Earlier this year, the Safety Institute of Australia (SIA) launched its OHS Body of Knowledge (BoK) project, an excellent collection of workplace safety information and research but one that has had restrictions imposed on it that seem contrary to its purpose. SafetyAtWorkBlog has communicated repeatedly to the SIA about the BoK project and the, seemingly, … Continue reading “Unanswered questions on Safety Institute activities”
Next week Australia holds public hearings into the issue of workplace bullying. Currently the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment has not yet made any submissions publicly available which handicaps the value of the public hearings for observers but the Trade Unions have released their submissions. Generally, the suggestions for control measures are progressive … Continue reading “Public hearings into Workplace Bullying to commence in Australia”
In a recent edition of Safety Express, a newsletter from WorkSafe Victoria, Clarke Martin outlined the benefits of WorkSafe’s Owner Visit program to one regional company. This good news story needed more depth and detail so Clark Martin provided SafetyAt WorkBlog with additional information. The Safety Express article outlined that a company of over 200 employees … Continue reading “More details of the costs of managing safety required from OHS regulators”
Two articles in two days concerning OHS advertising may seem a little much but in 2008 Australia’s Advertising Standards Board (ASB) received complaints about one of the graphic ads used by WorkSafe Victoria at that time. WorkSafe had identified a need to shock teenagers about workplace risks but some television viewers found them disturbing. A … Continue reading “WorkSafe’s approach to marketing safety to teenagers revealed”
For the last few weeks WorkSafe Victoria has been running new injury prevention advertisements based on a game show theme of playing the odds on injuring a worker. The curiosity of this campaign is that humour and a little bit of shame has been employed to communicate. It is refreshing for an OHS regulator to … Continue reading “WorkSafe Victoria tries humour in safety advertising”
There are two newspaper reports in Australia on 21 June 2012 about the Victorian Police Force that illustrate a fractious safety culture and a major organisational and ideological impediment to reducing workplace bullying. The Australian article ” OPI concedes failure against force’s culture” (only available to subscribers) states that: ‘The Office of Police Integrity has … Continue reading “Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management”
A recent article in Science about OHS inspections has gained considerable attention after Michael Blanding wrote about the findings in a Harvard Business School blog. According to the executive summary: “In a natural field experiment, researchers [ Associate Professor Michael W. Toffel and colleague David I. Levine] found that companies subject to random OSHA inspections … Continue reading “OHS inspections save businesses money”