• Skip to primary navigation
  • Skip to main content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
  • Skip to footer

Safety Risk .net

Humanising Safety and Embracing Real Risk

  • Home
    • About
      • Privacy Policy
      • Contact
  • FREE RESOURCES
    • FREE SAFETY eBOOKS
    • FREE DOWNLOADS
    • TOP 50
    • FREE RISK ASSESSMENT FORMS
    • Find a Safety Consultant
    • Free Safety Program Documents
    • Psychology Of Safety
    • Safety Ideas That Work
    • HEALTH and SAFETY MANUALS
    • FREE SAFE WORK METHOD STATEMENT RESOURCES
    • Whats New In Safety
    • FUN SAFETY STUFF
    • Health and Safety Training
    • SAFETY COURSES
    • Safety Training Needs Analysis and Matrix
    • Top 20 Safety Books
    • This Toaster Is Hot
    • Free Covid-19 Toolbox Talks
    • Download Page – Please Be Patient With Larger Files…….
    • SAFETY IMAGES, Photos, Unsafe Pictures and Funny Fails
    • How to Calculate TRIFR, LTIFR and Other Health and Safety Indicators
    • Download Safety Moments from Human Resources Secretariat
  • PSYCHOLOGY OF SAFETY & RISK
    • Safety Psychology Terminology
    • Some Basics on Social Psychology & Risk
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk – Prof Karl E. Weick
    • The Psychology of Leadership in Risk
    • Conducting a Psychology and Culture Safety Walk
    • The Psychology of Conversion – 20 Tips to get Started
    • Understanding The Social Psychology of Risk And Safety
    • Psychology and safety
    • The Psychology of Safety
    • Hot Toaster
    • TALKING RISK VIDEOS
    • WHAT IS SAFETY
    • THE HOT TOASTER
    • THE ZERO HARM DEBATE
    • SEMIOTICS
    • LEADERSHIP
  • Covid-19
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Covid-19 Returning to Work Inductions, Transitioning, Safety Start Up and Re Entry Plans
    • Covid-19 Work from Home Safety Checklists and Risk Assessments
    • The Hierarchy of Control and Covid-19
    • Why Safety Loves Covid-19
    • Covid-19, Cricket and Lessons in Safety
    • The Covid-19 Lesson
    • Safety has this Covid-19 thing sorted
    • The Heart of Wisdom at Covid Time
    • How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?
    • The Semiotics of COVID-19 and the Social Amplification of Risk
    • Working From Home Health and Safety Tips – Covid-19
    • Covid-19 and the Hierarchy of Control
  • Dr Rob Long Posts
    • Learning Styles Matter
    • There is no HIERARCHY of Controls
    • Scaffolding, Readiness and ZPD in Learning
    • What Can Safety Learn From Playschool?
    • Presentation Tips for Safety People
    • Dialogue Do’s and Don’ts
    • It’s Only a Symbol
    • Ten Cautions About Safety Checklists
    • Zero is Unethical
    • First Report on Zero Survey
    • There is No Objectivity, Deal With it!
  • Quotes & Slogans
    • Researchers Reveal the Top 10 Most Effective Safety Slogans Of All Time
    • When Slogans Don’t Work
    • 77 OF THE MOST CLASSIC, FAMOUS and INFAMOUS SAFETY QUOTES
    • 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
    • 167 CATCHY and FUNNY SAFETY SLOGANS FOR THE WORKPLACE
    • COVID-19 (Coronavirus, Omicron) Health and Safety Slogans and Quotes for the Workplace
    • Safety Acronyms
    • You know Where You Can Stick Your Safety Slogans
    • Sayings, Slogans, Aphorisms and the Discourse of Simple
    • Spanish Safety Slogans – Consignas de seguridad
    • Safety Slogans List
    • Road Safety Slogans
    • How to write your own safety slogans
    • Why Are Safety Slogans Important
    • Safety Slogans Don’t Save Lives
    • 40 Free Safety Slogans For the Workplace
    • Safety Slogans for Work
You are here: Home / Risk Management / OHS Challenges in Australia

OHS Challenges in Australia

September 11, 2013 by Admin 3 Comments

OHS Challenges in Australia

This is one of the best safety papers I have read for a long, long time and TOTALLY RELEVANT ANYWHERE ELSE IN THE WORLD. Its Author, George Robotham  admits to having a healthy dis-respect for many common approaches to OHS Management and OHS Training – and he backs up his philosophies brilliantly in this article. I guarantee, after downloading and reading this article, that you will also want to challenge the way things have always been done. ENJOY!  DOWNLOAD THE FULL PAPER HERE: [Download not found]

This paper explores the author’s beliefs about the Occupational Health & Safety (OHS) challenges facing Australia in 2011. Through a process of critical reflection on the theory he has been exposed to and his practical experiences, the author explains what he considers are the major obstacles to safety progress in Australia. His major conclusion is that there is an urgent need for a National, Class 1 personal damage occurrence (“accident”) data base to provide a factual base for OHS decision-making.

George Challenges The Following Safety Traditions

  • Absence of a scientific discipline
  • Focus on the Personal Damage Phenomenon
  • De-emphasise the Lost Time Injury Frequency Rate
  • Risk Assessment
  • An over reliance on tertiary OHS education as the panacea for the woes of the safety business
  • Standard of OHS staff
  • Body of knowledge
  • Lack of safety leadership
  • Lack of dynamic, member focussed professional organisations
  • Communications
  • An over reliance on A.N.Z.S. 4801 Safety Management Systems
  • OHS education of management
  • The tendency to pick up and run with the latest fads
  • OHS legislation
  • Highly visible demonstrated commitment to health and safety on behalf of Senior Management
  • Auditing
  • Interpersonal skills

Quotable Quote from the paper:

“A health & safety problem can be described by statistics but cannot be understood by statistics. It can only be understood by knowing and feeling the pain, anguish, and depression and shattered hopes of the victim and of wives, husbands, parents, children, grandparents and friends, and the hope, struggle and triumph of recovery and rehabilitation in a world often unsympathetic, ignorant, unfriendly and unsupportive, only those with close experience of life altering personal damage have this understanding”

Conclusions

There are far too many people who have their life permanently altered (terminated or impaired) in Australia every year, sadly we do not really know how many. There is some evidence to suggest that the incidence of some Class 1 damage is getting worse not better.

There are many dedicated people working hard to address OHS in Australia. Much of what is being done has no factual basis and is thus ineffective. Many are urging us to carry out basic risk assessments, the risk assessment process is potentially flawed, because in many cases, it uses estimates rather than solid personal damage data. We urgently need to change our focus from Lost Time accidents to Class 1 damage. The author suggests the content of much safety tertiary training courses suffers from lack of a solid, factual personal damage data base.

We need a two tiered approach, one at the collective level for governments to change the way they report and educate on safety and one at the individual level where we, as safety people, should seek facts to support our strategies.

We must start to base what we do in safety on solid damaging occurrence data if we are to improve- a National Class 1 damage data base should be a Government priority.

DOWNLOAD THE FULL PAPER HERE: [Download not found]

Please share our posts

  • Click to print (Opens in new window)
  • Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
  • Click to share on LinkedIn (Opens in new window)

Related

Filed Under: Risk Management, Safety Management Plan, Workplace Safety Tagged With: accident data, AS4801, critical reflection, discipline focus, dynamic member, frequency rate, george robotham, latest fads, long long time, ohs education, practical experiences, professional organisations, quotable quote, rate risk, safety leadership, safety management systems, safety ohs, safety progress, scientific discipline

Reader Interactions

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

Primary Sidebar

Search and Discover More on this Site

Visit Count – Started Jan 2015

  • 23,949,045 Visitors

Never miss a post - Subscribe via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,412 other subscribers

NEW! Free Download

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

Please take our 2 minute zero survey

Recent Comments

  • Rob Long on What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • Baidyanath Bhowmick on Safety Acronyms
  • rlong@internode.on.net on What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • Brian Edwin Darlington on What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • Chiara Acciano on What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • Admin on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Rob Long on Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Steve Nevin on Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Raven on 500 BEST and WORST WORKPLACE HEALTH and SAFETY SLOGANS 2021
  • Rob Long on Understanding Real Risk

FREE eBOOK DOWNLOADS

Featured Downloads

  • Real Risk by Dr Rob Long (1441 downloads)
  • ABCs Of Heavy Lifting (6498 downloads)
  • Covid-19 Re-Entry Considerations (4956 downloads)
  • Supervisor-Induction-Checklist.docx (1006 downloads)
  • What_it_means_to_be_an_OHS_professional (9025 downloads)
  • Risk-Unplugged-Peter-Ribbe.pdf (2267 downloads)
  • Zero-to-HRO.docx (1961 downloads)
  • Pre-Purchase-Risk-Assessment-Checklist.pdf (2148 downloads)
  • Abdukadirov_UnintendedConsequences_v11.pdf (1376 downloads)
  • How-can-the-ideology-of-zero-be-ethical_.pdf (682 downloads)
  • Hazard-Reporting-sheet.xlsx (6769 downloads)
  • Mapping-Social-Influence-Strategies-diagram-A3-002.pdf (1731 downloads)
  • Professional-Challenges-for-the-Safety-Industry (19550 downloads)
  • Safety Moment - Bypassing Safety Controls (5106 downloads)
  • HOTEL-RESORT-RISK-CHECKLIST.doc (11024 downloads)

Recent Posts

  • Safety Silences – Video Series
  • What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • You Don’t Fess Up Without Trust
  • Sense-Making and Decision-Making in Risk
  • Holistic Responses to Mental Health
  • Linguistics, Language and Meaning in Risk
  • Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
  • Is Safety A Virtue Signal?
  • Being Emotional and Being Safe
  • CLLR–Quarterly Newsletter–April 2022

What is Psychological Safety at Work?

Footer

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,412 other subscribers

AUTHORS

  • Alan Quilley
    • Heinrich–Industrial Accident Prevention
    • The Problem With ZERO Goals and Results
  • Bernard Corden
    • After the goldrush
    • The Internationale
  • Bill Sims
    • Employee Engagement: Chocolate, Vanilla, or Strawberry?
    • Injury Hiding-How do you stop it?
  • Craig Clancy
    • Task Based vs Activity Based Safe Work Method Statements
    • Safety And Tender Submissions
  • Daniel Kirk
    • It’s easy being wise after the event.
    • A Positive Safety Story
  • Dave Whitefield
    • Safety is about…
    • Safety and Compliance
  • Dennis Millard
    • Are You Risk Intelligent?
    • Honey they get me! They get me at work!
  • Drewie
    • Downturn Doin’ Your Head In? Let’s Chat….
    • How was your break?
  • Gabrielle Carlton
    • All Care and No Care!
    • You Are Not Alone!
  • George Robotham
    • How to Give an Unforgettable Safety Presentation
    • How To Write a Safety Report
  • Goran Prvulovic
    • Safety Manager – an Ultimate Scapegoat
    • HSE Performance – Back to Basics
  • James Ellis
    • Psychological Core Stability for Wellbeing in Workers Comp
    • In search of plan B in workers’ recovery
  • James Parkinson
    • To laugh or not to laugh
    • People and Safety
  • John Toomey
    • In it for The Long Haul – Making the most of the FIFO Lifestyle
    • Who is Responsible for This?
  • Karl Cameron
    • Abby Normal Safety
    • The Right Thing
  • Ken Roberts
    • Safety Legislation Is Our Biggest Accident?
    • HSE Trip Down Memory Lane
  • Mark Perrett
    • Psychology of Persuasion: Top 5 influencing skills for getting what you want
  • Mark Taylor
    • Build a Psychologically Safe Workplace by Taking Risks and Analysing Failures
    • Enculturing Safety
  • Max Geyer
    • WHS Legislation is NOT about Safety it’s about Culture
    • Due Diligence Is Not Just Ticking Boxes!
  • Matt Thorne
    • Safety Culture–Hudson’s Model
    • Culture – Edgar Schein
  • Peter Ribbe
    • Is there “Common Sense” in safety?
    • Who wants to be a safety professional?
  • Phil LaDuke
    • Professional Conferences Are A Sleazy Con
    • Hey Idiots, You’re Worried About the Wrong Things
  • Admin
    • Social Psychology Of Risk Workshops
    • CLLR–Quarterly Newsletter–April 2022
  • Dr Rob Long
    • Safety Silences – Video Series
    • What is the Human Body for in Safety?
  • Rob Sams
    • The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation
    • I’m just not that into safety anymore
  • Barry Spud
    • Things To Consider When Developing And Designing Your Company SWMS
    • Bad Safety Photos
  • Sheri Suckling
    • How Can I Get the Boss to Listen?
  • Simon Cassin
    • Safety values, ideas, behaviours and clothes
  • Safety Nerd
    • The Block isn’t portraying safety as it should be
    • Toolbox Talk Show–PPE
  • Wynand Serfontein
    • Why The Problem With Learning Is Unlearning
    • I DON’T KNOW
  • Zoe Koskinas
    • Why is fallibility so challenging in the workplace?

Most commented on

Forecasting Safety

The Banned Objects Index – A New Development in Safety Culture

The Unconscious and the Soap Dispenser

Dumbs for Safety

The Real Barriers to Safety

Safety as Faith Healing

Who Said We Don’t Need Systems?

Why Safety Controls Don’t Always Work

How to use signs, symbols and text effectively in communicating about risk

Safety Should NOT Be About Safety

FEATURED POSTS

Body Memory and Safety

The Learning (and unlearning) that Revealed my Vocation

Human Dymensions Newsletter–October 2014

Emotions, Bias and Heuristics in Risk

The Village Effect

Is Complacency Evil?

When ‘Hearts and Minds’ are not ‘Hearts and Minds’

Free Poster–Risk

Subliminal and Subconscious Influence

I Don’t Serve Systems

Affirming Chance

Deepwater Horizon and The Suppression of Risky Conversations

Real Risk for Real Life

Understanding How People Make Decisions and Judgments

The SEEK Investigations Donut

Amping it Up in Safety

Free Online Introduction to the Social Psychology of Risk

Complacency and The Wayward Mind

Say Something that Makes Sense

Framing Folly and Fantasy in Safety

More Posts from this Category

Subscribe to Blog via Email

Enter your email address and join other discerning risk and safety people who receive notifications of new posts by email

Join 7,412 other subscribers

How we pay for the high cost of running of this site – try it for free on your site

 

How To Make Your Own Hand Sanitizer

 

 

How to Make your own Covid-19 Face Mask

 

Covid-19 Returning To Work Safety, Transitioning, Start Up And Re Entry Plans

 

How’s the Hot Desking Going Covid?

imageOne of the benefits of the Covid-19 epidemic is a total rethink about how we live and work (https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-03-28/coronavirus-could-reshape-how-australians-work-forever/12097124 ).

Expertise by Regurgitation and Re-Badging

One of the fascinating things about the Coronavirus pandemic is watching Safety morph into epidemiology expertise. I would like a dollar for every flyer, presentation, podcast, powerpoint, checklist template, toolbox talk and poster set that had jumped into my inbox… Read the rest

The Stress of Stasis

One of the challenging things about the Coronavirus crisis is stasis. For those without work and confined to home, for those in self-isolation, it’s like life is frozen in time. ‘Stay at home’ is the mantra. The trouble is, in… Read the rest

loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.