WorkSafe Victoria recently released a guideline, or clarification, on what it considers to be the issues surrounding “employing or engaging suitably qualified persons to provide health and safety advice“. SafetyAtWorkBlog remains to be convinced that such a process will lead to better safety outcomes in the small to medium-sized enterprises at which this program is … Continue reading “The insidiousness of “reasonably practicable””
The Western Australian government has released its latest statistics on workplace fatalities. The good thing, if there can be such a thing, is that the statistics are over ten years which is longer than most reporting and provide a promising trendline. As the report states “The data used to produce this report differs from reports … Continue reading “New Western Australian Workplace Fatality Data”
SafetyAtWorkBlog has always been critical of those OHS professionals who try to explain OHS in comparison with driving. They are different processes in different environments with different purposes and different rules. However, there is a section of overlap and this relates to those whose work environment is transport and driving. Worksafe Victoria has released a … Continue reading “Safe Driving and OHS management impacts”
Coming to the end of Australia’s school year, the government is going overboard with confronting advertisements for young people, be they related to work safety or binge drinking. At least the OHS regulators watched other regulators information campaign and reduced their costs by resisting promoting the same message in the same way to the same … Continue reading “When too many graphic ads is never enough”
Australian worksites have established a system of red, green or blue cards that are used to indicate a level of OHS competence on a range of worksites. This type of system is reflected around the world in different industries and different forms, such as Safety Passports, or the green card in Canada and the United … Continue reading “Competent safety professionals”
On 29 October 2008, WorkSafe Alberta released a series of graphic workplace safety ads under the banner “BloodyLucky”. They are as confronting as the recent WorkSafe Victoria ads and raise many of the same questions about appropriateness, applicability and effectiveness. The website www.bloodylucky.ca has a cheesy format that doesn’t fit with the explicit nature of … Continue reading “The graphic workplace ads keep coming”
At the risk of increasing a young person’s infamy, SafetyAtWorkBlog draws your attention to a (former) YouTube video of a young forklift driver misusing a forklift. According to a WorkSafe media release: Dangerous forklift driving has cost a young worker his job, his forklift licence and earned him 50 hours of community work and an … Continue reading “Dangerous Forklift Behaviour”