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<\/p>\nLast month we made the trip to Adelaide for the AIHS National Health and Safety Conference. It is always a highlight on our calendar, and this year delivered on every front. Here is what stood out.<\/p>\n
One of the biggest conversations of the conference was the cognitive load AI is placing on people and teams. Workload, pace and operational demands can shift how decisions are made across an organisation very quickly, and AI is accelerating all three. The profession is starting to grapple with what that means for decision quality, fatigue and risk. This conversation is only getting louder, and safety leaders need to be in it early.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Michael Tooma’s presentation on psychosocial leadership was a standout. The last five years have seen a surge in focus on psychosocial hazards. Regulations now require organisations across Australia to identify and control them, and significant penalties have been handed down to those that have failed to act.<\/p>\n
Tooma’s argument was simple and sharp: psychosocial risk is no longer a novel issue, but too many organisations are still treating it as a compliance exercise. The real work is reframing it as a leadership issue. Compliance gets you to the starting line. Leadership is what actually shifts outcomes.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
Back for its second year, the Great Safety Debate was once again a crowd favourite. Sharp arguments, strong opinions and the kind of robust discussion the profession needs more of.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
The panel discussion on the evolving identity of the safety leader, led by Jane Bourke, Julie Willis and Deirdre Lewis, was another highlight. As the profession matures, the capabilities required at the top are changing: commercial acumen, influence, and the ability to lead through complexity are moving from nice-to-have to non-negotiable. For those of us recruiting HSEQ leaders every day, this conversation confirmed what we are seeing in the market.<\/p>\n
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<\/p>\n
It was also the first conference where I have been taken for a 200 km\/h hot lap. Adelaide knows how to put on a show.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Last month we made the trip to Adelaide for the AIHS National Health and Safety Conference. It is always a highlight on our calendar, and this year delivered on every front. Here is what stood out. AI and cognitive overload took centre stage One of the biggest conversations of the conference was the cognitive load…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":801,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"none","footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-798","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blogs"],"acf":[],"post_author_name":"","post_authors_type":"","post_authors_from_team_members":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=798"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":810,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/posts\/798\/revisions\/810"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media\/801"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=798"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=798"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sundstromrecruitment.com.au\/af-api\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=798"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}