When people mention safety, they are often really talking about risk. In a similar way, people talk about the absurdity of ‘elf ‘n’ safety when they actually mean public liability or food safety or HACCP. And when some professionals talk about risk management they mean minimising the cost to the employer or controlling reputational damage. …
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 …
Everyone wants clarity. We want the comfort of knowing we are doing the right thing or that we are meeting the targets we and others set. Workplace safety is no different but it has been complicated to an extent that clarity is unachievable and so uncertainty has come to dominate. Occupational health and safety (OHS) … Continue reading “Focus on Safety and compliance will come”
SafetyAtWorkBlog has written previously that the term “safety” seems to have fallen out of favour with some preferring terms such as “zero harm”. In November 2012 I wrote: “In some ways, “safety” has become an ineffective term, even a negative term in some areas. It is understandable that some companies and safety professionals would wish … Continue reading ““Safety” deserves to be supported not replaced or rephrased”
Recently a safety professional told me he was investigating an incident on a work site and asked his first question “What do you think caused the incident?” The response was “safety culture”. Of course the next question will always be “what do you mean by safety culture?” and in most cases at this point the … Continue reading “Where are the Codes for establishing a safety culture?”
In August-September 2012 a media release was circulated in Australia promoting an “…an Australian industry first – leading construction & mining workplace safety provider RIS offers to indemnify operators against non compliance prosecution.” This may be a first for RoofSafe Industrial Safety (RIS) but not for Australia. SafetyAtWorkBlog has reported on a smaller but similar system that … Continue reading “More safety indemnities offered but with similar limitations”
At the end of August 2012, Australia’s Minster for Workplace Relations, Bill Shorten, released a discussion paper on quad bike safety. The intention of the discussion paper is a: “…calls for submissions on potential improvements to quad bike safety to reduce the alarming rate of quad bike fatalities and injuries…. The comments received will be discussed … Continue reading “The Australian Government looks to apply “above-the-line” safety to quad bikes”