Central Safety Group Melbourne

Victorian Trades Hall Council

HSR Conference 2024

This year's HSR Conference will be held on Tuesday 22 October, 8:30am - 2:45pm. The topic is OHS Skills for Active HSRs. 

This is a free event and is a WorkSafe Victoria approved course of training under s69 of the Victoria OHS Act 2004. This means that HSR's are legally entitled to attend the conference on paid time. However, you must give your employer at least 14 days’ notice of your intention to attend in order to ensure that you receive paid leave. This means that you must notify your employer by COB Monday October 7.

The venues for 2024 are:
Melbourne at the Melbourne Convention and Exhibition Centre at 1 Convention Centre Pl, South Wharf.
Bendigo at Bendigo Trades Hall, 34-40 View Street, Bendigo.
Morwell at the Italian Australian Sporting Club, 499-501 Princes Drive, Morwell.
Wangaratta at the The Gateway, 29-37 Ryley Street, Wangaratta.
Warrnambool at Lady Bay Hotel, 2 Pertobe Road, Warrnambool.

Conference Program

8:00am
Doors open. Get your name ticked off and pick up your conference bag. Coffee and tea will be available.

8:30am - Session 1
Luke Hilakari, Secretary VTHC
The Hon. Danny Pearson MP, Minister for WorkSafe
Joe Calafiore, CEO WorkSafe

9:20am - Dr Lisa Heap
Dr Lisa Heap is a labour lawyer and a researcher with a keen focus on work health sand safety, regulation of work and gender inequalities. She'll be talking to us about OHS skills that can be applied in workplaces.

10:00am - Morning tea

10:30am - Session 2
We'll be hearing from 3 HSRs from a variety of industries. They'll share their stories of the skills, resources and tools they used to make their workplaces safer.

11:25am Breakout Session 1
In the first session, we'll have an opportunity to debrief the preceding sessions and recap some of the key rights and powers HSRs enjoy to better enable them to be active HSRs and represent their DWGs to establish controls. There will be plenty of opportunity for questions and discussion.

12:15pm - Lunch

1:15pm - Breakout Session 2
Building on first session, we will have an opportunity to reflect HSRs' own workplaces and the type of skills they can use, before moving on to discussion.

2:45pm - Certificate Collection
Certificates of Attendance will be available for collection in the foyer.

For more information & to register, click here

What’s new in ergonomics – here and overseas

The softly-spoken, widely-experienced David Caple is like the Obi Wan Kenobi of ergonomics, on whose every word we hang as he imparts his wisdom and guidance. This month's presentation covered a range of topics that highlighted his wealth of knowledge and experience and, indeed, why his expertise is sought after all over the world. 

Just back from the International Ergonomics Association (IEA) Congress in Korea, David gave a snapshot of the main topics of interest. He also recommended the IEA's series of Ergonomic Checkpoints publications, available freely on their website. Delegates gave great feedback on them, appreciating the simple case studies.

There you will also find a new publication Giving your business the human factors edge… Making it Happen! David is a co-author alongside Karen Lange-Morales (Colombia) and Andrew S. Imada (USA). This is aimed at line managers and supervisors.

David shared some case studies of his own, one to do with MSD issues related to large paint cans; the other concerned design of safe frontline staff environments. There is such a balancing act required when designing counters, for instance, and he showed us some of the pitfalls in this area. Screens are another contentious issue. In all cases, he recommends using prototypes before launching into changing design as this allows the people using the equipment to test it and provide feedback.

David briefly mentioned some innovation at the Department of Justice, which piqued our interest, and we are already looking at making that a topic for one of our events next year.

Financial members can access all of David Caple's previous presentations in our CSG archives. Once logged in, click on the Speakers tab on the banner at the top of the page, then type in "David Caple" in the Search box.

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