Mental health and burnout are workplace hazards with which many companies and workers are struggling. No matter what international or national organisations say about the hazard, it remains difficult to implement positive change at the workplace level. It is not helped by mainstream media articles that claim to prevent burnout and then provide very little …
On January 30 2020, the Victorian Trades Hall released a new “approved safety standard” on air quality risks for outdoor workers. It is the latest of a series of alerts and guidelines generated by the persistence of bushfire smoke in urban areas of, especially, New South Wales and Victoria. Bushfire smoke is only going to …
On January 23 2020, WorkSafe ACT released a curious safety alert. It was not about scaffolding, bushfire smoke, PPE, but about “safety systems on worksites”. It was not about things but about process....
SafetyAtWorkBlog reader Tony wrote a long comment on safety footwear in response to a blog article from 2016. The comment deserves its own post, below. Hi Kevin – arriving at this conversation incredibly late (though ‘better late than never’, as I believe someone once intoned), but there’s a decent reason I’m now invested in the …
It’s been a while since SafetyAtWorkBlog offered a profile on one of its subscribers. Wade Needham was generous enough to answer some questions about himself. His responses are intriguing and he provides excellents links to other resources. If you are a SafetyAtWorkBlog subscriber and would like to follow Wade’s lead, email your responses to the … Continue reading “OHS and Wade Needham”
The following article is reproduced from the excellent academic communication website The Conversation, and is written by Elizabeth Shi, a Senior Lecturer, in RMIT University‘s Graduate School of Business and Law. The article is a very useful contribution to managing the risks of working in smokey environments but is only one contribution to a discussion … Continue reading “What employers need to know: the legal risk of asking staff to work in smokey air”
Safe Work Australia (SWA) has reminded Australian businesses that they have a formal occupational health and safety (OHS) responsibility for workers exposed to poor air quality. Its guidance provides sound risk considerations for outdoor workers and their managers, but needs further explanation to help businesses reduce the risk in a practical sense....