Last week it was the Citi Safety Spotlight on ASX100, now it’s the Australian Council of Superannuation Investors (ACSI) with data on workplace safety and mental health of the S&P/ASX200. The good news is the ACSI report is publicly available for download. The bad news is that the report is very limited....
Australia’s Royal Commission into the Home Insulation Program (HIP) spent a great deal of time looking at the design of what started as an environmental initiative delivered in one way to an economic stimulus package delivered another way. The HIP, and the people working with it, struggled to accommodate these changes. A new book from … Continue reading “Book review: Business, Environment, and Society – Themes and Cases”
“Due diligence” is an established business management concept that only recently came to be applied to occupational health and safety (OHS) in Australia through the Work Health and Safety (WHS) harmonisation process. It’s credibility comes from the Corporations Act, principally, but also Consumer Protection and, partly, Environmental laws. The attention given by OHS/WHS professionals and …
It is very common to hear people say that the core motivation for introducing or improving workplace safety management is to cover one’s arse (to protect oneself from various legislative and reputational exposures), be that the collective arse of management, the board and executives or the arse of the individual worker. This is a fundamental …
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 …
On 16 August 2012, Australia’s Workplace Relations Minister, Bill Shorten, said in Parliament, in relation to new asbestos management initiatives, that” “On 14 March this year, in my first ministerial statement on workplace health and safety in this place, I said that every Australian who goes to work should return home safely. I know both sides of the House endorse this … Continue reading “Principled pragmatism – Human Rights included in OHS Due Diligence”
Early this century, according to a draft conference paper* in the SafetyAtWorkBlog archives, the late Eric Wigglesworth OAM posed the following question: “In addition to our basic human rights of freedom of speech and freedom of religion, should there also be freedom from injury as a basic human right?” The expectation of a safe and healthy work … Continue reading “Is safe work a basic, or fundamental, human right?”