Employers have a legal duty to identify and manage reasonably foreseeable workplace psychological hazards, and protect workers from unsafely high work demands and bullying, a SafeWork NSW director told a forum on mental health in the legal industry today.
An employer is liable for a worker's psychological injury sustained after a distressing meeting on new stringent overtime allocation policies, a tribunal has found.
The vast majority of workers with disabilities, health conditions or injuries are motivated to retain, secure or return to suitable employment, but necessary work accommodations are rare, and outcomes are stymied by stigma and discrimination, according to a major report on empowering workers.
Father fatigue is a major unspoken workplace safety issue, with new fathers being 36 per cent more likely to have an accident at work, an organisational psychologist has warned.
New parents face a number of challenges returning to work and shouldn't have to rely on winning "the boss lottery" to receive the support they need, an organisational psychologist specialising in workplace transitions says.
The World Health Organisation has redefined "burnout" as a syndrome resulting from chronic workplace stress that hasn't been successfully managed, and warned that poor work safety policies and inflexible hours can create or exacerbate the condition.
Indiscriminately taking tasks away from workers struggling with stress can make their conditions worse, according to a clinical psychologist who warns that misconceptions around employee burnout can have dire consequences.
Employers that rely on workers to conduct their own risk assessments for working from home risk serious hazards being overlooked through bias, a safety and injury management expert warns.
An employer's duty of care during emergencies extends to implementing an effective crisis communication plan for alerting workers promptly and meaningfully, according to the general manager of a global software company.
Employers are entitled to alter workers' flexible working arrangements to improve their performance, but one manager's hasty attempt to do so was unreasonable, a tribunal has found in an injury dispute.
