Browsing: White-collar work | Page 7

Employers digitising their work processes require interventions like "digital pilots" to help workers deal with new technology healthily and without stress, say researchers who found such transitions can overwhelm a significant number of workers.

• "Explore" office WHS risks with Comcare tool; and
  
• Technical innovations win WHS awards.

Successful workplace mental health policies must be backed up with open dialogue with workers that doesn't put the onus on them to be more resilient, but focuses on workable solutions and systemic change, a new major report on the legal profession says.

A pandemic-era study has shown that workers' experiences with flexible work have been "very positive", with benefits to wellbeing, while highlighting gaps in WHS support for these workers. It has identified seven elements that support safe flexible work.

Burnout is commonly associated with cognitive or mental employment demands, but it also affects those with high physical workloads, and can be exacerbated by certain kinds of off-the-job physical activities, researchers have found.

A white-collar worker has unsuccessfully challenged her dismissal for refusing to provide a urine sample for a drug and alcohol test for "personal medical reasons", with a commission stressing that office-based staff aren't "immune" from drug-related injury risks.

A tribunal has rejected a worker's claim that he developed a back injury from prolonged workplace sitting. The worker contended his case was supported by his employer's safety documents on sedentary risks, and a failure to provide him with an adjustable desk in a timely manner.

The struggle of workers to "decode" written communications, which are prolific in remote-work set-ups, is triggering a hunter-gatherer survival mechanism and perceptions of being bullied, a senior WHS researcher says.

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.

A worker's typing duties caused him to develop a chronic pain condition, a tribunal has ruled, despite claims that he did not meet the criteria for such a diagnosis, and the dearth of medical literature linking the condition to his area of work.