Employers providing workers with mindfulness training to combat stress need to ensure leaders are also accessing the program, to get the most out of their investment, icare says. The insurer has also identified a number of steps employers can take to reduce the impact of customer abuse.
The author of the review that led to the introduction of industrial manslaughter laws in Queensland has recommended that senior officers face up to "life" in prison for negligently causing the death of a worker in the Northern Territory. Meanwhile, the Territory has passed laws to protect emergency workers from violence.
A union official recently accused of hindering a WHS inspector in Queensland has been charged with doing the same thing in another jurisdiction, while two of his colleagues have been charged with misleadingly telling workers they were entitled, by WHS laws, to leave an "unsafe" site on full pay.
A WHS regulator has stressed that it is continuing to tackle imminent or serious safety risks under current "work bans", and progressing strategies to protect its inspectors from threats or assaults, after the Federal Government warned that these inspectors are living in fear of occupational violence.
