Charles Handy died in December 2024. He was a prominent author on organisational behaviour and business management and was recognised as a major thinker. It is fair to describe him as a pre-Internet influencer. His ideas never went away, but they faded under the neoliberal onslaught. With the decline of that ideology, Handy’s approach to organisational culture deserves a reread.
Continue reading “Handy and organisational culture”Category: wellness
The most recent guidance on office safety, including psych safety and working from home
In December 2024, WorkSafe Victoria released “Office Health and Safety – A Guide for Employers“. Sadly, it seems to have (half) dumped the Officewise brand. If WorkSafe had kept it, the guide would have been part of an illustrious history stretching to the last century when the first edition was published in 1995. The new guide has some interesting advice on occupational health and safety (OHS) issues related to working from home, but workplace mental health seems more prominent than in earlier editions.
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Workplace factors are missing from “The Science of Stress”
I am sure someone much wiser than me has produced this aphorism: “One can learn from what is said, but often learn more from what is not.” If not, I will claim it. I thought of this while reading the National Geographic special edition (August 2024) magazine on “The Science of Stress.” I looked for the editor’s thoughts on the origin of work-related stress and prevention methods. They were largely missing.
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Disciplinary overlaps may help with worker engagement
There is a considerable overlap between organisational psychology, Human Resources and occupational health and safety (OHS), even though each has developed its own culture and language. People are just starting to acknowledge the overlap and trying to increase it.
One example of that overlap was on display in an interview with prominent podcaster Mel Robbins, who admitted that:
“The hardest thing about what I do is that oftentimes the advice and the tools sound dumb or repetitive…”
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How to improve workplace health – MOVE
Self-help books often include a nugget of useful information related to occupational health and safety. Paul Taylor‘s “Death by Confort – How Modern Life is Killing Us and What We Can Do About It” offers a recent example.
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Latest OHS News from Herbert Smith Freehills
One of the most important sources of information about occupational health and safety (OHS) is seminars organised by law firms. A great example was a webinar hosted by Herbert Smith Freehills on October 30, 2024, as part of its Safety Leadership Series. It was a general discussion on Australia’s most prominent OHS issues but outlined increasingly significant consequences.
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Significant workplace culture investigation but OHS missed again
Australia’s news media is reporting a shocking report about the workplace culture of parts of the Nine Entertainment organisation – bullying, sexual harassment, abuse of power – all the elements of organisational culture that can be found in any company if one scratches the surface. Scratching is one of the aims of the occupational health and safety (OHS) discipline – investigating the causes of harm at the source.
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