Coming to the end of Australia’s school year, the government is going overboard with confronting advertisements for young people, be they related to work safety or binge drinking. At least the OHS regulators watched other regulators information campaign and reduced their costs by resisting promoting the same message in the same way to the same … Continue reading “When too many graphic ads is never enough”
On 29 October 2008, WorkSafe Alberta released a series of graphic workplace safety ads under the banner “BloodyLucky”. They are as confronting as the recent WorkSafe Victoria ads and raise many of the same questions about appropriateness, applicability and effectiveness. The website www.bloodylucky.ca has a cheesy format that doesn’t fit with the explicit nature of … Continue reading “The graphic workplace ads keep coming”
The Victorian Government’s workplace health strategy may be “coughing up blood” but health promotion continues. Last week, Australian health insurer, Medibank Private, released some statistics and cost estimates related to physical inactivity. According to the media release, physical inactivity costing the Australian economy $13.8 billion a year. The findings are based on research conducted in conjunction … Continue reading “Physical activity, mental health, alcohol consumption and productivity”
A Canadian OHS colleague has drawn attention to a younger worker safety site at http://www.youngworker.ca/en/flash/yw_2008.aspx. This is also a very good site and the humour is appreciated. Another colleague has said that the WorkSafe Victoria site captivated his teenagers for 30 minutes. The trick in commenting on any of these websites is that they are only … Continue reading “Young Worker Safety – Part 2”
At a recent safety conference in Australia, many presenters used videos downloaded from the internet, either to educate the audience or to titillate. The internet abounds with videos of people doing stupid things or injuring themselves. I am not beyond laughing at a man being hit in the testicles. Indeed most “family” movies currently have … Continue reading “Young Worker Safety – “The Pain Factory””
For many years OHS regulators have been concerned about the quality of advice that OHS experts have been providing to businesses in Australia. Some States have a regulated profession, others do not. Certainly there is no regime in Australia that compares to the “closed-shop” of Singapore. I have seen no evidence of bad OHS advice … Continue reading ““Suitably qualified” OHS professionals – who benefits?”
One of the most popular recent postings at SafetyAtWorkBlog has concerned the graphic ads aimed at young workers by WorkSafe Victoria. Last week a safety group meeting was told that WorkSafe focus groups of teenagers had said that to get the attention of young people on workplace safety, advertisements needed to be graphic and confrontational. … Continue reading “Unions question the targeting and success of graphic WorkSafe ads”