WhyWork Podcast

10 Episodes
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By: Alan Girle, Trajce Cvetkovski, & Sara Pazell

The WhyWork Podcast is an organisational strategy session and legal dissection of workplace events that are laced with humour. Your bloggers, Alan, Trajce, and Sara, explore the contemporary and uncomfortable realities of work and the boundaries that are tested. Alan and Trajce dismantle case law and Sara pushes all to consider how to redesign the world of work so that business objectives are realised and that people thrive. Good stories are told. The WhyWork team throws shade on some of the stories and the people involved as they consider defensible and remarkable work design strategy. When you listen to the...

S04 E12: Never smile at a crocodile
#12
Last Monday at 6:20 PM

“Never smile at a crocodile,” chimes Alan. This episode speaks on working with critters; the first, a case of two soldiers attacked by a crocodile in Far North Queensland. Comcare charged the Australian Department of Defense for breaching federal work and safety laws for failing to maintain a safe system of work, training, and policy implementation. “You’ve obviously seen an alligator or two in your travels across America, Sara,” Trajce suggests. The boys start chest-thumping their machismo argument that the salty crocodile of Australia is bigger and tougher than the American alligator counterpart, “A nibbler,” admonishes Trajce, “I’d like to see them...


S04 E11: The things we do for fun
#11
03/18/2024

Season 04 Episode 11: The things we do for fun.

WARNING: This episode discusses fatalities

Alan reflects on the prosecutions and a pending coronial inquest on the fatalities of the six Tasmanian children (and three injured children) while playing in jumping castles during their school fair. “The judgement on the facts is pending,” Alan explained, “and there are no industrial manslaughter judgements in Tasmania.”  The team grapples with the loss of innocent lives and the relaxed approaches to risk management when we embrace recreational fun versus work activities. “You are ready to have fun, you are expecting to have fun...


S04 E10: Prosecuting nicely
#10
03/11/2024

Season 04 Episode 10: Prosecuting ‘nicely’

WARNING: Suicide is discussed in this episode.

Alan introduces a model of prosecution adopted by the National Heavy Vehicle Regulator that provides guidance to industry and focuses on the most important prosecutorial issues. Alan and Trajce dream of dismantling ideological boundaries so that business and industry can return to the fundamental questions on, “What is our purpose?" In this way, creative solutions can be found to solve age-old problems. Sara is excited by what she sees as the favourable view of design in this light and her influence on the way that t...


S04 E09: Ker-Choo! To work or not to work in the face of danger
#9
03/04/2024

CAUTION: This episode speaks on near miss harm of a child.

Season 04 Episode 09: This episode speaks about the first pillar of work design, workplace protections, and the sociopolitical influences of worker empowerment. Thank you to subscriber, David Denoux, who shared his story on construction work and safety concerns.

“If something goes wrong, terribly wrong, it will change your life,” warns Alan, “just say 'no' and walk away.” Sara reminds Alan and Trajce that sometimes a worker may not feel empowered or privileged to walk away or to speak up, hinting at the second pillar in work des...


S04 E08: The archiac adage of deserving a good spanking
#8
02/26/2024

Season 04 Episode 08: This episode covers two main topics. The first, thanks to our subscriber Andrew Nicholls, a design and technology teacher and researcher, who informed us of his advocacy for the provision of personal protective equipment to school technology and design staff. Alan reminds us of the case against a university because of levies charged to nursing students for their fit testing of respiratory protective equipment before they undertook their hospital placements. Trajce sites Section 273 of the Australian Work Health and Safety Act 2011 (Person not to levy workers) arguing that a Person Conducting a Business or Undertaking ‘must not im...


S04 E07: 'Every Sunday I Eat A Pie, (mate)': The power intent of a hierarchy of controls.
#7
02/19/2024

Season 04 Episode 07: This episode stemmed from conversations with Dylan Matthews of the BHP FutureFit Academy on the seemingly innocent and instructive applications of the Hierarchy of Controls (HOC) in safety management: elimination, substitution, isolation, engineering, administrative controls, and personal protective equipment (ESIEAP – ‘Every Sunday I Eat A Pie’). Trajce is fired up by this topic as he recalls the 17th Century philosophy of Thomas Hobbes on jurisprudence, governance, liberalism, and utilitarianism. “A hierarchy of control is not intended to be as rigid as it implies with an unyielding iron cage of the law constraining work strategy. ‘Hierarchy’ is more politically...


S04 E06: Methane moments
#6
02/12/2024

WARNING: A fatality and suicide are discussed in this episode.

Season 04 Episode 06: “We’re all human,” Alan explains, “even during our methane messaging,” as he details the news story of U.S. Biden administration’s climate envoy, John Kerry, delivering a passionate speech on climate change in the most awkward exchange that was captured on film. The idea of ‘messaging’ led to the trio’s, Alan, Trajce, and Sara’s, expansion on the WhyWork Podcast’s vocabulary

After Alan introduces topics on mining, Sara recalls her visit to the Mackay Resources Center of Excellence (RCOE) with Karen Sanders of...


S04 E05: To live is to be anxious, especially in the toxic workplace
#5
02/05/2024

WARNING: Suicide is mentioned in this episode.

Season 04 Episode 05: Trajce introduces the idea of psychosocial factors causing work-related mental health disorders and psychological injury in a case in Victoria that led to the reguator's prosecution of a government agency. Alan explains that the injured person in this case committed suicide and even though this loss of life was not directly related to the workplace dynamics, the prosecution fine was significant. "This case," Alan recalls, "demonstrates that the public sector is not immune to prosecution."

Trajce speaks on Brodie’s law, Victorian anti-bullying June 2011 legislation that ma...


S04 E04: Ker-Choo! Dusty and crusty - for the love of power tools
#4
01/29/2024

Season 04 Episode 04: "It's time to put the lid on dust," Trajce advances. Engineered stone, silica exposure - this has been in the media of late. The trio, Alan, Trajce, and Sara, discuss who is vulnerable to these exposures and why. Trajce argues that the regulators must not demonise one hazard exposure. Rather, pragmatism is needed to determine the safety of work.

Alan argues the case that even when a business adheres to the workplace adivsory exposure standards for respirable dust, it does not matter when evaluated by a regulator. Trajce reminds us that dust is everywhere across...


S04 E03: Rites of passage
#3
01/22/2024

Season 04 Episode 03: Sara provokes thought on rites of passage by asking, “What are we holding on to in work and education simply because of a social construct established by rites of passage?” and, “Are the rites of passage of old still useful now?” Sara challenges the notion of adhering to rites of passage versus embracing transformative, generative work or education system re-design. She provides healthcare examples and asks how work designers effectively elicit knowledge to inform their design. She wonders how facilitators masterfully transfer that knowledge to those who need that information. She questions, also, whether those with the power to...