The coronavirus pandemic poses major health risks to frontline workers, but other less obvious serious safety issues will arise from pandemic-related job insecurity and prolonged teleworking, a leading Australian occupational and environmental physician has warned.
The substantive proceedings for a worker's claim that he developed dementia as a result of witnessing a traumatic fatality have been given the go-ahead, with a judge allowing him to appoint a litigation guardian.
Keeping communications upbeat, holding virtual team meetings and reminding workers their EAPs are there if they need them, are key strategies for overcoming the harmful social isolation workers could experience working from home during the COVID-19 pandemic, a safety and injury management expert says.
> Workplace bullying-related injury costs creeping up; > Draft guide restricts WHS undertakings with Comcare; and > Australian Standards for cranes and loading ramps released for comment.
A workplace rehabilitation case manager's increased workload after a merger, and problems with a difficult claimant who threatened her safety, caused her incapacitating work injury, a tribunal has found.
Australia is unlikely to harmonise presumptive laws for first responders with post-traumatic stress disorder and other injuries, but the Federal Government has provided in-principle support for a coordinated national approach to the issue, and could make presumptive provisions under the Comcare scheme.
Biased beliefs of what types of trauma cause "legitimate" suffering is blocking public safety workers like first responders from seeking help for mental health problems, researchers have found.
The former public prosecutor awarded more than $430,000 in damages for PTSD and depression this week should have been monitored for psychological "red flags", and the failure to do so represented a missed opportunity for welfare checks and early intervention, court documents show.
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.
Ramping up wellbeing and support services, like an onsite EAP, health checks and a "concierge service", helped a major law firm maintain workers' mental health during the gruelling work demands of the banking royal commission, according to the firm's national health, safety and wellbeing manager.
