The era of top down communication is dead and, it was observed in discussion, governments have not yet come to terms with this fairly dramatic change with huge implications for policy development.

For us in workplace health and safety (WHS) it means the days of thinking that developing and issuing a guidance note is an effective way to spend our time and money are well and truly over.

Meanwhile our colleagues in public health have been grappling with “systems thinking”. This has been in response to the development of knowledge on the social determinants of health – the recognition that health outcomes, such as obesity, are complex.. This is due to a myriad of interacting health risks (and opportunities) arising from personal and social and physical environmental factors.

Adjunct Professor, Institute for Safety, Compensation and Recovery Research and Department of Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine, Monash University

First published in Thomson Reuters Inside OHS, the supplement to Occupational Health News, February 2015

Recently a board of which I am a member had a planning day. We had an excellent presentation by David Chalke from AustraliaSCAN about the future, including the loss of faith in institutions, something that is happening now, and that we can expect to see more of.

Instead of taking advice from governments, business leaders, unions and others, Australians determine their attitudes and beliefs from sources they have chosen to follow, reinforced by ‘friends’ around them.

In consideration of the number of ‘friends’, Chalke made reference to Dunbar’s number. 1990s anthropologist Robin Dunbar proposed that there was a correlation between average brain size and the average social group size in primates.

According to this theory, extrapolating from research in primates and relating it to human brain size it turns out that the number of stable relationships we are capable of sustaining is between 100 and 250, and 150 is usually adopted – Dunbar’s number.. Groups greater than 250 “require more restrictive rules, laws, and enforced norms to maintain a stable, cohesive group“.

I am giving the keynote on this subject at the National Public Sector Health, Safety and Wellbeing Conference being run by Liquid Learning in Canberra on Tuesday 18th November.

I am going to be saying that new approaches to mental health in the workplace are going to change the way we think about workplace health and safety, at last. It will be the driver for a shift to an integrated approach to worker health. Tony La Montagne’s model of preventing harm, promoting the positive and managing illness is a useful one, and whilst we have some way to go with understanding promoting the positive, there is a sufficient evidence base for preventing harm, managing illness and the integrated approach to worker health to make a start.

Here is a link to the presentation: Public Sector Conference 17/11/14 and a link to a benchmarking tool for mentally healthy workplaces I have adapted from the Canadian National Standard, a recent Comcare guide and people@work Benchmarking Tool Sept 2014.