Graham Winter is an Australian psychologist who was the chief psychologist for the Australian Olympic team and is now an author and business adviser. In August 2009 he has a book released entitled “The Man Who Cured the Performance Review”. SafetyAtWorkBlog managed to interview Graham last week about the book, stress and safety leadership. The … Continue reading “Leadership, stress and performance reviews – interview”
The largest Australian telecommunications company, Telstra, announced the release today of a new service for mobile telephones aimed at the business sector. Below are some excerpts from the media release: “Telstra launches new smartphone to power workforce productivity August 3, 2009 – Business professionals have a powerful new productivity tool at their disposal with the launch … Continue reading “Does a new mobile telephone equal productivity increases?”
Several OHS regulators in Australia, OHS professional associations and trade union have directories for OHS advisers. Most of them are in the traditional OHS areas of guarding, engineering, chemical safety….. Psychosocial issues such as work stress or workplace bullying haven’t featured as much. The Australian Psychological Society (APS) has a very good searchable directory for … Continue reading “Australia’s “Find a Psychologist” directory”
Managing workplace absenteeism often ignores the OHS issues that are integral to the issue. On 20 July 2009 the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development released its findings on the issue in its annual Absence Management Survey. The media statement identifies the reasons for short- and long-term absences. “The main causes of short-term absence are … Continue reading “Absence management data misses the OHS mark”
In the Sydney Morning Herald on 17 July 2009, Kirsty Needham reported “Total injuries rose by 2339 (2 per cent) to 142,542” The media release from the Minister, Joe Tripodi on 15 July pointed out that the injury rate actually fell by 2%. An important point for the article and an error that has already … Continue reading “Statistics traps and a soft “warning””
The Australian media has been abuzz over the last couple of days on several issues concerning violence. Attention increases whenever there is video involved and the latest film of a bashing in Melbourne in a Hungry Jack’s store in the early hours of 13 July 2009 is getting a considerable run. Most commentators are taking … Continue reading “Occupational violence in fast food restaurants and petrol stations”
A survey of graduates by GradConnection released on 15 July 2009 has important information for Australian companies and provides some optimism for the OHS profession and regulators. A dominant element of modern employment is work/life balance. In some disciplines this is taken as workplace flexibility. In terms of workplace safety, work/life balance is a euphemism … Continue reading “What the next generation of graduates wants”