Improvements in safety and health at work are almost always begun after fatalities, catastrophes and scandals. This says much about the prominence of occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australian society. The latest industrial scandal is in the childcare industry. Non-compliance with safety requirements was exposed in March 2025, but now allegations of sexual abuse …
Recently, Australia’s politics were focused on an Economic Roundtable hosted by Treasurer Jim Chalmers. Chalmers sought proactive, low- or no-cost initiatives to improve Australia’s productivity. Occupational health and safety (OHS) is rarely, if ever, discussed at these national consultations. However, if we accept, as many believe, that OHS is unnecessary red tape, does this offer …
Earlier this week, the Institute for Safety Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) conducted a seminar called “Using Biopsychosocial Risk Profiling to Inform Claim Triage“. Workers’ compensation claims are not a focus for this blog, but attending events peripheral to one’s own discipline sometimes enlightens. There were a couple of moments when the occupational health and …
Last weekend, at the Victorian branch of the Australian Labour Party conference, delegates heard that the ability to work from home for part of the working week was so important and so good for workers and the economy that working from home should become a formal right. This coincided with a week of frothy outrage …
In November 2022, then-Sex Discrimination Commissioner Kate Jenkins explained why sexual harassment in Australian workplaces continues to happen. Basically, she said this was because the sex discrimination laws were reactive to a worker complaint and placed no duty on employers to prevent these types of incidents. But there is more to it than that, and …
It is clear from the emails I have received, as well as many of the comments on LinkedIn and other social media platforms, that the modern role of Employee Assistance Programs (EAPs) remains a contentious issue, as discussed below. One of the many issues, young workers’ perceptions of EAP, was addressed by Alena Titterton of …
Sometimes you need to stop what you’re doing and reflect. This could relate to life, work, values or more. I was invited to talk to the Central Safety Group (CSG) this week on “Challenging Mainstream OHS Views”, so I stopped, thought, and jotted down some personal opinions to discuss. It was a helpful exercise....
