Many conference delegates spoke highly of international speaker I David Daniels at the recent Psych Health and Safety conference. Daniels has a long occupational health and safety (OHS) career and hosts the United States version of the Psych Health and Safety podcast. His OHS perspectives, including his discussions about race, were significant.
A whole generation of workers has grown up believing that if they are having a hard time at work, if they are not coping with the workload or the sexual advances of their boss, or their difficult workplace, or the discrimination they feel about their gender or their sexuality, that it’s their fault, and it’s their problem, and therefore, it’s their role to solve and fix it. But there were generations before the current one, and I’m from one of those earlier generations. When I started work, there was good work and safe jobs, and there were social movements for women’s rights, and then gay rights and dignity at work, and respect at work. It was far from a paradise, but there was exciting progress and lively, challenging debates and social protests. A little of that passion has returned this decade, but more is needed.
Delegates at the recent Psych Health and Safety Conference were desperate for case studies on how psychosocial hazards are being prevented in Australian workplaces. Instead, they were largely presented with examples of how to manage psychosocial hazards, and many of those strategies were unsurprising – policies, training, counselling, leadership buy-in – and were familiar to those who have been applying well-being programs in their workplaces for years. Several speakers called these strategies bullshit. The most vocal of these speakers was David Burroughs, who was at the conference in a personal capacity.
Recent Australian insurer Allianz released survey data that revealed:
“….half of surveyed Australian employees claim they feel fatigued and burnt out”.
This report generated a recent article (paywalled) in the Australian Financial Review (AFR), which included some important comments from Dr Rebecca Michalak. Her comments are an important introduction to a week that includes SafetyAtWorkBlog’s exclusive reporting on The Psych Health & Safety Conference.
Last month, an extraordinary document appeared – “Evaluating OH&S Interventions: A WorkSafe Victoria Intervention Evaluation Framework 2023 (2nd Ed.).” Its extraordinariness comes from its appearance with no fanfare or promotion; it is a second edition of something published in 2004 (which I cannot recollect), it has authoritative authors, and it is a document many have been asking for.
“No one should die at work” is a common statement at Worker Memorial Services every year. Occupational health and safety (OHS), in particular, uses death as a starting point for reflection and sometimes action. Workplace death is a recognised worst-case scenario and has long been established as a benchmark for measuring OHS progress.
[This article discusses workplace suicides]
There is increased interest in psychosocial hazards at work with the worthy goal of preventing these hazards. However, psychosocial deaths such as those by suicide do not hold the same place or role as “traditional” physical workplace deaths. They are rarely the launching pad for drastic change in our systems of business, but that is starting to change if new data and analysis are any indication.
The cover story of the February 2024 edition of Psychology Today is less a story than a collection of short pieces on mental health and burnout. This blog may seem unfairly critical of much of the psychological discussion on burnout but this is largely because the World Health Organisation (WHO) has defined burnout as an occupational phenomenon and “is not classified as a medical condition”. The popular literature on mental health and its workplace context almost entirely overlooks these two elements – a literature that is often the first destination for people trying to understand their workplace distress. Sometimes, popular literature is unhelpful.
