Browsing: Supervision | Page 1

Employers have been urged to create proper onboarding programs for new managers, and give them the skills to manage up, with a large proportion of new middle managers being unprepared for their responsibilities and experiencing burnout.

A worker who was charged with the manslaughter of another worker, in a runaway-forklift incident, has been convicted and fined for a section-28 contravention of WHS laws, in a first-of-its-kind case highlighting the potential multifaceted consequences of safety failings.

Reporting a safety incident is as important as the incident itself, a commission has reaffirmed in ordering the reinstatement of a worker sacked for failing to report an allegedly unsafe driving incident. His failure to report was mitigated by the fact that his supervisor witnessed and recorded the event, the commission found.

An employer has been found liable for a worker's Achilles injury and ordered to pay him damages, after it negligently failed to change the flat battery on a piece of powered mobile plant.

A workplace manager did not bully a worker, but their employer dealt with the worker's grievances "clumsily", allowing misconstrued interactions to build up to a point where the mental health of both employees was affected, a commission has found.

A quick coaching program can show supervisors how often they unnecessarily interrupt their staff, to the detriment of staff members' health, and help them "redesign" working arrangements, according to Swiss researchers.

Workers often see referrals to employee assistance programs as "cloaking punishment", but establishing workplace EAP committees that liaise with vendors can help eradicate pushback, a human resources management expert says.

A second duty holder has been fined over the death of an 80-year-old workplace visitor in a disused stairwell that posed an obvious risk of falling or entrapment, while a business has been fined over a fatality that followed its failure to identify the qualifications and competencies required for high-risk tasks.

A "critical and insensitive" manager who routinely swore at his subordinates in an attempt to motivate them to meet purported "German demands" has lost his adverse action case, with a court finding his behaviour warranted instant dismissal and he wasn't the victim of WHS breaches.

Another employer has been fined for workplace health and safety breaches affecting children, with its failures including not maintaining a safe supervision ratio of employees to customers.