Blog

As employers collect personal information from workers and workplace visitors to control the risks posed by the COVID-19 pandemic, they are being reminded that they must comply with relevant privacy laws. The Office of the Australian Information Commissioner (OAIC) has released guidance intended to help entities regulated by the Privacy Act 1988 (Cth) (Privacy Act)Read more

There is currently a shortage of disposable particulate respirators in Australia due to an increase in demand from health care workers and from the public and because many Chinese manufacturers have temporarily shut down. This is an issue for workplaces which require disposable respirators to protect workers from exposure to hazardous dust generated from variousRead more

WHS authorities across Australia undertook 230,054 workplace interventions, issued 46,472 notices for WHS breaches and finalised 289 legal proceedings between 2013-14 and 2016-17, resulting in $18.9 million in fines ordered by the courts, according to a recent Safe Work Australia report. It also found that the total expenditure for workers’ compensation schemes across Australia wasRead more

ISO 45001, the long-awaited international standard for occupational safety and health, was published in March 2018 following a five-year development process. It gives organisations of any size a universally accepted framework for improving employee health and safety. Tens of thousands of businesses around the globe are already certified to ISO 45001, and it’s expected thatRead more

Presented by Sarah O’Leary & Nigel Woodward What’s covered? Online Learning continues to be the most effective method of delivering organizational training and inductions. In fact, the latest figures from the ABS reveal Online Learning as the fastest growing method of work-related training, having increased from 12.8% in 2013 to 19.2% in 2017. In thisRead more

Today, information is spread at the touch of a button, and the modern public demand accountability and transparency. Rather than shy away from this, successful companies take advantage of it. Health and safety initiatives are used not only to avoid a bad reputation, but also to build a good one. The companies at the forefrontRead more

There are a number of common rationalisations which lead individuals to compromise their ethics in the business world, and this has important implications for OHS professionals and potential safety outcomes within organisations. Mary Gentile, an international expert on ethics in business and Professor of Practice at the University of Virginia Darden School of Business, saidRead more

Safe Work Australia has released four new reports, one of which shows WHS regulators are increasingly turning to infringement notices to tackle health and safety violations, and another that shows workers’ compensation claims and rates are continuing to fall. The Comparative Performance Monitoring report analyses trends in WHS and workers’ compensation scheme performance across AustraliaRead more

Typically, the benefits of health and safety systems are framed in terms of cost-avoidance. Organisations are constantly reminded that health and safety failure is expensive. And whilst this is certainly true, there are benefits to health and safety success that go beyond cost-avoidance. Today, successful organisations view safety as an asset, and health and safetyRead more

Over many years, a debate has gone on about concepts such as ‘Zero Harm’ in health and safety. Although the history and origins of Zero Harm are clearly about generating awareness – whereas a slogan it represents the critically important idea that no amount of harm is acceptable – those who have more literal interpretationsRead more