One of the first OHS trade exhibitions for 2011 in Australia starts today. Exhibitions like Safety In Action are the best opportunities for many health and safety professionals, representatives and students to update their product knowledge. It is usually here where one finds out about non-steel capped safety footwear, new fall harnesses or the latest … Continue reading “Is this how safety should be promoted?”
Rarely does SafetyAtWorkBlog recommend the purchase of books but Federation Press is offering 50% off any Willan Publishing titles through to 17 December 2010. For those unfamiliar with this publisher, below are some of the titles that are relevant to occupational health and safety: Safety Crimes by Steve Tombs and David Whyte Workplace Violence by … Continue reading “Half price psychosocial hazard books”
The recent conference of the American Society of Safety Engineers (ASSE) gave considerable attention to corporate social responsibility (CSR). It could be argued that this shows the ASSE is years behind many others but it could also be argued that CSR has a practical longevity in workplace safety that may have faded in other CSR … Continue reading “CSR and public health”
The Australian OHS regulators struggle each year to make their annual safety week events last beyond the nominated week, the events and the newspaper advertisements. Queensland’s Workplace Health & Safety (WHSQ) has released two short films focussing on workplace incidents. The McGuane film provides a chronology of Gavan McGuane going to work for 30 minutes and remaining in hospital … Continue reading “Powerful short OHS films and long-term safety promotion”
Professor Tony LaMontagne is an Australian researcher and academic whose work always deserves careful consideration. LaMontagne has been mentioned several times in SafetyAtWorkBlog. The significance of his work is that it is not centred on occupational health and safety but has a major relevance nevertheless. On the eve of Victoria’s Mental Health Week, LaMontagne has … Continue reading “Mental health research broadens the workplace context”
If further information about the increasing inter-relationships between psychosocial health and physical health, organisational culture and a worker’s mental health was needed, a new study from Sweden provides convincing evidence. The research, a study of 81 research projects into the links between psychosocial factors and musculoskeletal disorders, was reported in by Eurofound on 10 September 2010. It found, among other … Continue reading “Safety begins to converge to focus on the individual”
Most safety professionals can tell stories about how workplace injuries are hidden so that bonuses or rewards are still distributed even though they are not warranted. Most of these examples are at the shop-floor level where rewards, although much anticipated, are minor – first aid kits, movie tickets, sometimes money – and where peer pressure can be quite … Continue reading “UK case exposes the hypocrisy of leadership commitment”