Any professional sees elements of their profession in other walks of life. Police notice infringements when they are off duty. Teachers often continue to instruct or educate when outside of school. Journalist’s conversations with friends often contain pointed questions. Safety professionals, commonly, extend safety principles to their own behaviours and lives. This can sometimes lead … Continue reading “Strengthening safety decision-making”
On September 5 2012, the Tasmania Minister for Industrial Relations, David O’Byrne launched a new campaign to encourage businesses to prepare for new Work Health and Safety laws. The name of the campaign is “OH S…”. O’Byrne’s media release explains the campaign: “OH S… is the understandable gut reaction of any worker, manager or business … Continue reading “Shit safety campaign launched in Australia”
Occupational safety advice and incident investigations are peppered with the need to have an improved workplace culture. In some ways, workplace culture is another, and broader, way of saying of “system of work”, a concept that has existed in Australian OHS laws for a long time but never received the prominence of clarity it deserved. But how does one develop … Continue reading “Performance Management may be key to building a safe workplace culture”
There have been many calls in Australia for a national definition of workplace bullying. Apparently the definition below that has applied in OHS legislation for over ten years in Victoria is insufficient: “Repeated unreasonable behaviour directed toward a worker or group of workers that creates a risk to health and safety.” The definition above was the one used … Continue reading “Why all the arguing over a workplace bullying definition?”
Just before Christmas in 2009, Dr Yossi Berger speculated for an information network about the safety of quad bikes. He called it QuadWatch. Over two years later, on 13 July 2012, Australia’s Employment and Workplace Relations Minister Bill Shorten announced his own QuadWatch. In the 2009 Croaky Blog, Dr Berger suggested “a network could be called QuadWatch and it would become a clearing house … Continue reading “Australian Government moves on quad bike safety”
Next week Australia holds public hearings into the issue of workplace bullying. Currently the House Standing Committee on Education and Employment has not yet made any submissions publicly available which handicaps the value of the public hearings for observers but the Trade Unions have released their submissions. Generally, the suggestions for control measures are progressive … Continue reading “Public hearings into Workplace Bullying to commence in Australia”
There are two newspaper reports in Australia on 21 June 2012 about the Victorian Police Force that illustrate a fractious safety culture and a major organisational and ideological impediment to reducing workplace bullying. The Australian article ” OPI concedes failure against force’s culture” (only available to subscribers) states that: ‘The Office of Police Integrity has … Continue reading “Workplace bullying in the police force illustrates the challenges of change management”