myosh Webinars

Managing Mental Health in the Workplace During COVID-19 Lockdowns

Presented by Emma Pritchard and Jenny Inness (Harmers Workplace Lawyers’ Executive Counsel)

What’s covered? 

Employers are facing a significant increase in serious mental health concerns within their workforces due to the ongoing impact of the COVID pandemic, and the extended lockdown and stay-at-home public health orders currently in place across many States and Territories.

Whilst working from home is an important safety measure at this time, the stress and anxiety caused by isolation and other associated stressors are giving rise to different safety concerns for workers from a mental health perspective.

In this webinar, Harmers’ Executive Counsel, Emma Pritchard and Jenny Inness, will provide guidance on:

How employers can identify workers who may need help:

• • Guidance for employers on sensitive and appropriate conversations to ascertain the health and wellbeing of your workers
  • Guidance on questions to ask and what not to ask when discussing mental health with your workers

What are your legal obligations as an employer in relation to mental health in the workplace?

• • Work health and safety obligations
  • Disability discrimination legislation (including reasonable adjustments for mental health and inherent requirements of the job)
  • Contractual obligations

What can employers do to carefully look after workers’ mental health and to maintain a positive workplace culture?

• • Guidance for employers on when employers can: Implement reasonable adjustments to accommodate mental health issues; Issue reasonable and lawful directions to manage sensitive mental health issues; Obtain independent medical assessments about fitness to work; Issue directions to take leave to manage mental health concerns
  • Guidance for employers to provide a supportive and positive workplace culture that can accommodate workers with mental health issues

Finding Out What Works and Doing More of It – Part 2

What’s covered?

How can Safety leaders and professionals change the focus of their conversations and impact change fast?

Did you attend the myosh – “Finding what works and doing more of it” session in May this year? If you did attend, then this is the Part 2 session.

Covid, lockdowns and working from home has created many challenges and constraints on how we work and live. Change is hard and particularly adapting to change. Well, it does not have to be. If we want to help ourselves and the people we lead to change and adapt fast, then being solution-focused and helping steer people to what is working will have a greater impact.

This session shows you again in action what the difference is between being problem-focused as compared to solution-focused and how you can form better relationships with your peers, clients, team members and even family members if you stick with a solution focus approach, especially now in a time of great uncertainty. You will get to see it in action again!

Learning about Normal Work – Drawing on Latest Research and Innovative Practices

Presented by Marc McLaren (Art of Work)

What’s covered? 

Organisations invest considerable time and effort to observe and learn about how work is being undertaken, in order to improve safe work outcomes. This combined effort, involving leaders, workers, Health and Safety practitioners, other functional specialists and administrative support can be broadly described as Work Interactions. The collective noun Work Interaction is intentionally used to capture a range of practices that aim to promote engagement, learning and behavioural and organisational change.

This webinar will cover the latest research into the broad area of Work Interactions and the insights gained from twelve Australian and overseas WHS practitioners who are actively seeking to enhance Works Interactions and share their experiences. The conversation will then move to how the learning and benefits gained by both those who initiate and participate can be enhanced, as well as an invitation to participate in the ongoing collaborative research work.

Learning about Normal Work – Drawing on Latest Research and Innovative Practices

Presented by Marc McLaren (Art of Work)

What’s covered? 

Organisations invest considerable time and effort to observe and learn about how work is being undertaken, in order to improve safe work outcomes. This combined effort, involving leaders, workers, Health and Safety practitioners, other functional specialists and administrative support can be broadly described as Work Interactions. The collective noun Work Interaction is intentionally used to capture a range of practices that aim to promote engagement, learning and behavioural and organisational change.

This webinar will cover the latest research into the broad area of Work Interactions and the insights gained from twelve Australian and overseas WHS practitioners who are actively seeking to enhance Works Interactions and share their experiences. The conversation will then move to how the learning and benefits gained by both those who initiate and participate can be enhanced, as well as an invitation to participate in the ongoing collaborative research work.

Safety Differently – A Balanced Conversation

Presented by Andy Shone

Safety professionals and organisations all over the world are having conversations about Safety Differently. But what is Safety Differently, different from? What challenges is Safety Differently a response to? And what does it look like in practice?

This webinar provides some answers to these questions through an exploration of the key principles of Safety Differently.

Key resources mentioned in the presentation:

• Books
  The Field Guide to Understanding Human Error
  Safety-I and Safety-II: The Past and Future of Safety Management
• HOP | LAB 
  The HOP|LAB is a space for the sharing of new ideas, research, opinions and experiences that support the application of Human and Organisational Performance.
• Video
  Safety Differently: The Movie

Understanding the Drivers of Incident Underreporting

Presented by Anthony Gibbs (CEO, Sentis)

Accurate and timely reporting of safety incidents is a crucial component of a positive safety culture. These invaluable learning opportunities allow us to adapt, make improvements and prevent future injury. Yet, recent Australian data has found that on average, 31% of incidents go unreported and in some organisations, this figure rises as high as 53%*. And it’s not just frontline workers failing to report; leaders and managers also underreport at alarming rates.

In this webinar, we explore the three key drivers of underreporting and how to strategically address each one to drive improved safety outcomes, along with key takeaways to push your safety culture in a positive direction.

Session outcomes:

• • Explore insights from a global research study of 12,460 participants across industry
  • Discover underreporting rates across team, leader and management levels
  • Understand the three key drivers of underreporting and the risks to your business
  • Learn strategies for addressing underreporting in your business

The 4-Step Methodology For Reopening Businesses Post COVID

Presented by Jeremy Leu (Pacific General Manager, Bureau Veritas)

COVID-19 has changed businesses and will continue to change the way they operate in the coming future, even after the pandemic ends. Despite the situation being unlikely to return to ‘normal’, the priority for all businesses is to return to work as quickly as possible and with optimum health, safety and hygiene conditions for their employees and clients.

Businesses planning to restart their operations will face significant challenges to safeguard their employees and clients from health and safety risks related to the spread of COVID-19. Organisations will also need to be able to protect and build trust with their employees and clients, as well as promote transparency and credibility to the society in order to reoperate efficiently.

Bureau Veritas Australia has developed a methodology: SafeGuard Assurance Program to meet the requirements of all business sectors of the economy as they gradually reopen for business.

• • Validation of the guidelines – which your facilities are assessed against
  • Self-assessment questionnaire – to be completed by each of your facilities
  • Independent audit – of your facilities by Bureau Veritas
  • Issuance of compliance certificate/label – to each of your audited facility

Contractor Management – Your Obligations, Your Risks, & the Challenges

Presented by Phoebe Gane, Renee Dawson, and Bianca Camuglia (Greencap)

Engaging contractors is essential to the operation of many businesses and can underpin the success of an organisation’s activities, business model, brand, and culture. However, these services come with inherit risks.

It is imperative that persons conducting a business or undertaking (PCBUs) and shared duty holders implement robust governance frameworks, management systems, pre-qualification processes, and compliance strategies that facilitate the successful procurement and engagement of contractors. This then enables an organisation to deliver services and business activities in a manner that aspires and aims to ensure work is undertaken without risk to health and safety.

This Contactor Management webinar will provide you with practical advice on how to demonstrate due diligence, limit your liability, and how to recognise when it may be desirable to take greater control over a contractor’s safety arrangements.

This moderated presentation and discussion includes case studies that showcase practicable and sustainable approaches to contractor management and how this has assisted business and shared duty holders to operate safely, efficiently and with agility in today’s regulatory and economic environment.

The case studies also cover recent learnings from sudden changes to business operations and requirements during the current COVID-19 pandemic.

Using Sport Science and Wearable Technology to Reduce Injury Risks

Presented by Scott Coleman (Managing Director, Preventure)

Research has indicated that traditional approaches to safety training (including manual handling training) are ineffective at changing worker behaviour and reducing injury risks. However, the Sports Science model of using wearable technology and data analysis to identify injury risks, then providing individualised training and feedback has been proven to effectively change behaviour and reduce injury risks.

In this session, we’ll review the research and methods behind successful sports-based injury prevention programs, and demonstrate how the same methods can be used to protect workers from injury in a cost-effective and sustainable way. We’ll also explore the use of data analysis and smartphone technology to:

• • identify specific injury risks for individual workers
  • identify which training modules the worker needs to complete to reduce these risks, and
  • deliver these training modules to the worker through their smartphone

Safety Differently in Practice

Presented by Kelvin Genn, MD Art of Work

Safety has traditionally been about the elimination of negative outcomes (incidents, injuries, errors, malfunctions). While this approach has lead to significant improvements it has also produced several problematic side effects: disengagement and disempowerment of people, increasing bureaucracy, loss of innovation and productivity. Furthermore, many organisations now struggle with plateauing safety records. Some industries even experience increasing injury and fatality rates despite unprecedented investments in safety.

Over the last 5 years, a growing number of organisations and thought-leaders have developed a set of ideas and practices that help organisations to overcome the current impasse. In this Webinar, attendees will be introduced to the assumptions, principles and practices that underpin Safety Differently in Practice, drawing upon the experiences and examples for organisations that are on the journey. The webinar provides attendees with insight as to how safety differently can be enabled at the operational, functional and strategic levels of organisations. Suitable participants are managers, supervisors, technical experts, safety professionals and safety representatives.