SAWB - Reframing to Systemic Perspectives

This episode summarises a SafetyAtWorkBlog article exploring a quiet but significant shift in occupational health and safety thinking — away from blaming individual workers and towards examining the systems that shape how work is designed and managed. Drawing on ideas from a recent US book about wealth, power and responsibility, the script contrasts “individual framing” with “systemic framing,” arguing that many workplace harms, especially psychological harm, are driven by organisational incentives, business models and power structures rather than personal failings. It challenges the rise of the workplace wellbeing industry, questions who benefits when safety is treated as an individual problem, and calls for OHS professionals to look higher up the system to identify the real sources of risk.