The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (formerly the Safety Institute of Australia) recently launched an Artificial Intelligence tool for the institute’s members to access its extensive data sources. I posed SPARK a couple of questions to evaluate its effectiveness. According to the September 25 2024 media release: “The “Safety Professional Assistant and Resource Knowledge-Base” …
Is it reasonable to apply the findings of a coronial inquiry into a theme park disaster to a “low-risk” administrative office environment? Well, one occupational health and safety management system (OHSMS) is much like another. Administrative and office work environments are much less likely to experience work-related traumatic deaths as there are few unguarded conveyor belts …
There are two common approaches to addressing and preventing psychosocial hazards at work. One is to consider these hazards as originating within and affecting only workers and work processes. This looks at the hazards generated by work that affect work and downplays or dismisses factors from outside work. The other is to acknowledge that work …
Most submissions to the inquiry into Sentencing Occupational Health and Safety Offences in Victoria are now publicly available. They raise a lot of different issues and some grumbles even though the Sentencing Advisory Council provided some structure to the topics it wanted addressed. A major purpose of any penalty is to deter harmful and damaging actions from being repeated. …
Work health and safety is a fundamental human right. Last year, I asked “so what?” Australia is strengthening the relevance of this international human right at the local level, but you wouldn’t notice unless you looked hard. The federal government’s Joint Standing Committee on Treaties has been receiving public submissions on the ratification of ILO …
Many people are promoting various tools, usually apps, for identifying and managing psychosocial hazards at work. Some experts in the field of organisational psychology are cool on these tools, others are dismissive of poorly designed tools promoted by rent-seekers, others promote free tools, and some say that all the information required is already available if …
New South Wales is the latest Australian jurisdiction to introduce a penalty for Industrial Manslaughter (IM) in its occupational health and safety (OHS) laws. One of the primary aims of significant penalties like IM is to deter others from making similar negligent decisions related to workplace health and safety. But deterrence is a fickle beast....
