Occupational health and safety (OHS) is often about promises. Employees trust their bosses to provide them with a job and the employer promises to provide a workplace that is as safe as possible. There are also contractual policies which formalise OHS relationships between client and contractor. But OHS is more often about those more personal promises and expectations between the boss and the worker.
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Today, Siobhan McHale, Head of HR at Dulux posted a comment and video on LinkedIn about measuring cultural change. She introduces her post with:
“Can culture be measured? In my view it can and should be measured – in the same way as any other business activity that’s important to your success.”
The responses have been speedy and this conversation is likely to continue for sometime as McHale is monitoring the comments, some of which dispute McHale’s position.
In 2017 the Victorian Government reviewed and revised its
Earlier this week former chair of the Australian Government’s National Mental Health Commission, Allan Fels (pictured right) addressed a lunch hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. The topicality of his presentation stemmed from two major inquiries into mental health – one by the Federal Government and undertaken by the Productivity Commission (PC), the other is a Royal Commission from the Victorian Government. The breadth of the Terms of Reference (ToR) of the PC inquiry has generated a very broad level of interest across the social spectrum. The Royal Commission ToR are yet to be released.
Fels acknowledged the role that workplaces have in addressing mental health
This article is part two of an edited version of a keynote presentation I made at the a special WHS Inspectors Forum organised by WorkSafe Tasmania. The audience comprised inspectors from around Australia and New Zealand. I was asked to be provocative and challenging so posed some questions to the audience about how occupational health and safety (OHS) is managed, regulated and inspected.
The audio of the presentation is available at
One of the Commissioners of Australia’s Productivity Commission (PC), Julie Abramson, spoke briefly at a lunchtime seminar on Mental Health and the Economy, hosted by the Committee for Economic Development of Australia. It is very early in the PC’s inquiry into the role of improving mental health but Abramson was able to provide some draft timelines.
Abramson told the audience that the Presiding Commissioner on this inquiry
Some readers have asked for more information about the “Share Solutions” program mentioned in a previous article. The initiative started in 1988 but this article is based on the second edition from 1995.
In 1995, pre-internet, the precursor to WorkSafe Victoria, the Health and Safety Organisation Victoria produced a Share Solutions manual (with an unfortunate sex doll-like graphic). This hard copy folders included single page solutions to common workplace hazards. These solutions were submitted usually by those workers or Health and Safety Representatives who had developed a solution to a hazard particular to their workplace. The solutions were shared with the program participants with acknowledgement of the origin. Continue reading “Share Solutions could be resurrected”