It has taken some time for an Australian to produce an affordable book on managing psychosocial hazards in the workplace. I have reservations about The Science of Happy Employees, self-published by Dr Brenda Jamnik. It is not the book I would write if I ever got off my arse to write one, but it seems …
What do Safe Work Australia (SWA) executives do outside National Safe Work Month? Several times each year, they appear before Senate committees. Recently, SWA’s CEO Marie Boland, Sinead McHugh, and Katherine Taylor spoke at a Senate Inquiry into the Digital Transformation of Workplaces....
On the afternoon of Friday, August 1, 2024, Safe Work Australia (SWA) announced important changes to the incident notification obligations in Australia’s Model Work Health and Safety laws. These changes are particularly relevant to the issues of psychological harm in workplaces and work-related suicides. I asked SWA for some clarifications on the changes and the …
There is a new book about psychological safety for organisations. Many have been published over the last twenty years, but the climate, at least, in Australia has changed. Psychological safety is now part of a broader and more inclusive concept – Psychosocial Safety – but many psychologists have not yet caught up, or are in …
Lately I have been thinking a lot about Leadership and how it dominates, and unchallenged, how occupational health and safety is managed in Australia. Of the three OHS/business books I bought this week, one included a page about Leadership and how we should move away from it....
The increased interest in preventing and managing psychosocial hazards at work should draw more attention to a service that many employers rely on to handle this issue: Employee Assistance Providers (EAPs). Recently, The Age newspaper ran an article called “Employers spruik workplace wellbeing services. But who is picking up the phone?” (paywalled). The hard copy …
Recently, Sydney, Australia, experienced the inaugural Psych Health and Safety conference managed by Flourishdx, a prominent Australian consultancy that identifies and helps companies manage psychosocial hazards at work. There were around 400 delegates in person and online. The conference was a gamble for Flourishdx, and it largely paid off, but contrary to some of the …
