‘He’s making a list

He’s checking it twice;

He’s gonna find out who’s naughty or nice

Santa Claus is coming to town’

This morning, as I flicked through Twitter and opened number 12 on my advent calendar, I found an article with the headline, ‘If you want to be a better leader, try being nicer’. It was published on the World Economic Forum website on July 22 this year and had been written by Dr Travis Bradberry. It was retweeted today by that colossus on the landscape of occupational stress, as someone once described him to me, Professor Cary Cooper.

The article cited research showing that “boss inflicted stress” had a strong link to heart disease, added significantly to health care costs, caused poor performance, unwillingness to seek promotions and quitting.

It then went on to say that nice bosses don’t just prevent the health and motivational problems, but also create benefits that the ‘hard-nosed bosses can’t’. Self-sacrificing and helpful bosses brought out the best in their employees who were more helpful and committed to their teams.

Could the simple idea of nicer bosses have impact on our productivity problem? As I asked myself this question, I realised I was going to have to understand more about our productivity problem, so I went to my go to guy for all things economical, Ross Gittins. He wrote a blog on December 3 commenting on the Productivity Commission(PC)’s discussion paper on improving Australia’s productivity released at the end of November.

In his blog he said there is global anxiety about stalling productivity. In Australia our productivity has been stalled since 2004, but some are wondering whether our measurement tools are the problem. According to Gittins, “productivity is a measure of an economy’s (or a business’s) ability to convert inputs of resources into outputs of goods and services”.

The (PC) chooses to measure multi-factor productivity, that is it assesses the output per unit of capital inputs as well as the output per unit of labour inputs, rather than just measuring the output in relation to labour inputs. In doing so they measure productivity gains from technological advancement and increases in human capital.

According to Gittins this means that the PC (and others) have been wringing their hands for years about the slowdown in productivity, but can’t “put its finger on a causal factor we could do something about”.

Gittins goes on to refer to the work of John Quiggin who says that multi-factor productivity is a good measure of the production of goods, but not as good for the production of services.

Furthermore the primary engine for productivity in the modern economy is information, and much information is free and information can’t be used up. In other words, traditional economic theory was developed for the economies following the Industrial Revolution, not for the economies in the Information Age.

Putting the elasticity or non-elasticity of information aside (I can never remember which, it always makes me think of underwear) a greater focus on human capital in the measurement of productivity by the PC is something relevant to us.

This is illustrated well with the research report released by Safe Work Australia in November, authored by Harry Becher and Maureen Dollard, ‘Psychosocial Safety Climate and Better Productivity in Australian Workplaces’.

Nice bosses & the Psychosocial Safety Climate

The research (above) “explores the productivity decline problem in Australia and presents an analysis of human capital focussed solutions for improving productivity”. They did this by examining the Psychosocial Safety Climate, and engagement, and their association with absenteeism, and presenteeism.

Psychosocial Safety Climate was defined by them as “the shared perception of employees that senior management have prioritised their mental wellbeing by creating a psychologically healthy workplace”. Also known as, having nice bosses.

They pointed to other research that found for every dollar spent on “improving individual skills and resilience; supporting employees with mental health conditions, and improving workplace climate” a return of $2.30 can be expected.

Becher and Dollard analysed data from a representative sample of over 4,000 interviews in the third round of the Australian Workplace Barometer Project undertaken in 2014-15. They found that low Psychosocial Safety Climate of peoples’ work was associated with 42% higher sickness absence, 72% more performance loss (presenteeism) with a cost/employee/year of $1887.

The study looked at one “psychosocial hazard mitigatory”, engagement. It found that people who worked in places with low engagement had 12% more sick days than people in high engagement workplaces, and 46% more when compared to medium and high engagement workplaces.

The average cost of loss of performance associated with low engagement was $4,594/employee/year. The converse, what is the performance gain of having high engagement, was interesting. The researchers report “no detectable performance loss”.

So their research failed to find the nice boss effect, described by Bradberry, that went beyond the prevention of health and motivational problems and delivered a commitment and helpfulness of employees. For that to be in evidence a gain in performance, not just protection from a loss of performance would be seen.

We need to be able to tell employers, not only that they have a problem, but how to fix it. Otherwise we are open to Gittins’ criticism of the Productivity Commission, that we have been, “wringing (our) hands for years, … never once … able to put (our) finger on a causal factor we could do something about”.

Nevertheless at a time the PC admits it needs ‘new and novel ideas’, and that ‘more of the same is not likely to be helpful’, interventional research in worker health that builds on these findings will be gold dust.

Many of us are bosses: are you putting into practice what we now know about creating mentally healthy workplaces? This year, have you been naughty or nice?

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, 19/12/2016

Inside OHS Editor: Stephanie D’Souza; (02) 8587 7684; Stephanie.D’Souza@thomsonreuters.com

I have just moved back to Sydney. I am trying to find a builder to renovate my apartment and it is not easy. If you are lucky enough to get the attention of one of them they talk in prices so high it makes you dizzy. I was complaining about this to a taxi driver the other day (I give as good as I get when it comes to having something to say in taxis). His response was: “What do you expect, you live in Elizabeth Bay and you are old, that’s 40% extra immediately.”

I am slowly accepting that young people see me as old now. Whilst there is a lot that is not fun about ageing there are some pluses, and probably my favourite is seeing what happened next.

The integrated approach to workplace health and safety, predicted as a direction for workplace health and safety since the 1990s, is a case in point. Essentially in theory it is the combining of occupational health and safety (health protection) with workplace health promotion.

In reality it is de-siloing health and safety, workplace health promotion and human resources management to build on a foundation of safety for a more strategic effort, with a greater sharing of responsibilities between employers and workers. Integrating health protection and promotion is expected to create synergy and enhance overall health and wellbeing of the workforce, while decreasing the likelihood of workplace injury and illnesses.

Vic WorkHealth: An integrated approach experiment

Having banged on about it since 1986 (to my best recollection) I have been lucky enough to be able to follow an experiment with this initiated by WorkSafe Victoria.

WorkSafe Victoria had a huge WorkHealth program from 2008-2013 in which health checks and advice were offered to the entire working population.

The intervention was strengthened in the latter years with the addition of grants to workplaces for workplace health promotion initiatives and lifestyle behavioural change programs.

Modelling undertaken as a part of the evaluation by the Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research (ISCRR) at Monash University and led by Professor Malcolm Sim, showed that:

• The program had been effective in raising awareness of worker health;
• The program was likely to have achieved its goals related to reductions in absenteeism, presenteeism and claims;
• Workplace culture and support was associated with more sustainable health behavioural change;
• There was a ripple effect (mental health was not included in the program, but despite this mental health was still addressed in workplace programs); and
• Workplaces with health promotion programs had better safety cultures than those without.

It is said that the impact of a public health program is determined by its reach and its effect (how powerful it is).

In this case the impact of the program was more so due to its extraordinary reach: more than 800,000 workers, about a third of the Victorian workforce, and around 40,000 workplaces. The evaluation found that the quality of the interventions, ie the effect, could have been improved.

In July 2014 WorkSafe Victoria working in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), as well as through their long-standing social partnerships with employer organisations and unions.

Expanding program for a WIN

WorkSafe and DHHS (above) decided to continue to explore the potential of the integrated approach to advance worker health, safety and wellbeing with another program, The WorkHealth Improvement Network (WIN).

At this point I should declare that I was involved with the evaluation of WorkHealth, described above, as well as the conceptualisation of WIN, and was a technical advisor to WIN for the past two years.

The theoretical underpinning of the WIN was based on three concepts:

1. The integrated approach
2. Continuous improvement – Specifically the (plan, do, study, act) methodology, described in health as ‘collaboratives’: small cycles of improvement, ‘permission to fail’
3. Partnership – Using already established networks of workplaces run by third parties to reach workplaces.

Three priority issues, considered to be influenced by a combination of work-related and non-work-related risk factors, were selected for the program: musculo-skeletal disorders, mental wellbeing and safety culture.

Manufacturing and health were selected as priority industries and the Victorian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (Victorian Chamber) and the Public Hospitals Network in the DHHS agreed to develop and manage the networks in their respective industry.

Through ISCRR, a research team drawn from the University of Melbourne and Monash University was appointed to provide information to assist workplaces with their improvement programs and address three evaluation questions for the program as a whole, related to:

• the optimal way for the integrated approach to advance OHS;
• what capacity must be built for sustainability; and
• the costs and benefits to employers and workers.

In three waves, 15 manufacturing worksites and 16 hospitals were recruited into the program.

The WIN learnings

On October 19, 2016, a function was held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground to celebrate the WIN program and to share learnings. For me it felt like I was looking at WHS in transition to the future.

Leaders from the three key partners: WorkSafe Victoria, Victorian Chamber and the DHHS, presented their views on the learnings from their experience; in addition several of the projects presented their conclusions.

Major learnings included:

• The changing nature of work and the rise of chronic disease is driving an evolution of prevention in worker health
• The integrated approach was seen as beneficial. It was agreed that the major selling point was the gains in terms of health, quality and productivity through an integrated approach to risk (work and non work health risks)
• The term ‘integrated approach’ had two meanings:

1. Integration of work-related and non work-related risk factors (the term holistic was often used as an alternative)
2. Integration of the work across various business units including safety, health promotion, human resources management and quality

• For the manufacturing industry, often (but not always) the integrated approach had been a means of building on a strong foundation of safety to tackle health issues, especially mental wellbeing
• For the health industry, which already has a consciousness of wellness, it had been used to improve the foundation of safety
• The methods of the program had led to, with positive results:

1. a broader engagement across business units and with staff than usually occurred
2. identification of issues of local relevance

• Learning from each other was valued at all levels:

1. central, through the partnerships
2. industry, exchange between the manufacturing and health networks
3. organisation (peer to peer within and between networks)

• Dealing with the regulator in a voluntary capacity had initially been of concern for many, but once boundaries were established, access to the expertise available at and through WorkSafe was valued
• Leadership was critical, especially for the establishment of goals and obtaining commitment for the resources required to run the projects in workplaces
• Readiness for the intervention was an issue that required further consideration – one dimension of this was whether the WHS program was sufficiently mature to provide a foundation for the integrated approach, another related to leadership, commitment and resourcing

Continuous improvement plus integrated approach

Further learnings (above) were:

• Introducing a continuous improvement methodology at the same time as the integrated approach had made the program complicated; however the idea of taking small steps in a safe to fail environment had been useful
• Overall workplaces liked having research reports for each of their workplaces, but more work was required on knowledge translation to improve its utilisation by them

Data is still being collected by the University of Melbourne and Monash University evaluation team, and the results are not due until after April next year.

Next steps

In the meantime:

• the Victorian Chamber is preparing case studies with the view to promulgation more broadly through their membership;
• WorkSafe is continuing to work with their Health Practice Team using this approach, and are looking to adopting the integrated approach for improving the health of their own staff; and
• the DHHS is looking forward to drawing on the partnership with WorkSafe and the Victorian Chamber in taking this approach to tackling occupational violence and bullying.

I, and my superannuation fund, have given myself another 20-25 years. So if I die before my Sydney apartment gets renovated, and at this stage that seems highly likely, at least I will be dying happy in the knowledge that 30 years after I first talked publicly about it, the integrated approach has seen the light of day of Australia.

In the words from Kylie Minogue’s Celebration, ‘It’s time to come together’.

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, 02 November 2016

Inside OHS Editor: Stephanie D’Souza; (02) 8587 7684; Stephanie.D’Souza@thomsonreuters.com

According to Safe Work Australia the cost of work-related injury and illness was $61.8 billion in 2012-13, which is 4.4% of GDP. We know work harms us, but how does it heal us?

The Australasian Faculty of Occupational and Environmental Medicine’s Realising the Health Benefits of Work statement says ‘worklessness’ is associated with increased death rates, including suicide, poorer physical and mental health and greater disability.

On the other hand, re-employment is associated with improvement to self-esteem, self-rated health, self-satisfaction and physical health. Although most policy statements now recognise that for recovery at work you need to return to good work.

At face value you might think that work improves our health by giving us a sense of purpose and relationships. We know a lot now about socio-organisational factors that are important for health in the workplace.

The UK Health and Safety Executive Stress Management Standards addresses six stressors: job demands, job control, support (encouragement and resources), relationships at work, role clarity and change management.

Is good, healing work simply the other side of the coin for these factors? You can make sense of that.

That means for healing work you would be looking for jobs that:

• Demand not too little and not too much of you;
• Give you discretion over the use of your skills in the job;
• Provide you with adequate support in terms of resources, training and help;
• Bring healthy relationships, and deal with conflict and unacceptable behaviours promptly;
• Have a clear understanding of your role, how it contributes to the organisational achievements and where there are no conflicts with other roles; and
• Exist in an environment where change is well managed and communicated.

But to me it doesn’t really answer the question how does good work heal you?

Health not merely the absence of disease: WHO

For that I turned to positive psychology.

Martin Seligman is usually considered the Father of this new discipline. In 1998, when he was the President of the American Psychology Association he proposed that the discipline of psychology needed to do more than address the ‘misery of mental illness’.

This echoes the World Health Organisation’s definition of health as physical, mental and social well-being, not just the absence of disease.

The discipline of health promotion has been trying to put flesh on the bones of that definition since the 1980s. The Ottawa Charter emerged from the first international conference on health promotion in 1986.

It stated that health promotion “creates living and working conditions that are safe, satisfying, stimulating and enjoyable”. Health promotion has always recognised that work plays an important role in health and wellbeing.

Sir Michael Marmot emphasised this in his leadership of the Social Determinants of Health Commission. In the Commission’s models the value of work, work that is fair as well as safe, is highlighted.

Something worth considering as we watch what has been going on with the 7 Eleven scandal.

On the ABC’s Q&A panel on poverty that aired on August 30, starring Sir Michael, it seemed to be a given that work was good for health and wellbeing.

Applying positive psychology to workplace health

Professor Anthony LaMontagne has proposed a model for mentally health workplaces which is based on the integrated approach.

By that I mean a holistic approach – considering the health of the worker as a whole – that combines occupational health and safety, workplace health promotion and human resources management.

I find this approach very useful and am using it to guide advice I give on mentally healthy workplaces.

There are three domains in this model: preventing harm; positive psychology and managing illness. La Montagne says it is early days in the application of positive psychology to workplace health, and I agree.

Seligman’s model of positive psychology, or as Keyes puts it what it takes to move people along the spectrum from mental illness to languishing to moderate mental health to flourishing, has seven elements:

1. Relationships;
2. Caring for others;
3. Exercise;
4. ‘Flow’ – tackling challenges confidently knowing you have the skills and resources to do so and then feeling the ‘flow’;
5. Spiritual engagement and meaning;
6. Knowledge of your strengths and virtues; and
7. Positive mind set – optimism, mindfulness and gratitude.

Thinking about how work might contribute to these factors I can see that work is a great place to form relationships and performance management systems, when working properly, would help you to understand your strengths and virtues. Good work should be all about creating opportunities for ‘flow’, and be meaningful.

Optimistic nuns aiming for heaven

I was speaking on this recently at The Womens’ Club in Sydney. It was a fantastic audience. When we got to optimism I was telling them about some of the early work on optimism and pessimism that was done on nuns.

Nuns were considered a good study population as, in the 1930s, they lived in stable communities with very similar exposures, for most of their lives. The nuns were assessed for optimism and pessimism and then decades later work was done to analyse differences in longevity.

It turns out optimistic nuns live ten years longer than pessimistic nuns. Caroline Baum, who was interviewing me in front of this audience, pulled me up, “But why would nuns be pessimistic, they all believe that heaven is awaiting them?”. I channelled a pessimistic nun’s response, “Heaven isn’t what it used to be”.

In trying to understand the healing powers of work, can the conceptual frameworks from the HSE stress management standards and the positive psychology approach be reconciled? Perhaps the very old definition of ergonomics helps here; our aim is to match work to man and each man to his job.

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, 12 September 2016

Inside OHS Editor: Stephanie D’Souza; (02) 8587 7684; Stephanie.D’Souza@thomsonreuters.com

Roseanne Barr, presumably in character on her eponymous sitcom, once said: “Excuse the mess, but we live here”.

With apologies to my many colleagues in rehabilitation provider firms, general practice, occupational medicine, insurance schemes and workplaces, that is the situation our complacency has got us into with regard to return to work (RTW).

According to the 2013/14 RTW Survey published by Safe Work Australia (SWA) there has been no improvement in our performance for more than 15 years. The proportion of injured workers in paid work 7-9 months after their injury has been steady at 84-87% for all this time.

That would be fine if system users were happy with this performance level – particularly those injured workers who are not back at work after 7-9 months. As it stands now, they will pay a high price both literally, in terms of loss of income, and figuratively, in terms of loss of health and wellbeing.

Signs are RTW set to improve

Fortunately, “mess is the material from which life and creativity are built” according to Ralph D Stacey, an expert in human organisations and their management.

My hunch is we are at a tipping point for renewed effort at improvement. There are new ideas and evidence swilling about. This was apparent at the excellent Northern Queensland RTW Conference run by the Queensland Government in Townsville in April this year.

I was invited to speak on ‘The Future of Return to Work’. I based my presentation on two things. First, the work Anne-Marie Feyer, Jane Palmer and I had done with the group life insurance industry for SuperFriend, the development of ‘A Best Practice Framework for the Management of Psychological Claims’ (it can be obtained here).

Secondly, my subsequent work as champion for the national, cross-sectoral ‘Collaborative Partnership for Work Participation’, in my capacity as Work for Health Advisor to Comcare.

My conclusions about the current state were:

• Compensation systems causing significant secondary harm, especially to mental health
• Treatment for mental health problems not evidence-based
• RTW support services not best practice
• Lack of improvement as measured by RTW indicators
• Confusion about GP, insurer, employer and rehab provider roles
• GPs slow to embrace health benefits of work messages
• Employers not buying message of ROI for early RTW/stay at work (SAW)
• Workers confused
• Workers’ compensation operates in a silo, but is impacted by and has impact on other parts of the work disability system.

My prediction for a desirable future state was:

• Empowered workers
• Employers and insurers work with the superannuation industry, insurance schemes and others to achieve better primary and secondary prevention
• GP, occupational physician, rehab provider, insurer and employer roles better defined for assessment and early intervention
• Evidence-based treatment and rehabilitation

Innovations from regulators to insurers

My further predictions (above):

Shift from claims processing to case management

Claims management semi-automated

Multi-stakeholder outcomes focus: client, insurer, employer, superannuation fund.

In recent months I have seen innovations in many of these areas: For instance, a smart rehabilitation provider is experimenting with the empowerment of workers through self management. I have also heard a life insurance company is taking a serious approach to implementing the Best Practice Framework. There has also been a productive collaboration between WorkSafe Victoria, VicHealth and SuperFriend on mentally healthy workplaces.

Meanwhile, SWA is looking at capitalising on inroads made by some jurisdictions in GP support by taking a national approach, and hopefully this will include addressing role clarity.

Also, many schemes (w/compensation and others) have been making efforts to shift claims management from tick-box processing to a more client-outcomes-focussed case management approach. While SA has an e-certificate for work capacity.

Employers crying out for evidence based guidance

While that is a list of just some of the signs of innovation, other ideas for the future identified from a literature review and from international innovation case studies are proving more challenging to address.

Consultations undertaken for the ‘Collaborative Partnership for Work Participation’ has shown employers have not really bought the argument of productivity gains associated with the Health Benefits of Work; they have residual concerns about early RTW and stay at work; and newer concerns about extending their responsibilities to wellness.

On the other hand they are crying out for evidence-based guidance on interventions for mentally healthy workplaces. We need to understand their views better and develop a new narrative for work participation based on the health benefits of work evidence.

Quality management of RTW services – there is a growing sense nationally that payers (in w/comp these can be schemes, insurers or employers) need to have better quality management frameworks for the rehabilitation and return to work services they buy. These must be driven by client outcome performance indicators, and should include incentives and disincentives for evidence-based interventions. Similarly payers should further develop their ability to incentivise evidence-based medical treatments.

We know that much of the treatments offered in mental health are not evidence-based. A leading expert told me this is likely to be as high as 60%. Strengthening outcome-based performance measurement is doable now, but working out what evidence-based treatments and return to work services are is more challenging.

The issue is not working out what the evidence is in relation to particular treatments or rehabilitation services commonly provided, as many schemes do this in an ad hoc way now; but working out a way that this evidence is kept up to date and on tap for policy makers.

There is great potential here for university/industry collaboration.

Triaging, taking into account clients’ real social and health outcomes

For me the biggest potential is the semi-automation of claims management. Triaging claims into those that are likely to resolve with minimal or no intervention, those requiring a bit more support and those requiring more intensive case management, has become common practice in the schemes that make up the work disability system as a whole.

However in many cases the triaging models are based on the data that the insurance schemes have readily available. We need triaging models that take into account the real social and health outcomes of their clients, as well as scheme outcomes; and we need to know that the risk factors used to develop the models are evidence based. For example, Canadian academic Renee-Louise Franche developed a model for recovery risks for musculoskeletal disorders and psychological injuries from research evidence in the literature and then worked with claims managers at WorkSafe British Columbia to develop a nine-question screening tool:

1. How are you doing?
2. Are you getting better/worse/staying the same?
3. How are you coping?
4. Who is supporting you through this at work and outside work?
5. If pain is identified rank the pain.
6. Tell me about your job? What is your job like?
7. Have you spoken with your employer?
8. When do you think you will return to work?
9. What is your regular healthcare provider telling you about your recovery and return to work? (Case study in Taking Action: A Best Practice Framework for the Management of Psychological Claims, see above link)

Automation of claims acceptance

There is huge potential to use big data to develop normative pathways for injuries of different types and levels of recovery risks. This would mean more automation of claims acceptance, allowing a more positive, trusting relationship with injured workers; and automation of claims management, with alerts for deviation from expected progression.

As one American software company said “it is like cloning your best claims manager”. Estelle Pearson, from the actuarial firm Finity, spoke at the Northern Queensland conference about the potential of big data to enable us to have better projections of claims and behaviours leading to claims.

For me though, when it comes to claims for psychological injury, the elephant in the room is the question: are we doing more harm than good?

Last year was the centenary of Einstein’s theory of relativity. He presented his theory to the Prussian Academy of Science on November 25, 1915. He of course is famous for saying, “insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. We can and must do better.

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, 06 July 2016

Inside OHS Editor: Stephanie D’Souza; (02) 8587 7684; Stephanie.D’Souza@thomsonreuters.com

Scott Spark emailed me in January when I was holidaying at the beach and asked me if I would agree to be interviewed for a new series he was doing for Radio National (RN) on work. Sounds interesting I thought, but not worth sacrificing good holiday time for, so I declined. Scott was happy to wait for my return.

In early February he sent me an email saying he was editing material on health and safety and thought there was an interesting tension between the effort industry was making to cut costs and its apparent willingness to spend increasing amounts of money on wellness. I was pretty impressed with that observation. He sent me a list of questions he was trying to answer.

These included:

• More workplaces are spending money on improvements to ‘wellness’ – where does this fit into work health and safety?;
• We live in an age of cost-cutting, which often means workers must do more with less. Then, on the other hand, you have this investment in ‘wellness’ of employees… things like plants, more natural light, standing desks, optional yoga classes. But do these things make up for the increased workloads?;
• Whose responsibility is it to ensure our health and safety at work?;
• What obligation do employees have to arrive at work in prime health? (I wonder if there’s a degree of intrusion here for some people… where it’s viewed as ‘unsafe’ if you come to work tired, sick, overweight, for instance?);
• To what extent is health and safety determined by whoever’s in charge?;
• When we go for a job, should we be asking a potential employer about their health and safety record?;
• And what about employers… is there anything they can look for in a potential employee that might help make their workplace healthier and safer?; and
• What would you say is the top thing we could do to improve health and safety at work?

To my mind Spark had really got to the heart of the transition workplace health and safety is going through. I asked for a brief chat on the phone before the interview to confirm the scope of the conversation.  Whilst happy to do this, he cut the conversation off as he was worried we were straying too far into the interview itself, and he wanted it to be fresh.

On the day of the interview, February 10, he was in Sydney and I was in the ABC’s Southbank studio. Despite him emailing them when I arrived nobody knew what I had arrived for. I figured Spark would be the one most anxious to sort this out as he had an hour of studio time booked, so I emailed him to let him know I was there and waited to be claimed.

Eventually I was. I was led through a maze of corridors with signs and names familiar to a RN listener like myself and introduced to Tony who operated the equipment on the other side of the glass from me. He settled me into my small room, more of a booth, with a glass of water, headphones and a microphone.

As always, I had worked out a set of talking points including facts and figures and some case studies, jotted down onto the index cards I prefer to use as aide memoirs.

I recalled the first time I had done a radio interview under the guidance of the new PR officer at the Tasmanian Department of Health.

Why prepare less for an interview than you would a lecture?

“How much time would you spend preparing to give a talk?” he had asked me. “Many hours” was the honest answer.  “How big is the audience when you are speaking face to face?” he then asked. One hundred, may be more, often less, was my reply.

“So why would you prepare any less for a radio interview which will reach tens of thousands, probably hundreds of thousands?”

That good advice, given thirty-four years ago, came from the man who was to become my husband. There were other things I liked about him, but I have to say having a free PR consultant on tap for the decades our marriage lasted hasn’t hurt my career!

We did a sound check. My performance voice is quite loud, I know. The director on the ABC television show ‘Stressbuster’ told me that, and the staff I have worked with in various organisations tell me I yell whenever I am on a teleconference.

I still cringe at the thought of the lunchtime address I gave at World Health Organisation headquarters in Manila where apparently I was so loud I almost damaged ear drums.

I think it might be genetic. As children my brother and I would often laugh about my Father who would answer the phone at home in his normal speaking voice, “25623 Frank Ellis speaking”, but if the call was for him he would immediately ramp it up to a sonic level, “WELL HELLO RON, HOW ARE YOU?”.

I didn’t feel nervous, as in a full blown ‘butterflies in the stomach’ feeling.

More of an arousal, a tension. And then Spark was on the line, and we had begun.

We talked for an hour. It was a proper conversation. He meandered along through some of the questions he had sent me, but also bounced off my answers.

I felt I was not being very clear on some points about the new ways of thinking emerging in workplace health and safety, where responsibility is shared.

I kept going, sometimes covering the same territory, trying to find a better way of saying it, knowing he would just pull out the best bits.

At the end he asked me a few questions about my own career, and when I told him how I got into occupational and public health he laughed and said “That is going straight in unedited.

The first tears for the show”, a reference to me describing myself crying in the 3E toilets at the Royal Hobart Hospital and realising clinical medicine was not for me.

‘Embarrassment leave’ potential

I always feel terrible after a radio or television interview. I am convinced I have made a fool of myself. In my first job in public health in Tasmania, I was the departmental spokesperson on HIV/AIDs. Early on I did an interview on the 7.30 Report, defending a video we had made for young people.

Afterwards I asked my boss if the public service had ‘Embarrassment Leave’.

That interview all those decades ago was fine, more than fine, but then, as now, I can never tell.

Spark said he would let me know when it was going to air, but he expected it to be in March sometime. On Sunday, March 27, I had this text exchange with a close friend, Caroline who is married to David.

C:  D is convinced you are on a RN teaser for a show about work, is he right?

Me: (Suddenly remembering the interview until then forgotten) Could be. I did an interview about a month ago

C: I lose bet then, it’s the way you say girlie apparently that is a dead giveaway

Me:  Golly, why am I saying girlie????? A worry

C:  You are mimicking/quoting a bloke. Don’t worry.

I look it up and find that three episodes of the series WorkLife have been posted, but not the one with me in it.

Don’t neglect the health benefits of work

Kevin Jones finds the episode before I do and emails it to me.  Neither of us had realised that each other had been interviewed, but we are both happy with the way it has turned out.

Except the title: ‘WorkLife:  Why is work making us sick’.

I tweet the link on Monday April 4, saying: “Good job Scott Spark @RadioNational on capturing modern WHS. Terrible title though, neglects health benefits of work.”

I am writing this now, five hours after I sent that tweet. I have just received an email from Scott Spark thanking me.

Advocacy is an important part of our work as WHS practitioners; if you get the chance to communicate about the benefits of investment in improving health and wellbeing, take it.

Think about your audience, hone your messages, and then come up with ways to illustrate these with examples from your experience. And be prepared to occasionally have to take Embarrassment Leave.

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, 08 June 2016

Inside OHS Editor: Stephanie D’Souza; (02) 8587 7684; Stephanie.D’Souza@thomsonreuters.com