In this quarterly report, OHS Alert examines all the need-to-know safety and compensation developments from the three months to 30 September 2021, including changes around workplace COVID jabs, the prosecution of a government department, legislative amendments, and a record WHS fine.
The Black Dog Institute has called for employers to implement organisation-level measures like "problem solving committees" to facilitate job control, and to allow for a "steady post-pandemic workplace transition". It warns that two decades of "seismic changes" have adversely affected workers' mental health.
Workplace injury stigma often involves the active discouragement of incident reporting and creates a "compounding negative effect" for employers, according to one of two new major return-to-work reports released by Safe Work Australia.
Workforce exhaustion has surged to the top of the list of "people-related risks" likely to impact businesses, with implications for workplace cultures and workers' comp costs, but many employers are not addressing the issue, a survey of nearly 1,500 risk managers and HR professionals has shown.
In a major report on Australia's "forced experiment" - widespread working-from-home arrangements for the pandemic - the Productivity Commission has detailed employers' WHS duties to remote workers, examined the "right to disconnect" and called for an upcoming WHS review to address the issue.
Workplace concussions, including seemingly mild head injuries, can involve drawn out recovery times for workers, according to US researchers, who recommend mental health screening to identify risk factors for complications.
