Flogging the banks could help safety

Australia’s Royal Commission into banking and financial services is a few months in and the evidence provided of wrongdoing is so substantial that those who were critical of the need for such an investigation are admitting they were wrong. SafetyAtWorkBlog is applying the logic that occupational health and safety (OHS) succeeds best when it is …

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Concerns over ISO45001 voiced but no details provided

The publication date for the first truly international Standard on occupational health and safety (OHS) management systems, ISO45001, the rhetoric is heating up in Australia. ISO45001 is due for publication on March 12 2018. Three days before the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) released...

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How will “independent workplace facilitators” improve OHS?

Every government releases a great deal of information, particularly around budget time and occupational health and safety (OHS) funding often gets missed in the overviews and media discussion.  The Victorian Government’s budget papers (Budget Paper No. 3 – Service Delivery) for 2017 included A$3 million to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for “Addressing … Continue reading “How will “independent workplace facilitators” improve OHS?”

Ads for quadbikes show the safety changes

As a companion piece to SafetyAtWorkBlog’s recent article on quad bike safety it is worth looking at the latest hardcopy edition of The Weekly Times, an influential agricultural newspaper in Australia.  It is useful to look at how quad bikes are being depicted in the advertising and some of the content, as online versions have …

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CEO-speak and safety culture – losing track of what matters most

The BP Deepwater Horizon disaster has faded to become another safety leadership failure to be discussed in the OHS and risk management courses but some new research ($ paywall) in Critical Perspectives on Accounting provides a fresh perspective on BP’s safety culture and leadership prior to the major disaster by deconstructing the speeches of the …

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Citi’s 2015 Safety Spotlight shines light on some OHS areas

[This article from 2015 was previously password-protected and is now available to all] Recently a couple of media outlets referred to a report produced by Citi into workplace safety issues related to the top 100 companies on the Australian stock exchange.  The report, “Safety Spotlight: ASX100 Companies & More” (not available online), provides a useful …

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National OHS performance indicators needed

Since the release of the 2015 Citi report into the occupational health and safety (OHS) performance of the companies in the ASX200 stick exchange rankings, this blog has received many requests for a copy of the report to assist in the benchmarking of performance. Clearly performance indicators for OHS remain contentious and difficult but this … Continue reading “National OHS performance indicators needed”