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Employers trapped by ineffective "intergenerational" workplace safety investigations should flip their objectives and not be "so concerned with the why", an investigations expert says.

A local council's innovative contractor management system (CMS) has dramatically improved its safety communication and messaging processes and compliance activities, a spokesperson has revealed.

A WHS regulator will step up its enforcement activities against workplace psychosocial hazards, like excessive workloads, with more specialist inspectors and better engagement with stakeholders, under two of 46 accepted recommendations from a highly anticipated review.

Employers must apply the hierarchy of controls to the hazards associated with height work, which starts with not performing any such work where reasonably practicable, a regulator has advised in launching a major blitz.

A coronial inquest into a young worker's death in a forklift crash has found his employer didn't have any written safety policies or enforce critical WHS rules, before appearing to defy WHS caselaw by concluding the business was not obligated to instruct the worker to wear his seatbelt or not perform unloading work on slopes.

Different forms of verbal aggression have different effects on workers' mental health, according to a unique study, which found supervisors are common perpetrators of abuse and need special training to help staff achieve psychological detachment from work.

Employers adopting a four-day work week are being urged to increase their employees' knowledge of the injury risks associated with work intensification, and warned against leaving it up to staff to figure out how to maintain their output.

• WHS notices reach $1m after judge's referral;
  
• Employers charged over deaths at mental health unit and nursery; and
  
• Right-to-disconnect laws tweaked to avoid criminal proceedings.

The powers of elected health and safety representatives and protections against safety discrimination in the offshore sector have been stepped up and aligned with those in WHS laws, in a Bill introduced some six years after a parliamentary inquiry warned the changes were needed to combat a "culture of fear and reprisal".

Workers in the legal profession will reveal whether their employers are complying with their proactive duties to tackle bullying and harassment, under a follow-up equal opportunity review announced in South Australia. Meanwhile, safety professionals have been asked to apply to present on ideas for improving WHS outcomes in Tasmania.