Central Safety Group Melbourne

The OHS consultant's challenge

Occupational health and safety (OHS) seems to fluctuate between being simple and complex depending on who you talk to. The principles and values of safety are simple to understand, but can be complex to apply. Safety processes may seem complex, but their purpose and outcome appear simple and are widely understood.

Often our OHS conversations build from the simple. What do you want? What outcome are you looking for? Why do you want this? Has something happened to require change? Have you tried to improve OHS previously? Why did it fail or not proceed?

Such questions build a scope of works, a profile of the client and a context for the services and advice that you will be providing. Honest conversations make the rest of the process fairly simple to identify and write out.

Complexity does not often come from OHS, but from how a company must change to accommodate whatever level of safety and health the employer decides is appropriate. Here lies the challenge, the disruption and, yes, the cost.

Your advice may tell the client what they should do to meet their OHS aims, but not often tell them how to do. The “How” is the responsibility of the employer in consultation with the employees (and perhaps an OHS specialist, if necessary). We may help, but we should not do.

It is particularly useful to think about this as we enter the Christmas and holiday periods where unusual work-related activities occur, when people are often thinking about things other than work and when the usual level of resources can be lower.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

Where are the psychosocial safety regulations?

On the eve of National Safe Work Month, Victorians are justified in asking “Where the hell are the psychosocial safety regulations?”  

Over two years ago the Victorian Government was proud to be leading the pack of jurisdictions and various WorkSafes in promising amendments to the occupational health and safety (OHS) laws.  Now it is the last to introduce those amendments

In reality, those laws seem as far from introduction as ever.  The government has conducted two rounds of public consultations on the issue with the last ending early this year.  Since then WorkSafe representatives have pre-empted the inevitable question at their public appearances by saying, rightly, the “the laws are with the Minister” or “on the Minister’s desk”.  The delay is becoming negligent.

This delay is puzzling as the government had a major inquiry into Victoria’s Mental Health System and, although workplaces were on the periphery of consideration, there was an overlap.  The unions are in favour of psychosocial reform.  Business groups always argue against any new OHS regulations based on the spurious, rote reasons of increased cost of compliance.  But this whiney opposition is very weak when all other jurisdictions have resolved any concerns.  So why hasn’t Victoria?

It is highly likely that whatever draft regulatory amendments the government holds are out of date compared to the other States and Territories and a further cycle of consultation may be required.  All the while, workers are facing psychosocial hazards that their employers could be controlling.  Of course, employers should have been controlling these since the OHS duty of care in 1985, but many employers do not act on occupational hazards until they have to.  And in Victoria, they feel they don’t have to.

Remember this Minister’s delay on the elimination and management of psychosocial hazards at work, the next time any government representative says that “we give the safety of Victorians the highest priority”.  If that statement were true, the OHS laws would have been amended over 18 months ago and workers would have been safer.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

Executive Director leaves WorkSafe Victoria

Dr Narelle Beer has appeared regularly in SafetyAtWorkBlog articles. Her most recent public appearance was at the Australian Institute of Health and Safety national conference. No more is Dr Beer WorkSafe Victoria’s Executive Director Health and Safety.

In an email to WorkSafe staff, dated June 5 2024, CEO Joe Calafiore said:

“Narelle was appointed as our Executive Director, Health and Safety in 2021, bringing with her a wealth of expertise from her time in policing, both in Victoria and the Northern Territory. In her time at WorkSafe, Narelle has shown a genuine commitment to keeping Victorian workers safe and has been a passionate advocate for strong regulation that holds those who do not to account.

"On behalf of WorkSafe I thank Narelle for her contribution and wish her all the best for the future.

"With Narelle’s departure, and with the commencement of our new Executive Director of People and Culture Jane Barker in the near future, I have asked Sam Jenkin to lead the Health and Safety Business Unit for the next six months, starting today.”

I only ever met Dr Beer at her public appearances at conferences, seminars and other occupational health and safety events. I first saw her speaking at a lawyer’s breakfast seminar several years ago. Her presentation was a little uncertain, but it did not take long for her to become a polished public speaker to the extent that at last month’s national conference, her twenty-minute presentation was relaxed, confident and flawless.

Additional comment from Central Safety Group's Membership Co-ordinator:
We were honoured to have Dr Narelle Beer as special guest speaker for our 60th anniversary celebration at Parliament House in October 2022. At that time she committed to assisting CSG develop closer ties with WorkSafe Victoria and she was true to that promise.

WorkSafe Victoria is now one of our valued Corporate Members; they are represented at most of our events with several attendees and we have already had speakers from WorkSafe present to us. We join CEO Joe Calafiore in wishing Narelle every success in the future.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

The value of OHS conferences and trade shows

In May 2024, the Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) held its national conference in Melbourne. Day One consisted of two long seminars; Two and Three had the more traditional speaker/lecture format. Coinciding, and with a dotted commercial connection to the conference, was a trade show and exhibition, the Work Health and Safety Show. Both events had guest speakers, but one required a paid ticket and the other did not. What also distinguished each was that the conference selects its speakers through a mix of referrals, research, networking and speaker bureaus. The trade show primarily used exhibitors with some invited guests.

From what I saw, several of the psychosocial hazards sessions in the trade show had hundreds of attendees, with many standing in the aisles. The conference had around 500 delegates and one session directly on managing psychosocial hazards. I felt bad for the AIHS until an organisational psychology colleague at the trade show pointed out to me that some of the information provided there was outdated and incorrect.

Another difference between the two events was the quality control of the conference. The trade show offered opportunities to talk, present and promote, but that’s all it did. The conference was more cautious, and it is fair to take its information as more valid, because it selected its speakers.

The conference speakers were not all perfect. One I saw was atrocious and totally misread the audience. Some, as is a perennial risk with OHS conferences, were overly commercial and promotional even though the content was authoritative and valid.

So, which event offered more value? It is an unfair comparison, probably. Previous conferences have offered a much greater range of speakers, topics and themes. In some ways, the AIHS conference was a shell of its former, pre-covid self, but that seems to be the circumstance for all contemporary conferences. The Trade Show exposed a few new products, although apps and software seemed to dominate the exhibitors. If you needed OHS software, the trade show was good, but if your business is already locked into a software product, many exhibitors were irrelevant. The Trade Show speakers were okay within their own context. One panel on the construction industry and mental health with Professor Helen Lingard was very good. Lingard expanded on the research behind the topic much more in the conference.

The information provided during the conference was much more authoritative, with some speakers sparkling. I found Tanya Pelja of BGIS excellent. She presented several OHS initiatives that are only just starting in many Australian companies. She told us what worked for them.

If you can afford it, OHS conferences can offer good content. Trade Shows can offer new OHS things, gadgets and apps. A balance is available, but you must maintain scepticism and critical thinking in both event types.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

Reputational damage versus harm in the workplace

One of the consequences trotted out to justify occupational health and safety (OHS) management changes and initiatives is that an incident may result in damage to the company’s reputation or the social standing of the owner of the company or employer.

We have a legal system designed to identify whoever is to blame for the incident and allocate a penalty size, cost and type that a person would consider reasonable. However, the OHS legislation states that an employer MUST provide a safe and healthy work environment with an equivocation that the employer only has to do so as far as it is reasonably practicable.

Most of the community has accepted the punishment process of the legal system and, therefore, demands justice if workers are killed or injured. However, lawyers operate in a combative relationship where one aims to prove responsibility and the other aims to prove the innocence of the offender/employer or minimise the penalty that the Courts/judges allocate to the employer. There is an understanding that the outcome of this rigorous process will be fair and acceptable to most of the community. But this is how things operate in the abstract in OHS.

What this process seems to avoid, at least in the understanding of those outside the daily legal processes and institutions, is that employers do not always have the good or the health and safety of workers as their primary consideration, although our OHS legislation assumes employers are all and always good-hearted. Some employers are exploitative and do not always pay employees what they are worth. Workers may be contracted to work a certain number of hours each week for a certain amount of wages, but many employers do not enforce the contracted limit of hours, though they do enforce the amount of remuneration. Why should they, when workers “choose” to work for longer than they get paid, or longer than their health allows or longer than is tolerated by their families at home?

OHS would say that employers should enforce hours, because they are obliged to under the law to prevent physical and psychological harm, and unpaid overtime can generate mental ill health in those workers and increase the anxiety of relatives and families who rely on the workers' presence at home. Some employers claim that workers often choose to work longer than contracted to maximise their wages, to “provide for their family”, but wages usually remain at the same level, although some industries offer occasional overtime and special allowances.

One of the current challenges for OHS professionals and practitioners is to address psychosocial hazards at work, but perhaps a greater challenge is to understand the social elements of those hazards and of work more generally. It is necessary to consider the factors that contribute to work-related harm beyond those directly related to employment and take action to change those contributory factors. We should be asking questions such as:

• Why are some employers comfortable with creating hazardous working conditions and then minimising or denying their responsibility when the hazard generates an injury or a death?
• Where did the employers learn such values and attitudes?
• Why do those attitudes persist when there is abundant evidence of the benefits of change?
• Who should be calling out these attitudes and to whom?

Those OHS people who are tertiary qualified are likely to be familiar with the social determinants of health, but it is odd that we do not learn or discuss the social determinants of harm, of exploitation, of abuse, greed, disrespect and other relationships that we know harm workers and their families.

A core question we should all be asking is why workers are still dying at work from the same hazards that have always existed when, for almost 40 years in Victoria, employers have been required to provide working environments free from risks to the health and safety of workers. Something is fundamentally amiss and will not change until we start asking the right questions.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

Are wellbeing programs effective tools against psychosocial hazards?

Earlier this year, a significant UK research study sparked a wave of discussion on social media. The study's findings, which suggested that corporate wellbeing programs may not be as effective as previously thought, were met with both surprise and concern. While the research did indicate some positive outcomes from volunteering, it was unable to establish a clear link between corporate wellbeing programs and improved worker benefits.

The research findings triggered a range of reactions. Human Resources personnel and professionals, who had invested heavily in occupational wellbeing programs, expressed outrage, while many OHS individuals, who had long held suspicions about the effectiveness of such programs, found their concerns validated. This dichotomy of responses underscores the significance of the research and the potential implications for the future of corporate wellbeing.

Although many Australian jurisdictions have introduced a clear positive duty in their Work Health and Safety laws, the Victorian government is holding onto the set of laws that have been prepared for months and are sitting on the Minister’s desk.  This delay is prolonging the inevitable transition phase on laws that will require employers to prevent psychosocial hazards as far as is reasonably practicable.

Most Victorian employers remain confused about these new proposed obligations, preferring to wait until the laws appear before doing anything about psychosocial hazards.  This is regardless of their industry colleagues in other jurisdictions already being required to prevent psychosocial harm.  Those employers who are aware of these legislative changes, and they are very few, are often in denial.  To truly meet these new OHS obligations, they will likely need to change the way they work and the way they manage their workers, and this is frightening to many of them.

Of course, this OHS obligation to workers' mental health is not new. The psychological health of workers has been included in the OHS definition of health for many, many years in Victoria. It’s just that compliance was too hard; employers did not have the necessary tools, and they comfortably felt that their often expensive wellbeing programs were meeting the OHS law’s compliance standards. 

Wellbeing never did.  Wellbeing does not prevent harm, as the OHS laws require; it only helps manage it.  Wellbeing programs were comfortable and non-threatening.  Well, that sensation may be changing in Victoria, if, not when, the Minister puts the legislation to Parliament.  Don’t hold your breath.

Kevin Jones https://safetyatworkblog.com/

Emerging OHS challenges

We had a great turnout both online and in the room for the March presentation by Kevin Jones. He covered a range of topics in his usual thought-provoking manner. I think attendees appreciate his approach that doesn't always follow an expected line, and makes us explore the complexities of some of today's OHS challenges.

He talked about the recent WorkSafe awards night and how disappointing it was that psychosocial hazrds were missing as a focus. He also spoke about one of his bugbears: the value of wellbeing programs. In his opinion, it is more important to address systems of work than to offer employees short-term "feel good" options. He recently posted a snippet from The Australian newspaper on this topic on LinkedIn and it sparked a lengthy exchange of views.

Kevin shared his thoughts on the role of OHS advisors within organisations, that there should not be an automatic requirement that they be tertiary educated. After all, guidance from the Authority is supposed to be written so that a lay person can understand it, isn't it?

As always, Kevin is very well read and he reviewed some interesting new publications. These included a book about trouble-making, another on workplace ethics, and the recent book about the construction industry by Michelle Turner and Helen Lingard. Prof. Lingard gave us a presentation on changing OHS culture in construction in October last year. (Financial members can view it here.)

Kevin also alerted us to a free monthly magazine that is published by the European Trade Union Institute -when you subscribe, they post out a hard copy to you. The latest edition features the topic of climate change and workers.

The audience was certainly engaged and there was quite a deal of discussion after the presentation. Those of us in the room were still discussing some of the issues 15 minutes after the recording stopped. Such is the advantage of attending in person and networking face-to-face.

To re-visit Kevin's other presentations from past years, you can do a Search in the Speakers section of our website (log in first).

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Kevin Jones

Date & Time: Tuesday 12 March 2024, noon

CSG Hybrid Lunchtime Presentation ~via zoom or in the room

Speaker: Kevin Jones, Editor, SafetyAtWorkBlog

Topic: Emerging OHS challenges

Some of the hot topics in OHS at the moment are not directly about work health and safety. You can find out more on Tuesday 12 March 2024 when Kevin Jones will be discussing what’s new, what’s getting attention, and some of the latest and re-emerging challenges in OHS.

His talk will include comments, and recommendations of books on issues including work psychology; the management of time; suicide; troublemakers; corporate values and leadership.
The presentation will be followed by a question and discussion session.

About the speaker:

Kevin Jones is a consultant and advisor in a wide range of OHS projects.

He is internationally recognised for his commentary and analysis on safety-related matters in his popular award-winning SafetyAtWorkBlog (safetyatworkblog.com).

Kevin is a Life Member of Central Safety Group.

Event Flyer - Print version

Note: RSVP by close of business Monday 8 March 2024.  When booking, please ensure you select the March Event from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP.

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The hot topics of OHS today

You can always count on Kevin Jones to stimulate discussion about OHS, and his March presentation was no exception.

He started by talking about what he considers to be the 5 hot topics at the moment. One of those topics is working from home, which comes up against the prevailing approach of OHS systems that are based on "workplaces" rather than "work". This issue is linked to another of the hot topics, systems thinking, which Kevin believes tends to be very limited. In particular, during investgations the thinking can become bogged down in old systems and not open to the possibility of change.

Another topic that has been hot for quite a while is that of psychosocial hazards. Kevin had many interesting thoughts about these, including challenges with the traditional hierarchy of controls as well as the tendency for HR to see this as their patch rather than sharing a united front with OHS.

This led Kevin into a discussion of some of the books he's been reading lately on these various topics, and what an extensive reading list he presented to us. On the topic of psychosocial hazards, he started by talking about some books that are "shockers", mainly self-help books that put the onus on the person having difficulties to deal with it themselves, instead of tackling organisational aspects. Luckily there are publications about that do deal with the organisational side, and Kevin shared some of those with us.

It is impressive how well-read Kevin is, and it is not confined to published books alone. He also alerted us to an online research paper along with an interview on RN. The full list can be viewed here (log in first).

One of Kevin's key messages was that he encourages OHS practtioners to be less timid about speaking out, to be more visible and not be afraid to talk about politics. He invites us to join him on the May Day march to highlight the importance of safe jobs! As part of his message, he delved into some interesting ethical topics, including conflicts of interest with big consultancy firms; the profit versus  productivity motivation of business and individuals; and even talked about the UN's Sustainable Development Goals that include "decent work". OHS is a fundamental human right.

To learn more of Kevin's insights, you can also re-visit his presentation from February 2022 New perspectives on OHS (log in first).

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Kevin Jones

Date & Time: Wednesday 15 March 2023, noon
*Note: different day due to Monday public holiday

CSG Hybrid Lunchtime Presentation -via zoom or in person

Speaker: Kevin Jones, Editor, SafetyAtWorkBlog

Topic: The hot topics of OHS today

Some of the latest books on workplace OHS will be discussed by Kevin Jones in a lunchtime presentation on Wednesday 15 March. This is a chance to find out what’s new, what’s getting attention, and some of the fastest growing trends in OHS.

Kevin is internationally recognised for his commentary and analysis on safety-related matters and is involved in different areas of safety.....read more

Note: RSVP by close of business Tuesday 14 March 2023  When booking, please ensure you select the March Event from the dropdown list (shaded orange), to RSVP.

RSVP Here