Browsing: Coronavirus, COVID-19 | Page 6

A much higher number of workplace types than expected has been linked to significant infectious disease risks, highlighting the need for more widespread preventive actions.

The decreased visibility of workers, with remote and hybrid work arrangements becoming commonplace because of COVID-19, could be masking the fact that many employees feel compelled to "soldier on" while sick under these arrangements, creating serious wellbeing and productivity risks, new research suggests.

Organisations need to do much more to help their employees balance work and family responsibilities to avoid burnout, both during and outside of times of crisis or emergency, researchers have found.

Employers have been urged to learn from, persist with and improve on the safety strategies they implemented for the COVID-19 pandemic, and warned against reverting to past practices that will alienate workers in the post-COVID era.

Australian managers and WHS officers can "tap out" when they encounter psychosocial hazards they perceive as "too complex", exacerbating the mental injury risks arising from the rapid switch to working from home since the COVID-19 outbreak, researchers say.

Portable standing desks can help fill the gap in strategies for tackling increased excessive sitting among the high number of workers who started working from home more because of the COVID-19 pandemic, health science researchers have found.

A first-of-its-kind study examining the link between pre-COVID workplace safety systems and working conditions during the pandemic has found proactive organisations coped better with the chaos and wellbeing disaster that marred the past few years.

A commission has rejected a union's bid to bin a major employer's COVID-19 vaccine mandate, underscoring that under WHS legislation, a "reasonable" direction does not need to be one preferred by or in the best interests of all parties.

A Sydney Trains health and safety representative, who claimed he was exercising his WHS rights when he detained a customer during a COVID-19 lockdown, has failed to overturn his dismissal.

• Fatigue "misalignment" events ignored prior to crash-fire death;
  
• WHS visits tumble in SA in COVID era;
  
• Inconsistent understanding of silica risks identified in ACT; and
  
• SIRA to target overservicing in the workers' comp system.