The personal and cultural factors in work addiction

Recently this blog wrote about an article on the news website of the Australian Broadcasting Corporation concerning burnout. One of the people interviewed for the article was Sally McGrath, who responded to a series of questions put to her to clarify some of the workplace mental health issues raised. SAWB: Did your three burnout experiences … Continue reading “The personal and cultural factors in work addiction”

More bravery is needed on workplace mental health

The bookshops I visit often have two sections of books marked Business and Management. These categories are interchangeable for occupational health and safety (OHS) purposes, but the shopowners and/or publishers differentiate. Both categories have self-help books – leadership varieties, how to be a better manager, how to make lots of money really quickly (without apparently …

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Action on Health and Safety is always a choice

Last week epidemiologist Hassan Vally wrote one article in The Age called either “Health or economy a false choice” or “COVID caution can be a win for both public health and business” (paywalled), depending on the sub-editor and format. Curiously one has a negative implication, the other, the opposite. Either way, the article illustrates the …

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Prohibition on Administrative Controls for psychological health at work

The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) and Herbert Smith Freehills (HSF) annual breakfast physically returned this month after a few years of enforced absence. It kept its traditional structure – speeches from the local OHS regulator WorkSafe Victoria, representatives from HSF and AIHS and a summary of a salary survey report focused on …

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Notifiable psych injuries may be what’s needed

Recently the Victorian Government proposed six-monthly reports on psychologically hazardous incidents from employers to the OHS regulator, WorkSafe. The aim is to improve the pool of data available to the government in order to tailor harm prevention and reduction initiatives and a red tape campaign from employers is expected. These incident summaries are not the …

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Reluctance to address mental health notifications

Another example of the unwillingness of occupational health and safety (OHS) regulators feeling able to affect change in workplace mental health by looking outside the workplace is the United Kingdom’s Health & Safety Executive (HSE). Sadly this position contributes to unnecessarily stigmatising a legitimate workplace hazard. On a recent episode of the Safety and Health …

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Job insecurity and OHS solutions

As well as featuring in a workplace psychology podcast Professor Tony LaMontagne spoke at the current Senate Select Committee on Job Security in Australia and made a submission that provides evidence of the connection between job insecurity and poor mental health. This strengthens the argument that the prevention of mental health at work (and maybe …

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