Search Results for: Andrew Hopkins

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Where are the safety profession thinkers?

The most successful safety management improvements come from a multi-disciplinary approach. The biggest leaps in safety management have come not from the established safety academic profession of engineering but from those outside that discipline – sociologists (Andrew Hopkins) , psychologists (James Reason)  and, increasingly, philosophers. Recently philosopher Alain de Botton  was interviewed in the Australian magazine, … Continue reading “Where are the safety profession thinkers?”

New Tooma OHS book augurs well for the rest of the series on due diligence

Tooma is a leading figure in Australia’s analysis and application of occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.  He has also been a regular author for publisher CCH.  His latest book on workplace health and safety is entitled “Due Diligence: Duty of Officers”.  The process for harmonisation of OHS laws in Australia continues to be a … Continue reading “New Tooma OHS book augurs well for the rest of the series on due diligence”

Managerial OHS walk-arounds and D&O liabilities

The latest edition of The National Research Centre for Occupational Health and Safety Regulation’s newsletter lists two new working papers, one from Andrew Hopkins and one from Neil Foster.  Both should be obligatory reading. Hopkins discusses how to increase the value of the “management walk-arounds” an increasingly common key performance indicator for senior executives.  Hopkins, … Continue reading “Managerial OHS walk-arounds and D&O liabilities”

The Asphyxiation of OHS

Good OHS thinking and practice are being slowly asphyxiated.  By far most suggestions by workers, unions or good consultants for Health & Safety improvements are ‘choked’ by management naysayers and bureaucrats more in touch with their current minister’s moods than workplace reality.  Not choked immediately or blatantly.   In fact, that person may be patted on … Continue reading “The Asphyxiation of OHS”

Is capitalism anti-safety? Systemic failures in oil industry

The Wall Street Journal and other media around the world have reported on systemic failures of the global oil industry and government regulators identified by the National Commission on the BP Deepwater Horizon Oil Spill and Offshore Drilling.  These articles are based on the release of a single chapter, Chapter 4, of the final report due … Continue reading “Is capitalism anti-safety? Systemic failures in oil industry”

How much significant information do workplace fatalities provide?

Workplace fatalities are terrible, lingering tragedies that generally don’t teach anything new about OHS failures.  I couldn’t find anything new in the frightening detail in the article below (dated 14th December 2010) or in scores of Google searches of industrial/occupational fatalities; though disease fatality epidemiology can be  informative. If all workplace fatalities in Australia were … Continue reading “How much significant information do workplace fatalities provide?”

2010 in review – SafetyAtWorkBlog

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health: The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Wow. Crunchy numbers The Louvre Museum has 8.5 million visitors per year. This blog was viewed about 160,000 times in 2010. If it were an exhibit at … Continue reading “2010 in review – SafetyAtWorkBlog”