Measures for preventing workplace fatigue range from providing appropriate staffing levels to digitally locking out workers, according to WHS lawyers, who warn the issue is dangerously overlooked in many organisations, and highlight a safety prosecution that reads like a "how-to" guide to tackling fatigue.
This Thursday is national R U OK? Day, but workers are being urged to "connect with their colleagues and let them know they're here to hear them, every day of the year".
All of Australia's eight harmonised WHS jurisdictions have now formally applied or committed to adopting provisions explicitly requiring PCBUs to manage psychosocial risks through a risk management process.
Complying with a business's WHS duties includes ensuring workers working from home "are not forgotten" under the assumption they will "reach out if they need anything", a senior employment and safety lawyer has told a workplace mental wellbeing webinar.
All but one of Australia's eight harmonised WHS jurisdictions have now introduced the new model clauses on psychosocial risks, with the ACT being the latest to do so, while joining a subgroup that has chosen to prescribe the use of the hierarchy of controls for these risks.
Psychosocial hazards are more challenging for employers to tackle than physical risks for many reasons, but there are also similarities in how they can be addressed, including through prevention-is-better-than-cure and early-intervention approaches, which will nearly always yield better outcomes, according to senior organisational psychologists.
A worker has failed to obtain stop-bullying orders against a colleague who, in a "single outburst", threatened him and told him he wasn't welcome in the workplace or at an upcoming work dinner.
Training that busts the myth that drugs and alcohol are the only notable causes of workplace impairments can be an "aha" moment for managers, and help them properly respond when they suspect a worker might be impaired, researchers say.
A worker's inappropriate s-xual jokes and comments constituted s-xual harassment and provided a valid reason to dismiss him, according to a commissioner, who has also warned his former employer to do more to meet its positive WHS duty to prevent harassment.
