At a well-attended La Trobe University alumni seminar in May 2017, researchers discussed the reality and the hype surrounding mindfulness. They explained the varieties of mindfulness, the clinic research history over the last four decades and the personal advantages of living mindfully. However in the workplace and organisational context, they said that there was insufficient …
Kirstin Ferguson has been an amazing advocate for occupational health and safety (OHS), good governance, Board responsibility, and gender diversity. She is receiving a great deal of media attention lately for her Celebrating Women campaign on social media. Ferguson has inspired, and been inspired by, many people in the OHS profession in Australia and is …
Fatigue and impairment are two of the most difficult workplace hazards to address. These are further complicated when they are contextualised in workplace mental health. So it is concerning when an entrepreneur produces a product that is meant to help address mental fatigue but that may also mask occupational health and safety (OHS) actions that …
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”
In occupational health and safety (OHS), as in most things, it is possible to learn more from what is not said than what is said. Recently WorkSafe Victoria released a guidebook for employers on “Preventing and managing work-related stress”. Given the current community focus on stress, health and wellness, discussion of this document’s release has …
In May 2016, the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) held their annual safety breakfast. The speakers were the usual blend of WorkSafe representative, SIA, Herbert Smith Freehills and remuneration survey results but there is always bits of useful information for the old hands and a lot of information for new … Continue reading “Breakfast seminar provides OHS tidbits”
The 2016 Workplace Wellness conference in Melbourne has heard about the Workhealth Improvement Network (WIN) through a panel of WIN participants. The point of difference of this panel is that the participants are from a range of different sized and regional companies. The significance of this difference should not be understated as conferences rarely include …