In July 22 2014 Dr. Dave Sharar, Managing Director of Chestnut Global Health, stated: “Business leaders here and abroad are starting to understand the need for systematic, scientifically proven approaches in alleviating the behaviors and conditions that compromise employee performance. Managing the stress and the counterproductive behaviors that often result, is critical — but the key to …
Paul Breslin caused a stir in Australia’s OHS sector in 2013 with his costing of one element of managing high risk workplaces, the Safe Work Method Statement (SWMS). In 2014, an update of Breslin’s research was published in The Australian and New Zealand Journal of Health, Safety and Environment (only available through subscription), in which …
Ministerial responsibility seems to be advantageous in financial policies but irrelevant to workplace safety going by actions by Australia’s political leaders. This week former senior (Labor) parliamentarians, Mark Arbib, Peter Garrett, Greg Combet and Kevin Rudd, will be fronting the Royal Commission into Home Insulation to explain their lack of due diligence on workplace safety matters. This …
A short time ago the International Workers Memorial Day commemoration in Melbourne, Victoria, concluded. The ceremony was less sombre than in previous years with, it seemed, fewer families and relatives of deceased workers. Certainly there was no speech from a family member, nothing from workplace safety advocates other than the three trade union speakers, Meredith Peace, Brian … Continue reading “Red tape (again) and Obama’s support – Melbourne’s Workers’ Memorial Day 2014”
Richard Johnstone is always worth reading as he writes perceptively about occupational health and safety (OHS) and its enforcement. The new book from Baywood Publishing “Safety or Profit” provides a chapter by Johnstone that argues: “…that despite the rhetoric of stronger enforcement and more robust prosecution, the dominant ideology of work health and safety enforcement …
It is rare for workplace safety to gain a half-page in the daily press in Australia but this occurred recently in The Australian. The newspaper’s industrial editor, Ewin Hannan, built an article, “Tunnel Vision on Safety“, around the following quote from a leaked memo from 2010 then head of human resources, industrial relations and safety … Continue reading “Safety in the C Suite doesn’t always run smoothly”
Defining safety culture is still a tricky proposition. Definitions can vary from what Global Safety Index quotes: ‘the product of individual and group values, attitudes and beliefs, competencies and patterns of behaviour that determine the commitment to, and the style and proficiency of, an organisation’s health and safety management’. to the, arguably more functional, definition … Continue reading “Measuring a safety culture”