Browsing: Health and mental wellbeing | Page 9

Eliminating physical hazards will not eliminate musculoskeletal disorders (MSDs), a leading ergonomics researcher has warned, challenging how WHS practitioners often conceptualise and implement risk management programs for the widespread safety issue.

Workplace hazards ranging from long hours to vibrations increase the risks faced by pregnant workers, but all these risks can be controlled by modifying roles and should not affect workforce participation, according to Australian public health researchers.

• Effective anti-burnout strategy identified; and
  
• Advisory group "key" to eliminating harassment in NSW workplaces.

An employer has been reprimanded for failing to properly discipline a bully and allowing further "reprehensible" conduct to occur, but the victim has been refused stop-bullying orders, after the company made a number of changes to the workplace to make it safe for him to return to work.

Workers denying not getting enough sleep, and fearing being exposed as having sleep issues, are two of four barriers that need to be addressed to implement an effective sleep health program for white-collar workers, the authors of a global study say.

Union members across all states and territories will proactively block the transportation and use of certain silica-containing materials under a national WHS ban agreed on today.

Employers need to be more strategic when planning work schedules and rest times to "reduce physical and mental overload", according to safety experts, who found the widespread problem of lower back pain tends to build up across consecutive work days.

Court Services Victoria (CSV) has been convicted and ordered to pay nearly $400,000 in penalties, in relation to a toxic workplace culture that contributed to the suicide death of a lawyer and to other workers taking stress leave.

SafeWork NSW has outlined a range of workplace factors that increase the risk of s-xual harassment, and explained what businesses can do to prevent it, in its inaugural four-year Respect at Work Strategy.

The extended use of work-related electronic communication (WREC) during non-work hours worsens fatigue and depression and results in unhealthily high levels of alertness before bed, according to researchers, who advise promoting the "right to disconnect".