undertook a survey of small business operators. The survey showed that many would be working over the Christmas break. Telstra Business Group Managing Director, Deena Shiff said
“In 2008, Australian SMEs have been world leaders in the take up of mobile technology based on the Telstra Next G™ network – in fact businesses are now using mobile technology more than fixed line phones and data….
The key is to use technology not to intrude on personal time, but to manage the ongoing needs of the business in a more efficient way that doesn’t keep people away from family.” [my emphasis]
In 2006, the Chartered Institute for Personnel and Developmetn (CIPD) undertook research that said
“The phenomenon of “teleworking” has been overexaggerated, is unlikely ever to be a prospect for the majority of workers, and may be overshadowing far more effective means of improving work-life balance…”
The most important feature of modern mobile phones is the OFF button.
Australia’s “Find a Psychologist” directory
Several OHS regulators in Australia, OHS professional associations and trade union have directories for OHS advisers. Most of them are in the traditional OHS areas of guarding, engineering, chemical safety….. Psychosocial issues such as work stress or workplace bullying haven’t featured as much.
The Australian Psychological Society (APS) has a very good searchable directory for its members. The search results provide a brief table of those psychologists for the subject area in your region with a good amount of information on individual listings on the click-through.
A great feature is to locate someone within a radius of one’s town or suburb. The Society has thought about the geography if Australia by including a 200 kilometre radius option.
On a brief search for psychologists who specialise in work stress or workplace bullying, the large Australian capital cities had plenty of listings. Darwin came up empty as did Cairns, Alice Springs and Broom but these are remote locations and there may be psychologists in those areas who could provide assistance on workplace psychosocial issues, just not as specialists.
The “Find a Psychologist” directory is very easy to use and could be used by other member organisations as a template for their own databases. The APS website should be flagged by Australian OHS professionals who need he services of psychologists for workplace psychosocial assistance.
New Work/Life Research
There seems to be new institutes and academic schools popping up regularly over research into the issue of work/life balance. Recently one of the oldest and most prominent of the institutes, the Centre for Work + Life at the University of South Australia, released new research data.
The latest Australian Work and Life Index (AWALI) was released in late July 2009. The executive summary identifies several important issues relevant to OHS:
“Three years of data about work-life interference in Australia tell us that many employees experience frequent interference from work in their personal, home and community lives, many feel overloaded at work and feelings of time pressure are also common and growing.”
“Work hours are central to work-life interference….. Many Australians are a long way from their preferred working hours and the 2008/09 economic downturn has not made any difference to the incidence of this mismatch.”
The work by Barbara Pocock and others at the Centre is characterised by recommendations for improvements rather than simply describing a situation. In this data the researchers say
“Our AWALI reports over the past three years suggest that employers and public policy makers can help workers deal with work-life pressures. This involves improving the quality of supervision and workplace culture, controlling workloads, designing ‘do-able’ jobs, reducing long working hours and work-related commuting, increasing employee-centered flexibility and options for permanent part-time work, improving the fit between actual and preferred hours and increasing care supports.”
It is obvious from these comments that OHS professionals need to work hard on these matters to create, or maintain, their workplace safety cultures.
Absence management data misses the OHS mark
Managing workplace absenteeism often ignores the OHS issues that are integral to the issue.
On 20 July 2009 the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development released its findings on the issue in its annual Absence Management Survey.
The media statement identifies the reasons for short- and long-term absences.
- “The main causes of short-term absence are minor illnesses such as colds and flu, stress and musculoskeletal conditions
- The main causes of long-term absence are acute medical conditions, stress and mental health conditions and musculoskeletal conditions and back pain.”
However, the media statement identifies no measures to counter these workplace hazards, preferring to focus on ancillary factors such as job security.
Willmott focuses on a comparison between absenteeism in the public and private sectors. The difference is statistically interesting, perhaps, but does not address the causes of absenteeism.
Willmot also illustrates the dominant HR position on absenteeism.
“Effective absence management involves finding a balance between providing support to help employees with health problems stay in and return to work and taking consistent and firm action against employees that try and take advantage of organisations’ occupational sick pay schemes.”
This manages the effect of the problem but not the problem itself which CIPD’s own research has identified as musculoskeletal conditions, stress, mental health and, to a lesser extent, colds and flu.
The comments by the Senior Public Policy Adviser for the CIPD, BenWillmott, are a good example of how some human resources or management organisations miss the health and safety element.
The CIPD does acknowledge the importance of workplace health and safety as illustrated by its reply to the Health & Safety Executive’s draft strategy. It also says in the Absence Management Survey that, in the return-to-work context:
“The involvement of occupational health professionals is identified as the most effective approach for managing long-term absence…”
However even though it sees itself as the “professional and accreditation body for the UK HR profession [which represents] over 130,000 HR professionals at every level of business and in every sector”, it hesitates to take a leadership role in health and safety. It’s a pity because applying the apparent professionalism of the Institute and its membership strength to OHS could achieve great social and business efficiencies.
For those wanting to look at comparison data, CIPD makes available its previous surveys for download.
Maintain instead of repair
Every country has its share of high-fliers who “burn out”. Many fade away from the public eye with their careers over. Frequently this path to wealth and prominence is not perceived as a workplace health or safety matter. Some people decide that the health trade-off of multi-million dollar salaries is worth it.
Sadly the psychological reality of this personal decision is often masked by clichés. Frequently, executives say that a major motivation for their decision is “to spend more time with my family”. Many executives may believe this to be a major part of their decision, but regrettably, this worthy sentiment has become a cliché – the equivalent of a beauty pageant winner working toward “world peace”.
The family-time phrase/reason/excuse signifies an important element of the executive’s personality. They were willing to sacrifice decades of their relationship with their partner and to be absent from the development of their children for money.
If any of these departing executives use the family-time phrase in the same departure speech or media exit-interview as regaining “control of their lives” to “re-engage with the most important people in my life”, ask the executives, or politicians, “how do you justify ignoring your family over your career?”.
In some cases one could be more specific. “Do you think that your multi-million career was related to your daughter’s persistent attempts to kill herself?” “After being absent so frequently and for so long, are you still justified in describing your marriage as a loving relationship, or your partner as your ‘soulmate’?” “Was your million-dollar salary really worth it?”
Int he wake of the self-generated corporate financial crisis, some corporate executives are re-examining their ethics and morality. Not enough are going through this but it’s a start. Most say they operate for the benefit of shareholders but they cannot deny the reality of massive remuneration for their efforts. What they are ignoring is the individual cost to their loved ones of these efforts.
Should we look up to the billionaires who sacrifice the wellbeing of others they say they love to chase the dollar? Are these the paragons of our society?
People are trying to maintain or establish a work/life balance. (There are several articles at SafetyAtWorkBlog that report on this movement.) But the reality is that to achieve a work/life balance, one must be prepared to sacrifice income. This may involve the necessity of achieving a certain stage in one’s career that is not the top, but still a position of value in the company and, equally important, of value to one’s family and even one’s own psychological well-being. If one’s colleagues fail to understand this decision, the workplace culture is faulty, and probably irreparable.
If the ultimate ideal is to have a happy, functional, and sustainable community, one must examine one’s own motivations, and one’s own personal priorities. Everyone must consider whether we want to emulate those who sacrifice their family’s welfare for money or whether we support those who rebut the “glory of the high-achiever” and emulate those who love their family enough to spend time with them through their career. Maintenance is easier than repair in life as in safety management.