Changing workplace has health and safety implications

FOR several decades the proportion of Australians working in manufacturing has been in decline — from 25 per cent in the 1960s to just 10 per cent now.

For several decades the proportion of Australians working in manufacturing has been in decline — from 25 per cent in the 1960s to just 10 per cent now. At the same time, the average age of the Australian workforce — as with other developed economies — is increasing dramatically.

More people are moving into new industries including tourism, leisure and education. A major growth area worldwide is the knowledge industry, where people base their work around computers and information technology.

This raises questions with far-reaching implications — what is work, where do we do it — and where does an issue such as work health and safety come in?

We talk about work health and safety, rather than occupational health and safety. The focus is on the work people do — and the place where they work is just one factor to consider. Our concept of what now constitutes work differs markedly from when most of our concepts of OHS were developed.

In the 21st century — with internet clouds and social media — where do people work? The WHS Act 2011 defines workplace as a place where work is carried out and includes any place where a worker goes, or is likely to be, while at work.

People can work from everywhere or anywhere they can be productive — home, office, library, coffee shop, their car, in a park. It is not necessary for a knowledge worker to come in to a central workplace. Increasingly we have all the tools we need in our pocket or purse. Yet the legal duty remains on employers to provide for health and safety at work.

Industrialisation in the past two centuries demanded standardised, defined and documented processes and procedures — such as safe operating procedures and safe work method statements — to make organisations more effective. But are they still necessary in a non-industrial work setting?

Developing, learning and following procedures often means we are too busy being busy. So a challenge is how we can manage technology, rather than it manage us. This has implications for how we approach work, including how we deal with issues such as health and safety.

We talk about flexible working arrangements. But does this necessarily mean working from home? We now have the technology to choose where we want to work and how we want to work. Flexible working means being mindful about the tasks we have to accomplish and the best places to work in to accomplish those tasks.

In many organisations, it’s still a case of “bums on seats” — if we can’t see you, we don’t know you’re working. A report in The Australian a few weeks ago, “Bosses struggle with trust”, supports studies that indicate three-quarters of the British workforce believe remote workers will not work as hard as office-based staff.

Other studies show workers who work away from the office seem to have a sense of guilt and suspicion that others may think they’re not working at all — so they compensate by sending more emails and making more phone calls to prove they are working.

Organisations and their managers have to let go, they need to empower employees to choose the best places to work, the best times, the best tools. But in letting go, employers can’t just let go of their responsibilities for health and safety. Apart from legal duties of care, issues such as productivity, quality — and ultimately profit — hinge on work safety.

David McIvor is the managing director of Occupational Safety and Health Associates