By Melody Kemp Walking my dog along the Mekong in Vientiane, new piles of building rubble litter the river bank. The capital has long had a problem with plastic waste, but as unbridled wealth spreads and humble buildings are replaced by garish McMansions, building rubble is turning up in the general detritus. Among the bricks … Continue reading ““We cannot buy the health of people with money””
The Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) is making serious efforts to increase its relevance to Australia’s occupational health and safety (OHS) profession and the broader community. Around International Women’s Day, the SIA released a media statement calling for action on workplace bullying, harassment and abuse....
A lot of statistics were presented at a workers’ compensation research seminar in Melbourne on 1 March 2018. Monash University’s Insurance Work and Health Group provided a useful perspective on return-to-work matters with several points relevant to occupational health and safety (OHS). Both Professor Alex Collie and Dr Tyler Lane showed a graph about gun-related …
On November 9 2017, the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare (AIHW) released statistical data on work-related injury. This data included statistics from workers compensation but also statistics about hospitalised injuries that were identified as work-related but funded by sources other than workers’ compensation. The report also provides a different perspective on mental health....
“Then I went, ‘Oh hang on, I’ve normalised so much of this as part of my industry…. This last three months has really made us all take a long hard look at what we have even let ourselves think is acceptable.” – Sacha Horler Such a statement is familiar to those working in the field … Continue reading “What do Weinstein, Spacey and others have to do with OHS?”
In support of this year’s election of new Board members to the Safety Institute of Australia, the Safety on Tap podcast has granted each nominee ten minutes to introduce themselves. Some of these episodes raised the following points of interest: The need to change the demographics of the occupational health and safety (OHS) profession to … Continue reading “Configuring the safety profession for the future”
The mainstream media regularly includes articles and, increasingly, advertorials, about the modern workplace, usually office buildings, that are designed to foster creativity, communication, productivity and improve physical health. In many of these workplaces, it quickly becomes apparent that there are never enough meeting rooms for confidential discussions, making the coffee shop in the foyer or …