Beyondblue has just released a report into the cost of mental health in the workplace prepared by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and called “Creating a mentally healthy workplace – Return on investment analysis“. The report is interesting but of limited use for those looking for ways to make their own workplaces safer and healthier with minimal cost. The …
Several weeks ago there was a stir in the OHS sector in Victoria, Australia. WorkSafe was to disappear. Quickly the WorkSafe executives clarified that the organisation would continue to exist but that the trading name of “WorkSafe” would go. Unions and others were suspicious as such a decision was unexpected, even by WorkSafe it appears, and …
Australia’s Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) demands the attention of all occupational health and safety (OHS) professionals, primarily, because a job creation and economic stimulus program was so poorly planned at the highest level of government, that it seems to have established a culture that led to workplace deaths. However the Royal …
WorkSafe NZ has released “best practice guidelines” on workplace bullying. Best practice is a nonsense term but this guide is a major step above similar guides in Australia, in particular. Definitions Guides always begin with definitions and the definition New Zealand has applied is the same as that in the recently released Australian workplace bullying …
Mental health, happiness, well being, safety, red tape …. each of these have been linked to productivity recently in Australian discourses but, as has been mentioned previously, productivity has a flexible definition depending on one’s politics and political agenda. There is multi-factor productivity and labour productivity. Each measure provides different results. So where does OHS … Continue reading “Labour productivity is “soaring” in a period of IR/OHS variability”
Safe Work Australia has released its latest draft code of practice for preventing and responding to workplace bullying for public comment. There are many useful and practical strategies in the draft code but workplace bullying is only a small element of the more sustainable strategy of developing a safe and respectful organisational culture. The definition … Continue reading “Draft bullying code and cultural measurement”
Every year, around this time, the mainstream media reports on the findings of employee surveys of the Victorian public service. Each year the statistics on workplace bullying are featured. (The Age newspaper reported on the latest survey on 31 March 2013.) But the approach to an understanding of workplace bullying has changed over the last … Continue reading “OHS would benefit from a historical perspective on workplace bullying”