WhyWork Podcast

WhyWork Podcast

di Alan Girle, Trajce Cvetkovski, & Sara Pazell

Amministrazione Scienze sociali

Stagione 7

S07 Bonus 01: Re-Release: Spirit Animals

Season 07 Bonus o1 - Re-Release Episode - a little frivolty to start the new year. What is your Spirit Animal?. The river otter, the wise owl, and the transformation of a deer to a stag and back again. When ‘fuzzy science’ can be meaningful in terms of personality profiles, values, and our behaviours. Why not have fun and reflect on who we are, how we are, and why? This episode reveals more intimate details about the mugs from backwater Brissie: Trajce, Alan, and Sara.

S07 Trailer 03: We're back to unpack

Season 07 Trailer 03: We're back to unpack - Botox, s3x offences, Bollywood dancing, and work from home topics are on their way to your listening ear.

S07 Trailer 02: Reflections before we return to unpack more about workplace realities

Season 07 Trailer 02: A teaser on the exploration of the entertainment industry and issues of principal contractors managing subcontractors - it all blows up when there is a fatality.

S07 Trailer 01: Botox and Bollywood

Season 07 Trailer 01: Botox and Bollywood, a teaser on more to follow in WhyWork Season 07.

Stagione 6

S06 E15: Turbulence on the ground

Season 06 Episode 15: Turbulence on the ground WARNING: we discuss a passenger fatality - listener discretion advised. Thank you to subscriber, Grace Kennedy, for suggesting this topic. Grace described her experience in the airport arrivals lounge when passengers headed down an escalator to collect their luggage. The passenger congestion was significant, causing a pile up so severe that this led to people back pedalling on the escalator, attempting to walk backward to return to the floor above. “Airports are busy, and this would not be the first time to consider cranky travellers,” remarks Alan. Trajce talks about the themes of crowd control, egress, and the escalator pile on. Sara reflects on the human behavioural aspects of rushing because of a need to compete and win, fulfilling the need for status, and the complex chain of responsibilities in airport management. Trajce asks, “Who owns the problem?” while Sara continues to discuss airport design. Trajce references a story of a death of a passenger who died from natural causes but challenged the work activities.

S06 E14: From the club to the courtroom

Season 06 Episode 14: From the club to the courtroom WARNING: This episode includes refences to both sex and suicide - listener discretion advised. Trajce presents a judgement from the United Kingdom involving a lawyer hiring a law student as his legal secretary. The confronting aspect of this scenario? They first met in a strip club where she worked as a stripper to fund her studies. “This reeks of people and power. In this scenario,” probes Sara, “does this lawyer think that he can ask anything of his personal assistant?” Trajce shares more details: in the interview, the lawyer refers to himself as a "God" and the woman as his "obedient slave creature." “Oh, you can’t do that,” deplores Alan, “even if it is intended as a joke.” Sara references this to the episode S04 E08: The archaic adage of deserving a good spanking. The team discuss work culture and impact, including the news of an Australian worker who committed suicide allegedly based on work demands.

S06 E13: From underwear to underworld: Criminal ties

Season 06 Epsiode 13: From underwear to underworld: Criminal ties WARNING: This episode includes sexual references - listener discretion is advised. Trajce jokes about purchasing a pair of Tradie’s underwear, a discussion thread continuing from Season 05 Episode 04. Trajce wonders if ads like this offend peoples' sensibilities. Alan responds, “There will not be many situations in a workplace when you would contemplate showing a video of people in their underwear.” Sara asserts that context matters, arguing “You can’t judge an event for infinity – the spirit of the times matters, the ‘zeitgeist’.” Alan reassures her, “You’re exactly right – context matters.” Alan probes Sara’s crime connection and she shares a few stories…. Including past generation Mafioso bootlegging connections, FBI shoot-outs, and current family friends.

S06 E12: It's going SWM'ingly

Season 06 Episode 12: It's going SWM'ingly The podcasters, Trajce, Alan, and Sara, discuss the conventions of establishing Safe Work Method Statements (SWMS). Alan likens SWMS to mythology, rigorously enforced from powers that be, though he believes that the legal doctrine supporting them is unclear. Alan asks, “Do they really work?” Trajce shares his research on breaches of work health and safety law, including fatal events. “In these cases,” he reveals, “90% of the defendants presented a SWMS – 517 cases, in fact.” In these cases, the SWMS were either not followed, not well considered or constructed, or work simply changed and the workers were confronted by unexpected events. “These ‘unexpected events’ are customary,” remarks Sara, “not unusual.” “To sink or swim?” she asks. Trajce uses the phrase, “The Holy Grail of SWMS.” They continue this thread of debate, wondering if a document is well prepared, have organisations helped transfer that embedded knowledge into the minds and operations of people who do the work, while establishing systems to continue to learn from the many work variations that arise in daily routines. Sara leverages this debate to bolster support for the WhyWork Workshop build-your-own sponsored podcast and interactive workshops. These workshops are designed for industry and organisations wishing to dive into resilience engineering, reliability thinking, and contingency planning, using case law and work re-design strategies.

S06 E11: The collective sighs - let's talk about s-X, baby

Seaon 06 Episode 11: The collective sighs - let's talk about s-X, baby Let’s talk about…. sex as a primal survival urge. The WhyWork Podcast reflect on their debate about the Australian Tradie’s underwear ads discussed in Season 05 Episode 04. Sara makes a joke about performance drivers much to the chagrin of the boys, when Trajce quotes a Talking Heads lyric, “We’re on the road to nowhere…” Sara explains primal inner-mammal neurobehavioural drivers of human activity, philosophies advanced by researcher Dr Loretta Breuning , and the ways in which these ideas are used in gaming technology, could improve road safety compliance, and can advance work design strategies. Alan loves the linguistics with words like ‘ontological framework’ and ‘salutogenesis’ and Trajce expounds on these ideas because of his interests in social science. “Your mind works like a prism,” Trajce remarks, “while my mind is like a kaleidoscope.”

S06 E10: Moooo – It’s a stampede!

Season 06 Episode 10: Moooo – It’s a stampede! WARNING: A fatality is discussed in this episode – listener discretion is advised. Country boy Alan shares a story about cows in Wales. In this case, a cow went haywire while farm workers offloaded it from its transit vehicle to a pen. The cow was agitated, jumped off its ramp, killing a 75 y/o farmworker, and injuring another man. “Can you keep the cattle calm?” begs Trajce. They team dissect the case, remarking on the lack of enclosures and barriers as restraints on the spooked bovine creature. This case prompts Trajce to recall one of his prosecutions involving cows at night. “Like SpongeBob SquarePants who does not like taking the trash out at night,” he explains, “these cows get spooked at night. These are live, heavy beasts, not just doughy-eyed innocent creations." Sara, in contrast, shares some cute and marvellous cow stories including stumbling upon the birth of a calf. Trajce remarks, “Well, wasn’t’ that a buckin’ excellent story?” Alan remains on point with stories of tragic circumstances in the case of a fall from heights - a rigger who fell from a hanger on a movie set, while the team debate the merits of fall prevention, protection, and arrest in work design.

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