Tap into Safety

During the pandemic, we saw rising anxiety levels, increasing depressive thoughts and use of substances. Evidence is suggesting that mental illness is the pandemic within the COVID-19 pandemic.

Interestingly, although COVID-19 has, and is, crippling many, it is likely that we will develop long-term resilience. New research suggests that actively cultivating social support, adaptive meaning, and direct prosocial behaviours to reach the most vulnerable can have powerful mental health resilience promoting effects.

For this podcast, we discuss four common myths about resilience to provide strategies to build resiliency in individuals and the community as we manage and emerge from the pandemic.

Workplace mental health is emerging as a critical issue especially since the arrival of COVID-19. There have been anecdotal reports that 80% of your employees are anxious, and suicide attempts have increased by 5%. They are worried about losing their job, many are isolated working from home, and they are incredibly concerned that they will catch the coronavirus.

For this podcast, we unpack the recently published Draft Code of Practice on managing work-related psychological health from SafeWork NSW. The Code is a welcome step to support the journey for organisations to provide mentally healthy workplaces. 

Ensuring psychologically healthy and safe work helps organisations to meet their WHS legal responsibilities. It also contributes to a decrease in organisational disruptions and costs resulting from work-related harm and may improve performance and productivity.

You may be seeking promotion to the role of a Supervisor after serving time in your work team. You are likely a clear candidate if you either have excellent knowledge of the work that is done, are a champion of safe practice, have simply been there longer than anyone else, or are generally well-liked by your team. But promotion to Supervisor creates additional roles and responsibilities, and sometimes the leap is a challenge.

For this podcast, we look at the role of a Supervisor in light of organisation, management, communication, and collaboration skills to provide tips to improve your effectiveness.

Effective safety communication relies on well-developed skills. Good communicators use listening techniques and nonverbal strategies to improve their conversations.

What you are doing in face-to-face communicating is taking what you want to say as it exists in your mind, converting or coding it into words and possibly gestures and sending the message in speech and perhaps signs. The receiver hears your words, and sees your gestures, and decodes them into what they mean to them.

Unfortunately, communication breakdown occurs more often than not and the sender's message may be completely distorted by the time it is decoded by the receiver.

For this podcast, we look at the different types of safety communication commonly used across organisations, the barriers to effective communication, and five areas that you can work on to improve your verbal communication skills.

The Australian Model WHS Laws require duty holders to assess and address risks in the workplace, but how do you perform an effective risk assessment? Once you have assessed the risks, what factors should you consider when determining which hazard control measures would work best for your organisation? 

For this podcast, we provide a step-by-step guide on how to perform an effective risk assessment in your organisation to keep employees physically and psychologically safe. We also discuss how to develop hazard control measures and ensure that they are effective and provide suggestions on how to successfully implement them.

We're in the middle of a global pandemic that is affecting every country differently, so where does critical safety thinking play a part? Now more then ever, we need clear decision-making, concrete responses and open-communication to keep ourselves, our employees and their families safe. At the same time, we need to keep our businesses operating to reduce further negative impacts on our economies. Government leaders around the world are working hard to keep ahead of the pandemic and to lead into the road to recovery.

We're searching for a vaccine and at the same time effective treatments for the virus. While protecting the health impacts, we're also juggling the economic consequences of shutdowns, restructures and reductions in services of whole industries such as tourism, hospitality and entertainment.

For this podcast, we discuss critical safety thinking in this time of the global pandemic to help Leaders and Managers lead during the crisis and beyond.

Addressing the issue of preventing employees from being sexually harassed in the workplace is an area of concern for many organisations. Although COVID-19 has much of our focus elsewhere, topics such as these that impact mental health continue unabated. The Australian Human Rights Commission conducted a national inquiry into sexual harassment in Australian workplaces. Their focus is on achieving respect for all employees with one-third of employees reporting in the past five years that they experience sexual harassment at work. For this podcast, we delve into the Respect@Work report to look at the current context in which sexual harassment occurs, what is currently understood, what it means for your business and primary prevention strategies that we can use.

How do you motivate your employees in the middle of a global pandemic? Some of your team are working from home, and as a Manager or Leader, you might be as well. Some are working on split rosters where they work at home for several days and only come into the office occasionally.

As a Manager or Leader, you need to ensure that your employees are productive, but at the same time not overworking. Some employees are not only trying to work from home, but also manage homeschooling and small children. How do you ensure their mental health is ok?

We discuss how to tap into the three areas of motivation: purpose, social recognition and the work environment. We explain extrinsic and intrinsic motivation and provide the best tips to motivate your employees. We conclude with a discussion on employee mental health and strategies for Managers and Leaders.

Bullying behaviour at work has serious consequences on the organisation's culture and your employee's mental health. It seems that workplace bullying may be triggered by poor working conditions. Research shows role conflict, workload, and lack of social support are related to bullying behaviour at work. For example, very poor working conditions may create stress reactions and feelings of frustration where some employees may display poor performance or rudeness. These reactions can fuel retaliation by their co-workers and superiors.

Workplace bullying behaviour is a complex issue and why people are targeted is an ongoing theme for research. Bullying victims report long-term psychological and physical health changes. For these employees, bullying includes the spreading of rumours and repeated insults aimed at changing the image of the victim that results in feelings of guilt, shame and diminishing self-esteem. 

For this podcast, we discuss some of the more recent research to identify how workplace bullying affects employee mental health and what it means for your business. We suggest the primary, secondary and tertiary anti-bullying interventions that organisations can draw on to prevent workplace bullying, support victims and reduce the long-term effects.

The hierarchy of controls is a risk management tool used around the world to manage workplace hazards. NIOSH and OSHA use the following flow:

In Australia, Safe Work Australia includes an additional high-level action of:

When putting the hierarchy of controls to work you need to consider which hazard control measures would work best for your organisation. Safe Work Australia recommends that you start by looking at the codes of practice and guidance material; information from manufacturers and suppliers of plant, substances and equipment that you use and reference materials from industry associations and unions.

For this podcast, we discuss the hierarchy of controls and how to develop effective hazard control measures. We provide suggestions on how to successfully implement the control measures to ensure your employees remain safe while at work.