When anyone dies, it is important to remember them and their relatives as well as those we did not know personally but who also grieve. Public recognition of deceased workers is a recent phenomenon, even though we have commemorated and noted industrial disasters for over a century. Memorials have always provided a symbolic focus for our …
It is rare to find an occupational health and safety (OHS) seminar that is captivating but there is almost always some useful bits of safety information, hopefully enough to make attendance worthwhile. On March 24, 2017 the Safety Institute of Australia and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) held the annual breakfast seminar in Melbourne. Speakers included representatives from …
There are many advocates of the importance of a mental health and wellbeing in workplaces. But few of them address the worst-case scenario for workplace mental health of work-related suicides. In some cases, the mental health advocates are overly cautious about even speaking the reality, which does not help reduce mental health stigma. In 2016 …
The Herald-Sun newspaper has released the final report into the mental health and suicide rate of Victorian metropolitan firefighters. The report, authored by Dr Peter Cotton, found that the issues uncovered in the review of firefighters in the Metropolitan Fire Brigade (MFB) are not dissimilar from the findings of other inquiries into emergency service organisations …
[This article from 2015 was previously password-protected and is now available to all] Recently a couple of media outlets referred to a report produced by Citi into workplace safety issues related to the top 100 companies on the Australian stock exchange. The report, “Safety Spotlight: ASX100 Companies & More” (not available online), provides a useful …
Australian workplace mental health advocates often seem to shy away from discussions of suicide, perhaps because suicides are not a regular occurrence at work or because work-related suicide remains stigmatised. To better understand this overlap between suicide and mental health, and the working environment, it may be useful to look at the Japanese experience where work-related … Continue reading “Japanese depression contrasts the Western understanding of workplace mental health”
Barry Naismith‘s third report into the operations and performance of WorkSafe Victoria was released on July 22, 2014. Naismith produces these reports through a combination of publicly available information in the press, a dive into the resources of the WorkSafe Library (visit before it moves to Geelong) and requests to WorkSafe. This level of analysis … Continue reading “Independent analysis of WorkSafe Victoria”