SafetyAtWorkBlog

This morning I attended the launch of a white paper about Shared Values and mental health and was able to grab five minutes with the CEO of the Shared Values Project, Helen Steel.

Episode 12 involves a conversation with Glen Poole, the CEO of the Australian Men's Health Forum while at the Australian Labor Party's National Conference in Adelaide on December 16 2018. We discuss the importance of men's health and the relevance of the workplace in generating and managing workplace mental health

This episode is part 2 of my keynote presentation at the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities Inspectors forum in Tasmania recently. This podcast is an edited version of the second half of that presentation. This time I discuss the “primary duty of care”, the role of unions, the new work structures, Industrial manslaughter laws, the need to operate in a coordinated cooperative method across disciplines and organisations, notifiable psychological incidents and supply chains

Recently I was invited to provide a non-regulatory perspective and to be challenging and provocative at a conference in Tasmania. It was organised by WorkSafe Tasmania as part of the efforts by the Heads of Workplace Safety Authorities to strengthen the connections between workplace health and safety inspectors throughout Australia and New Zealand. This podcast is an edited version of the first half of that presentation in which I talk about a little bit of business bullshit, resilience, the down side of “as far as is reasonably practicable” and psychological harm, and how this may affect the role of the Inspector.

Recently a group of workplace health and safety professionals organised a one day conference in Christchurch New Zealand. This event evolved from a LinkedIn group established only a few years ago. I attended the conference and found 10 minutes to talk with the main organiser of the conference, Matt Jones.

Kevin Jones, editor of the SafetyAtWorkBlog, interviews safety professional and international conference speaker Eldeen Pozniak.

This weekend is the International Workers Memorial Day. It is highly likely that the issue of Industrial Manslaughter laws will be raised as part of a trade union campaign. Dr Gerry Ayres, the OHS&E Manager of one of the branches of the CFMEU, features in an online petition about these laws and it seemed the right time to interview Dr Ayres about these laws but also about workplace health and safety enforcement and practices more generally.

In mid-March 2018 I was invited to speak at the inaugural NSW Regional Safety Conference & Expo in Newcastle, New South Wales. Once the conference had ended and prior to the Hunter Safety Awards event that night, I was able to talk with Sarah-Jane Dunford, the organizer of the events and the Director of the Riskology consultancy firm.

Episode 5 contains a chat with safety lawyer and partner with Clyde & Co, Alena Titterton. The conversation touches on safety issues like industrial manslaughter, dealing with police at an incident, certification to safety standards, safety in procurement, and small business. Alena is a refreshing safety voice from Australia.

This episode of Safety At Work Talks contains another interview with Professor Sidney Dekker, this time about his new book "The Safety Anarchist". This episode includes discussions about governance, risk assessment, the safety profession, bureaucracy, centralisation and the cost of compliance.

With this episode of Safety At Work Talks I return to the sequence of interviews with Professor Sidney Dekker. In April 2017, Dekker published a book called The End of Heaven which discusses suffering. This book has a very different tone from his previous books and intrigued me. The breadth of the discussion was also surprising with concepts and references rarely talked about in relation to occuaptional healh and safety, such as morality, Acts of God, Train disasters and the Bible. A review of the book from July is available at the SafetyAtWorkBlog - https://safetyatworkblog.com/2017/07/26/get-tickled-by-sidney-dekker/

SafetyAtWorkBlog's first attempt at podcasting was over a decade ago. Many of those archived audio files still hold some interest in showing how workplace safety approaches have changed, or not, over that time. This archive program is from 2006 and contains an exclusive interview with Dr Jukka Takala who had recently been appointed head of the Occupational Safety and Health Agency of the European Union. In 2017 he is working with Singapore’s Ministry of Manpower.

This first Safety At Work Talks episode is the first of a series of exclusive interviews with Professor Sidney Dekker about his work, his research and his writings. Dekker talks about his new Safety Differently documentary and how it came about. Safety At Work Talks complements the award-winning Safety At Work Blog with exclusive interviews with prominent and interesting safety people. A new episode will be posted every few weeks.