Australian lawyer Michael Tooma is always worth listening to, and he recently participated in a webinar titled “When AI Watches Work: Monitoring Workers and Psychosocial Risks!” hosted by the Global Initiative for Industrial Safety. Tooma reinforced warnings about overreliance on artificial intelligence (AI) in occupational health and safety....
It still surprises me that treating work‑related mental harm as something prevented through job design, rather than as a personal failing, is seen as a revelation. Humans are infinitely variable, if not from genetics, then from our socialisation. Humans may still be considered as little more than interchangeable parts in a production process, but only …
In 2000, Graeme Cowan‘s world collapsed after the “dot-com crash“, leading to an attempt to end his own life. His new book, “Great Leaders Care: Developing Safe, Resilient and Successful Teams“, is an analysis of the consequences of those times and the tools he discovered to stabilise his mental health. There are two clues to …
A hugely popular radio show in Australia, hosted by Kyle Sandilands and Jackie O (Henderson), has been offensive for a long time, but offence can also be entertaining and economically lucrative. Last month, the host clashed on air, resulting in Jackie O leaving. Now there is legal action on several fronts, and psychological health and …
Every company seems to have a Mission Statement, a Values Statement, or something similar that all employees are expected to follow and comply with. Largely, these are aspirational statements, but they are sometimes invoked when/if an employee needs to be disciplined or dismissed. The values are often vague and lend themselves to various interpretations, even …
Discussions about “the human condition” rarely make it into board papers or safety strategies, yet they sit underneath almost every modern workplace challenge. Whether we’re talking about psychosocial hazards, insecure work, presenteeism, or the slow cultural erosion that comes from constant restructuring, the through‑line is unmistakable: work is a profoundly human activity, and when we …
Harvard Business Review (HBR) is an active publisher of articles on business management. In 2024, it released a collection of essays on psychological safety as part of its Emotional Intelligence series. HBR’s psychological safety advice is written for a U.S. corporate audience. It largely ignores the legislative duties that shape psychosocial risk management in Australia, …
