Business Pulse July 2016

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WONDER WARDS

INSIDE FIONA STANLEY HOSPITAL

SWEET SPOT

HAVE A BUSINESS AND A LIFE

KASHIF SALEEM

TRACK STAR

How finding lost materials launched a start-up success Print Post Approved No. 100004175 ISSN 1328-2689

CCI – now supporting more than 9,000 Members JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 1

HELLO

HELLO TO SOME OF CCI’S NEWEST MEMBERS

INVision Investigations and Consulting Jane Wyllie Director/Principal Investigator

Stealth Global Industries David Legg General Manager - Business Development

Preston Rowe Paterson Perth (PRP Perth) Cam Sharp Managing Director

INVision is a market leader in the conduct of workplace investigations, workplace reviews and consultation.

We are a global supply company specialising in safety, healthcare and optical, industrial (MRO, automotive and drilling) and workplace products.

T (08) 9319 9968

T (08) 6465 7800

E jane@inv.com.au

E sales@stealthgi.com

W www.inv.com.au

W www.stealthgi.com

PRP is an international property consultancy practice providing valuations, advisory, research and due diligence for all types of real estate.

T (08) 9287 2121 E perth@prp.com.au W www.prp.com.au

Law Central Co Pty Ltd Mario Surjan National Business Development and Marketing Manager Online legal documents.

T (08) 9476 4900 E support@lawcentral.com.au W www.lawcentral.com.au

Quality Builders Pty Ltd John Hearne General Manager/Director Quality Builders is a local and regional builder that provides excellence in transportable/modular construction.

T (08) 9454 9700

CCI OFFERS EXPOSURE TO A WIDE RANGE OF BUSINESS TYPES

E johnh@qualitybuilders.com.au W www.qualitybuilders.com.au

Multiplier Heidi Cuthbert Managing Partner We are a content marketing company with specialist expertise in digital strategy. Cleverly created, well-timed content has a multiplier effect.

M 0411 272 366

WE JOINED CCI TO EXPAND OUR BUSINESS NETWORKS AND LEARN FROM MENTORS ABOUT HOW TO GROW A SUCCESSFUL BUSINESS

E heidi.cuthbert@multiplier.com.au W www.multiplier.com.au

To find out how you can advertise your business in Business Pulse:

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(08) 9365 7544

advertising@cciwa.com

CONTENTS A NOTE FROM THE EDITOR CARRIE COX

Business Pulse Editor

“W

ithout good health, we actually don’t have much,” writes Assistant Minister for Health and Aged Care Ken Wyatt in this health-themed edition of Business Pulse.

Health is not only our biggest and arguably most important sector of public service, accounting for 24 cents in every dollar collected from Australian taxpayers, but it’s also a thriving sector for business and presents enormous untapped opportunities for future innovators. And of course we can’t do business – indeed we can’t do much at all – if we’re not in good health ourselves.

In this edition we’ve looked at health in both the macro and micro senses: as an industry (read about our exclusive tour of Fiona Stanley Hospital on p10) and as a vital human element within any business. Beyond health, there is plenty within these pages to inspire and inform businesses and organisations across every sector. It was particularly rewarding this month to interview the subject of our cover story, Kashif Saleem, whose personal tale of perseverance, sacrifice and innovation captures the essence of why anyone goes into business in the first place (p8).

Many thanks to those readers who’ve shared with us their experiences and observations regarding ice use in WA workplaces. Last month’s special edition generated an unprecedented response from the business sector and the wider community about this deadly issue and highlighted the need for all sectors to unite in the fight against ice.

Please email editor@cciwa.com

JULY 2016

IN THIS EDITION

03 04 06 08 10 14 16 17 18 19 21 23 24 26 28 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 39 40

CEO message The Guide In brief Kashif Saleem’s inspiring innovation story Inside Fiona Stanley Hospital Can business owners have a life too?

Good news on the breast cancer front Responding to mental health issues Pre-employment health checks Ken Wyatt on the state of health Lithium shines bright in red dust North-west tour inspires confidence Innovation in shipbuilding Meet Sue – the adviser to advisers Q&A: Ask the experts The business of bad language Do you need a social media policy?

Book Look Leadership: are you getting it right?

We’ve moved 2 minutes down the street!

Coach’s Corner The latest in WA research Message from a CCI Member Winners are grinners Five world-changing health inventions Published monthly by Chamber of Commerce and Industry of Western Australia (Inc) 180 Hay Street, East Perth WA 6004 T (08) 9365 7555 F (08) 9365 7550 E info@cciwa.com www.cciwa.com President Agu Kantsler

MyLeave has a new home. You’ll now find us at Level 3, 50 Colin Street, West Perth.

Our phone and postal details remain unchanged. That’s a big thumbs up! www.myleave.wa.gov.au

Editor Carrie Cox (08) 9365 7459 editor@cciwa.com

Chief Executive Officer Deidre Willmott Graphic Designer Katie Addison (08) 9365 7518 katie.addison@cciwa.com

Advertising sales Paula Connell (08) 9365 7544 advertising@cciwa.com

Disclaimer: This information is current at 1 July 2016. CCI has taken all reasonable care in preparing this information, however, it is provided as a guide only. You should seek specific advice from a CCI adviser before acting. CCI does not accept liability for any claim which may arise from any person acting or refraining from acting on this information. Reproduction of any CCI material is not permitted without written authorisation from the General Manager, Corporate Affairs. © Copyright CCI. All rights reserved.

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SECTOR NEEDS SCRUTINY A MESSAGE FROM THE CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER

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estern Australia’s world-leading health sector has a proud history operating at the forefront of life-changing health care innovations.

From Professor Fiona Woods’ spray-on skin, to a smartphone app that tells users which emergency room has the shortest wait time, to robot-assisted surgery at Fiona Stanley Hospital – West Australians continue to break new ground in patient care and technologies that benefit the global community.

The health of the health care industry has major implications for the wellbeing of the state’s economy. WA Health alone employs more than 44,000 people and State Government expenditure on health services will reach $8.6 billion in 2016-17 – an increase of nearly $400 million from 2015-16.

unsustainable rate, putting undue pressure on the already strained public purse.

If we want future generations to enjoy the same level of quality care and cutting-edge innovation we have been privileged to experience, the state must apply some private-sector thinking to the public health care system to ensure the system doesn’t experience a budget crisis.

At a minimum, CCI encourages the State Government to persevere with the WA health system’s transition to the national pricing scheme. Beyond this, CCI has identified a number of areas where greater efficiencies could be achieved without compromising health care outcomes.

To begin with, cost inconsistencies throughout WA’s health system should be reviewed urgently. A 2014

STATE GOVERNMENT EXPENDITURE ON HEALTH SERVICES WILL REACH $8.6 BILLION IN 2016-17 While this is an improvement on the nine per cent per year growth rate averaged over the last decade, it’s important to note the 2016-17 increase in health spending still outstrips anticipated growth in WA’s population and CPI. In other words, government spending on health continues to grow at an

Grattan Institute report found WA hospitals have on average around $1000 worth of avoidable costs per admission, with significant cost discrepancies between major hospitals for the same procedures – for example, the cost of a gall bladder removal in WA can range from $4200 to $8000, depending on the facility.

A National Health Performance Authority report also found WA has some of the most costly hospitals in the country – Sir Charles Gardiner Hospital and Rockingham General Hospital were both identified as having some of the highest costs in Australia. WA also has the third highest number of allied health professionals of all Australian jurisdictions. Queensland and New South Wales have significantly higher populations than WA, yet have fewer allied health professionals per 100,000 people.

The reasons for all of these cost discrepancies should be further investigated to find where gaps could be reduced and efficiencies could be achieved.

There is also an enormous opportunity for greater engagement between the private and public health care systems.

A 2015 Productivity Commission report found nearly 25 per cent of patients who attended a hospital emergency department (ED) thought the care they received could have been provided at a general practice.

If general practitioners assumed a greater role in supporting the WA health system by assisting patients before they present to EDs, it would reduce the burden on the public hospital system. This could be achieved by encouraging more GP services to co-locate alongside public hospitals.

Most importantly, there should be further harmonisation between the public and private systems through public private partnerships (PPPs), such as those already operating successfully at

Joondalup and Midland health campuses. PPPs could also allow for some shared costs, reduced duplication of services, facilities and equipment, and improved recruitment and training outcomes.

In addition, privately insured patients presenting in EDs should be transferred to the private system wherever possible to reduce the strain on public hospital resources and respect individual choice. Co-location between private and public hospitals could also enable public patients to be treated in private hospitals under short-term contracting arrangements, which can in turn assist public hospitals during surges in demand.

While social wellbeing and economic growth are often viewed as separate outcomes that require separate policy solutions, there is in fact a clear link between the wellbeing of the community and a thriving and prosperous business sector.

If WA is to continue to provide the very best in health care services, it’s vital we support our dynamic health sector in finding new ways to innovate and drive efficiencies that will deliver the best outcomes for both consumers and the economy. ¢

Deidre Willmott Chief Executive Officer

TO GET INVOLVED: cciwa.com @CCI_CEO

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JULY 2016

THE GUIDE 1. North West

Resources Tour 23 - 27 MAY 2016 The annual CCI North West Resources Tour took delegates on an exclusive tour of WA’s – and Northern Territory’s – major resources projects, helping delegates understand the true significance of WA’s resources industry, according to CCI Chief Operating Officer Lindsay O’Sullivan.

“Participating in this trip confirms how important the resources sector is for all Australians and how clever those in the industry and the communities they operate in are,” O’Sullivan says.

The tour began with visits to remote operations centres in Perth CBD before travelling to local projects in Karratha and finally Darwin. ¢

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2. Roundtable with James Pearson 2 JUNE 2016 Former CCI CEO and current chief executive of the Australian Chamber of Commerce and Industry (ACCI) James Pearson briefed CCI Members in an exclusive roundtable at 180 Hay Street last month.

Pearson shared ACCI’s priorities for business in the upcoming Federal Election, which are centred on regaining Australia’s global competitive advantage. ACCI has outlined 10 steps it says will help Australia become a top 10 country in the Global Competitive Index within 10 years.

ACCI’s commitments focus on strengthening Australia’s biggest weaknesses for the business sector: innovation, tax and workplace relations. ¢

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3. ‘Ice Land’:

campaign launch

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Last month’s CCI investigation into the effects of the drug ice in WA workplaces sparked national media coverage. CEO Deidre Willmott addressed WA’s leading television, print and radio journalists at a press conference at CCI’s head office where she spoke about the devastating effect of the drug on WA businesses.

Willmott said CCI will advocate for leniency in the Fair Work Act to assist employers in their bid to deal with employees who may be abusing the deadly drug. ¢

To register your interest in receiving more information about any of our 2016 events, please email functions@cciwa.com 4 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

JULY 2016

SAVE THE DATE:

4. Breakfast

with the Federal Treasurer

CCI HR Conference

8 JUNE 2016

22 SEPTEMBER 2016, PAN PACIFIC Go to cciwa.com/events

“The best form of welfare is a job,” Federal Treasurer Scott Morrison told 250 WA business people at a breakfast in the Hyatt Regency last month.

Morrison said he looks at the business community as the primary driver of the welfare of the nation and he encourages businesses to get behind the Government’s ‘Path Program’ – a threephase program that helps young unemployed people get real-work experience.

The Treasurer was excited to see small businesses’ innovative spirit as he travelled around on his campaign trail.

“I’m incredibly impressed by their agility,” Morrison said. “They are sniffing out every opportunity.” ¢

6. Farewell

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CCI CEO Deidre Willmott acknowledged retired Chevron CEO Roy Krzywosinski’s contribution to the WA business community last month. ¢

5. CCI Economic and Innovation Breakfast

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9 JUNE 2016 “Growth in the 21st century will come from knowledge.”

This was Commonwealth Government Chief Economist Mark Cully’s hot tip as he discussed Australia’s past and bright future at CCI’s ninth annual economic breakfast.

Cully said Australia’s resources sector is a global leader in innovation and the economy continues to benefit from Asia’s proximity.

“The world’s centre of gravity has pivoted – it has turned away from the Atlantic and towards our region,” Cully said.

“We have created a worldclass and highly innovative resources sector and our integration with Asia has rapidly expanded cross-border flows in goods, services, capital, people and ideas.” ¢

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WHAT’S ON THIS MONTH 12 JULY The human element of health and safety will be top of the agenda at CCI’s OSH Hotspot. Experts will share tips on how to manage staff – safely and fairly – while meeting OSH obligations.

13 JULY Real estate business owners are invited to the REEFWA Conference at CCI to hear from experts in the fields of employee relations and safety on the topics of leadership and operations.

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IN BRIEF

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF...

EMMETT MCMAHON, SENIOR CONSULTANT, SAFE AT WORK

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afe at Work Director Pauline Fletcher met Emmett McMahon through a mutual friend on Facebook. After a number of years of friendship, Fletcher, who has a background in the mining industry, enlisted UK-based McMahon to help her turn her passion for safety into a business venture.

McMahon relocated to Perth 18 months ago and is now a senior consultant at the Welshpool company, which offers small-to-medium businesses an alternative to hiring a full-time safety manager.

Safe at Work creates tailormade safety

management systems and McMahon says its diverse client base enables creativity and agility.

The consulting team gathers each morning for a ‘power hour’ to discuss plans for the day, week and month ahead and ensure each client is receiving the attention they need.

“When we have a client who has a very special operation, it’s important to understand the nuances of it,” McMahon says. “Rather than just ticking the standard safety management boxes, we look at the specific risks of each site – each event and each task.”

The Safe at Work team is on call 24 hours a day because many industries don’t fit neatly into working hours.

The company’s biggest challenge, McMahon says, is to sell safety as an asset, not a burden.

“Endless research demonstrates

that safety will save you money,” he says.

“Our clients have full days just trying to run their businesses so they don’t want to be burdened with safety.

“What we say is, give us your safety and we’ll keep you safe and legal.”

Beyond safety, this is a company that focuses on networking and on building a community in which their clients refer business among themselves.

“Due to the size of our business and the size of our clients’ businesses, we rely a lot on word of mouth and we’ve started to put different businesses in touch with each other,” McMahon says.

“They’ve been very open to the idea of talking to other clients if we can think of a way they can work together or give business to each other.” ¢

NEW APP EASES EMERGENCIES An Australian-first smartphone app invented in WA will take some of the stress out of visiting hospital emergency departments by advising real-time travel times and waiting periods.

Innovation Minister Bill Marmion says the app – called WA ED – can tell users which emergency department has the shortest waiting time at any one moment.

Marmion says the app is a prime example of the potential for innovation through the Government’s ‘Open Data Policy’, which makes data available for public use.

WA ED is available from the Apple and Android app stores.

LESSONS LEARNT Ray Loh, General Manager, West Australian Power Protection Growing up I learnt … The middle child syndrome is very real. To stand out, I always had to strive harder. It has made me more resilient and determined.

From my family I learnt … Everyone develops in their own time. I am proudest of my two beautiful daughters. I may have pushed them a bit hard, but I have learnt they will surprise you with their abilities in time. Get them to help out around the house from a young age.

This applies in the workplace too. Empower your staff and delegate work according to their strengths. You can’t possibly do everything yourself.

LEADERS HAVE TO ACT MORE QUICKLY TODAY. THE PRESSURE COMES MUCH FASTER

The most valuable lesson I learnt in life so far … An ex-boss taught me that perseverance is key. If at first you don’t succeed, keep persisting (albeit with a different tack if need be).

Andy Groves, the Nazi occupancy survivor who went on to found and lead Intel Corporation. He died this year, aged 79.

A small but crucial lesson to learn is … Count your blessings, not your problems.

Whatever travails I face in life, I just have to remember of how lucky my family and I are compared to those living in poverty or in conflict zones.

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This year I’ve learnt … There was a study done that linked climate change to increased lightning strikes and intensity – good for our lightning protection business but not so good for the environment.

One lesson I wish I had learnt earlier … “Luck is when opportunity meets preparation” is such a true idiom that I now live by. I was quite the introvert when I was younger, but by getting out of my comfort zone to hone my skills and knowledge and by going out of my way to help others while also expanding my network, more and more doors open.

IN BRIEF

CALLING WA’S TOP EXPORTERS The 2016 WA Industry and Export Awards are now open for applications.

Now in their 28th year, the awards provide national and international exposure for winners and finalists.

WA Commerce Minister Michael Mischin says the state has a plethora of businesses worthy of an award.

“There are many diverse and dynamic businesses in WA which are excelling in their respective sectors and these awards acknowledge their hard work and talent,” Mischin says.

The award categories cross a number of sectors, including manufacturing, agribusiness, education and training, marketing and design, minerals and energy, engineering, health and biotechnology, and digital technologies.

Two new categories have been introduced this year: WA Women in International Business and WA Emerging Exporter.

WA winners of the export categories automatically become finalists at the Australian Export Awards, where the state has enjoyed a good record of success.

Applications close on 1 August and finalists will be announced on 8 September. For more information, visit exportawards.com.au/wa

$31.58 MILLION Australia golfer Jason Day’s income for the past financial year. He’s made Forbes’ Sports Rich List for the first time.

THE STORY: SOCIAL MEDIA V PRODUCTIVITY

You might not ‘like’ Facebook use by staff, but a little scrolling won’t kill your business

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“IN INTRODUCING RESTRICTIONS, YOU NEED TO ENSURE THEY DON’T BACKFIRE BY SENDING A SIGNAL THAT YOU DON’T TRUST YOUR PEOPLE” Sinead Taylor, Bankwest EGM

TBA

YOU ARE THE HR MANAGER HOW WOULD YOU HANDLE THIS SCENARIO? You’ve just been shown AN email chain from an employee saying “Boss, my anxiety is really bad.

I am going to head home.”

The email is a few weeks old and appears to have gone unaddressed. This is the first you’ve heard of the employee’s situation.

What do you do?

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38%

The pay gap between Australian men and women, as reported to the ATO.

ore than half the nation’s smalland medium-size businesses are blocking – or intend to block – employee access to social media sites in order to boost productivity, but could they be shooting themselves in the foot?

An international research team has produced a paper suggesting that when it comes to Facebook in the workplace, a little bit can go a long way. “A moderate amount of personal social media can spur creativity and give workers an outlet for their stress,” the researchers says. “It’s especially important for young people in dull, unfulfilling jobs who were expecting something more exciting.”

Of course, too much social media will make people unproductive and alienated from their job, so what’s the magic tipping point? Study author Jhony Ng says he can’t quite define the threshold, but he knows it when he sees it.

Of the Australian businesses blocking social media access, a quarter exclude management from the restrictions, according to Bankwest’s 2016 Business Productivity Report. ¢

NVESTIGATE. Speak with the supervisor and relevant management. Has the issue already been dealt with verbally?

Have issues been handled in a manner that is consistent with company mental health policies and procedures? Are there records?

What is causing the anxiety – is it workrelated or personal? Could work pressures be exacerbating an underlying illness? Has an injury/illness management plan been put in place? Have HR and safety personnel been involved?

All these questions and more will need to be answered. The supervisor’s omission

is possibly evidence of conduct that has the potential to exacerbate an existing illness or injury. In some cases, this could lead to claims for workers’ compensation. Employers need to be just as alert to mental health warning signs as they are to overt safety concerns. The cited email should have been considered a deafening call for aid. Employees, particularly those in managerial positions, should be made aware of warning signs and the appropriate steps they are required to take when someone needs help. This should give you pause for thought: how do you manage mental health in your organisation? ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN E SS PU L SE 7

COVER STORY

THE GOODS

As rags-to-riches tales go, they don’t come much better than the story of WA’s 2015 Innovator of the Year

CARRIE COX

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t reads like a movie moment: self-made entrepreneur moves his burgeoning business into the same CBD offices he used to clean to pay his way through university.

It gets better: he’s a migrant who came here with just $500 in his bank account, no family, no friends, no English – 17 years later he wins WA’s Innovator of the Year Award before a packed house at the State Reception Centre.

This is the story of Kashif Saleem, whose company Track’em is set to be publicly listed later this year. Not just a wonderful human story of the power of persistence and determination, Saleem’s tale puts real meat onto the bones of the ‘innovation revolution’ being touted as WA’s path out of resource dependence.

In fairness, Saleem’s product – a software tracking system to manage assets on large projects – owes a great deal to the resource sector. It was while working as a FIFO IT specialist on FMG’s Cloudbreak site that Saleem first told others in the industry about the invention

he’d been quietly working on.

While sceptical at first, the site’s project manager took a chance on Track’em, a decision that gave Saleem ‘first mover advantage’ and his pivotal sliding door.

“I was sub-contracting to a contractor who was subcontracting to another contractor, so I was really bottom of the chain,” Saleem says with a smile.

“I said to the project manager ‘So … I’ve built this thing ...’”

‘This thing’ had been inspired by an earlier conversation with a colleague who’d mentioned to Saleem how the loss of equipment had become a major cost issue on his site. “He said ‘We just keep losing stuff’ and I couldn’t believe when he started to paint the picture,” Saleem recalls. “It costs millions of dollars in downtime when you don’t have the right equipment ready at the right time – you’ve got contractors standing around costing $150 an hour each with nothing to do because you can’t locate that custom-made piece of pipe or

whatever it is. These are multimillion dollar projects in which asset control comes down to a few spreadsheets and manual handling. I immediately thought if no-one’s doing this, I will try to build a software solution.”

The then project manager at Cloudbreak, Neil Tregea, assuaged his wariness about putting asset management into the hands of a sub-sub-sub contract worker by agreeing to Saleem’s proposal: that FMG would use Track’em for free for two years provided Saleem retained IP and copyright of the software.

“Kashif’s idea was state of the art at that time and he listened to our experience and further refined Track’em along the lines of our specific construction needs and requirements for this particular project,” Neil recalls. “Kashif used to work through the night to satisfy our requests so that the Track’em system was available at commencement of shift in the morning. I recall this occurred a few times. Not many people would

COVER STORY

Track’em at work

I COULD WRITE BOOKS ON THE MISTAKES I’VE MADE, BUT FORTUNATELY I HAVEN’T MADE THE SAME MISTAKE AGAIN have such dedication to assist any project to that degree.”

That was 2007 and Saleem remains forever grateful for the opportunity afforded to him

by FMG. “I was able to spend a lot of time with different people to understand what their requirements are – from the managers through to those receiving and using materials – pretty much the whole supply chain to understand their pain points,” Saleem says. “The product ultimately proved itself and I think its biggest success was that it was built for the end user.

“People who left Cloudbreak

to go elsewhere would say ‘We want to use this system on our next project’, so through word of mouth Track’em has now been used on more than 45 projects, interfacing with 12,000 human users.”

After successful innovation comes diversification and Saleem has now produced ‘Time’em’ (measuring time and attendance of operators), ‘Store’em’ (inventory management) and ‘Transport’em’ (everything trackable about shipping units).

He’s also about to roll out ‘Track’em Lite’, a cloud-based app system that enables SME

managers to log in to from anywhere on any device – even without wi-fi access. “We’ve realised that Track’em isn’t just a solution for big companies – it’s for small companies too who want to know more about their assets, who want better control and total visibility. It’s like a very, very smart Excel spreadsheet and it can track whatever is important to you.”

Humble origins Saleem worked three parttime jobs to pay off his $40,000 student debt while studying, ultimately graduating second top of his course. He speaks more about failure than he does success, and when he does talk about success it’s usually to deflect praise onto the people around him. “I had a dream,” Saleem says, “that I always wanted to own my own business and to make a difference. Luckily I’ve found really good people, people smarter than me, to help me get there and I found them

A large 12,000-tonne structural steel project in the north-west of WA used Track’em and not one individual item was lost on site.

All items were tracked through the system from fabrication to installation and ready for commissioning.

There were thousands of individual items – all necessary to complete the erection and installation to minimise schedule and costs.

An overseas shipment of structural steel was ready for dispatch from an Asian port where the paperwork stated that critical columns were on board the ship. Track’em proved the critical columns were NOT on board – a crosscheck was instigated and found that Track’em was correct. The ship was delayed until the columns were loaded so that a more extensive time and cost delay was avoided.

at the right time – timing is everything.

“When people ask ‘What’s the biggest mistake you’ve made?’, I think I could write books on the mistakes I’ve made, but fortunately I haven’t made the same mistake again. There have been times when I thought we were going to go bust, that I’d have to close the business and walk away, but you just keep pushing and you get through that. You never give up – that’s the most important lesson I’ve learnt in business. You keep going and you surround yourself with people who are positive and who share your passion.”

For a boy who grew up in a city of 20 million people (Karachi, Pakistan), standing out from the crowd is not a natural fit, but Saleem is learning to accept the attention that comes with being WA’s top innovator. And should he ever experience a wave of hubris, he need only glance down at the office floors he vacuumed all those years ago. ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN E SS PU L SE 9

HEALTHY BUSINESS

CORRIDORS OF POWER CCI was given an exclusive tour of Fiona Stanley Hospital to witness the innovation that doesn’t make the headlines

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ajor new hospitals are a little like Olympic Games – there’s a strong public appetite for bad-news stories in the lead-up to their opening. The buildings aren’t finished, the money’s run out, the sky’s falling in, or so the headlines scream.

It’s a wonder Fiona Stanley Hospital (FSH), which weathered a firestorm of bad press throughout 2014 and just prior to its opening in February 2015, would ever open its doors to a journalist again. But these are different times for WA’s largest public hospital and 18 months of operation have not only ironed out the early wrinkles but enabled a continuous rolling out of world-leading innovation.

CARRIE COX

IT IS INGRAINED IN ALL OF OUR TEAMS THAT WE WANT TO KEEP IMPROVING, TO KEEP OUR SERVICES LEADING-EDGE The business model that scaffolds FSH is innovative in itself – global company Serco operates the hospital’s 25 non-clinical services while the WA Health Government provides all the clinical expertise. Serco’s contract makes it financially answerable to very strict KPIs set down by WA Health – 450 of them to be precise.

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On call 24-7 One example requires the hospital’s central call centre, which is staffed by 32 employees around the clock, to answer 95 per cent of calls within 15 seconds. On an average day the centre will field 5000 internal and external calls – at least 30 of them will constitute an emergency response. “KPIs really drive our performance and provide clear and tangible outcomes,” explains call centre manager Adam Cunningham.

Of course, such transparent targets come with pressures, and Cunningham described a recent KPI deadline that resulted in staff going above and beyond to hit the number. “What’s the penalty – death?” this journalist asked. Cunningham laughed.

“Major financial penalties,” he replied. It was recently reported Serco has lost $1 million in revenue since October 2015 for failing to meet certain KPIs. This loss may be seen less as a failure than as a measure of a system that is actually working; a system that can’t hide inefficiency. Certainly it makes innovation a necessity rather than a novelty.

HEALTHY BUSINESS

Innovation on the WA health scene St John of God Subiaco has become the first facility in Australia to purchase Stryker orthopaedic robotic technology to assist patients undergoing partial knee replacement surgery.

Robotic-assisted surgical technique allows highly accurate pre-operative planning, merging the accuracy of computer navigation and the positioning of patientspecific knee systems. No other knee replacement system allows this flexibility.

An international development group is looking to expand the robot use to total knee replacement over the next few years.

St John of God Subiaco has invested in operating room robots for a range of specialty areas, including orthopaedics, gynaecology, surgical oncology and urology.

Serco Contract Director Bill Cotter is passionate about the model that makes FSH a public hospital that looks and sounds very much like a private hospital. “It is ingrained in all of our teams that we want to keep improving, to keep our services leading-edge,” Cotter says.

“Before we even opened, we developed an innovation matrix that determined how our services could keep improving and ensure that they are innovative into the future. We encourage all of our people to come up with innovative ideas. Nothing is ever off the table as long as it meets the following criteria – Is it safe? Can it be implemented cost effectively? And does it add value to the patient?”

While Serco’s remit is non-clinical, much of its work directly impacts on the patient experience. More than 80 per cent of FSH’s patients are cared for in single rooms and each of them has easy access to a bedside computer portal that enables them to call their loved ones at the click of a mouse, order menus, explore relevant health services and information, or if they’re up to it: watch the latest movies on demand.

Automation at work Roaming the service corridors of FSH are 18 robots – or ‘automated guided vehicles’ as they’re technically known.

These Germanengineered devices run on the hospital’s wireless network, transferring linen and meals and responding to requests from the helpdesk. Though known only by their numbers at present, plans are afoot to ‘humanise’ the robots with either names or superhero tags. Last Christmas they were programmed to pipe out carols on their travels.

Certainly in 18 months the robots have become part of the hospital’s (mobile) furniture. > Cont’d next page

Did you know?

Serco staff prepare more than 2000 meals every day made on site with fresh ingredients.

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HEALTHY BUSINESS

Telethonfunded fun Two hundred tropical fish help soothe sick children at the new Telethon Children’s Ward, which opened last month at Joondalup Health Campus.

The brightly coloured forest- and ocean-themed ward looks more like a play centre than a hospital and boasts 37 new beds, including a new 10-bed Day Procedure Unit, which will help keep overnight beds free for more serious procedures.

During their stay, children have access to interactive displays, video games and a range of other fun activities to help them settle in. Parents will also be able to take advantage of day-beds and more comfortable surroundings than traditional wards.

> “And the robots aren’t an exercise in replacing people because they cost about the same amount,” Cotter says.

“They’re a great example of where we have introduced an innovation that is helping to reduce the number of occupational health and safety injuries through the movement of heavy and regularly distributed items such as meals, linen and supplies.

“When considering innovative ideas and practices, we are not driven by cost; we are primarily driven by better outcomes for patients and clinicians.”

Good ideas Indeed, innovation doesn’t have to be flashy and expensive to make an impact. When an employee noted the lengthy amount of time it took to walk between FSH’s five separate buildings, the decision was made to invest in pushbikes – an inexpensive purchase that quickly paid for itself.

Similarly, an observation there had to be a better, safer way to haul the hospital’s hundreds of wheelie bins from

The main concourse of Fiona Stanley Hospital.

1 2 B USI NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

one location to another prompted the search for a solution. Serco discovered a family-owned WA company, Backsafe Australia, that produces a trolley that can hold four bins at once (weighing up to 400kg) and can easily be pushed by one person.

AV excellence FSH’s investment in leading-edge AV technology – there are more than 7500 ‘screens’ in use around the hospital – has positioned it as a major teaching facility within the international health sector. Live coverage of surgical procedures can be beamed into classrooms anywhere around the hospital. Telehealth conferencing is done via mobile computing devices carried by staff throughout the hospital and run on a single network.

Indicatively, FSH was chosen as the venue for a two-day international cardiology conference held last month that utilised the hospital’s advanced AV system to involve delegates stationed in hospitals around the world. ¢

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HEALTHY BUSINESS

BALANCING ACT Running a small business can be all consuming, but it’s possible to have a life outside the office too SALLY GRANDY

I

f you run your own business, chances are you’re probably a workaholic. You face unique challenges and punishing schedules. Your business is your livelihood – the machine feeding your family and, in many ways, a family member in its own right.

Is it even possible to keep a lid on stress levels when your business is all consuming?

WHEN PEOPLE START TO WORK LONGER DAYS, THE RISK OF AN OCCUPATIONAL INJURY INCREASES BY A STAGGERING 41 PER CENT Olav Muurlink is an expert in organisational behavioural management and also a senior lecturer at Central Queensland 1 4 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

University, which has a campus in WA. Muurlink’s research shows small business owners are sitting ducks for stress-related conditions.

“The human body is not designed for constant work and when people start to work longer days, the risk of an occupational injury increases by a staggering 41 per cent,” he says. “The divisions between family and work become blurred and it’s very difficult to step back from it. We are paying the price with our health.”

But it’s not all bad news. While Muurlink says small business owners are more likely to overwork, they also usually have greater autonomy about how they can better manage their time.

“People who run their own companies have the ability to manage stress far better than those in executive positions working for employers,” he says. “This is because they have become experts at being in

control, being at the helm and making decisions.”

WA jeweller and business owner Rohan Milne agrees.

“I do feel stressed a lot of the time, but as a business owner I expect it. If you don’t stress, you’re not pushing yourself, but because I understand the pressures I am under, I am better able to deal with them.”

Family first Milne says he’s able to keep stress at manageable levels with the aid of a good support network, his wife Toni and by taking regular holidays. And he says some aspects of his life remain sacrosanct no matter what.

“We have two daughters aged seven and four. Recently we were working flat out and talked about needing to employ the nanny for extra hours,” he says. “But then we realised we’d be missing out on precious early years with the girls, so we employed another

HEALTHY BUSINESS

Above left: Ted Folkes; above right: Olav Muurlink; bottom: Rohan Milne.

person in the business so my wife could have one-on-one time with them. It’s not rocket science.”

Research shows most business owners won’t forego quality time with their children. While Rohan admits that he “works, lives and breathes” the business, sometimes skipping meals and exercise, he always makes a point of pencilling a family holiday into the diary.

“My wife and I call it our time to unplug,” he says. “We go to Kangaroo Island, we restore ourselves and put good stuff back in. We go to a health retreat and I drink water and walk through the hills and usually come back five kilos lighter.”

From panic to calm For many business owners, achieving a work-life balance takes time, as the first few years of running a business are often the most challenging (more than 60 per cent fail within the first

three years – a fact about which many owners are only too aware).

Ted Folkes runs Altiform, which designs and manufactures outdoor furniture and employs 14 people at his factory in Canning Vale. Only now, after 12 years in business, does Folkes think he’s got the balance right.

“I’ve been on medication for stress and panic attacks, but this year I came off the pills and that’s because I made changes within the business,” Folkes says. “A lot of my problems were worries about whether we’d get paid because of the downturn, so I took out debtor’s insurance so if a company goes bust and can’t pay us, then I’m covered. I’ve also brought in a freelance bookkeeper who works here twice a week and that has definitely brought my stress levels down.”

Folkes also no longer takes his mobile phone into the house, instead leaving it on charge overnight in his car.

But the biggest change he’s made outweighs all the others.

“Last October I moved down to Dawesville on the coast,” he says. “I go across the bridge and it’s as though I am going on

holiday. Imagine that – going on holiday every time you return home from work? Turnover is up and my stress levels have gone down – there’s definitely a correlation.” ¢

How to get your groove back Private health insurance provider HBF has come up with these tips to help business owners achieve a better work-life balance and reduce stress: 1. Find your “way” to manage stress. Take up morning yoga, learn breathing techniques or play regular sport to blow off steam.

2. Protect your private time. Make sure you keep this as a priority. Work will always be there, but relaxed minds make better decisions.

3. Use technology to your advantage. Technology is supposed to make our lives easier, but often seems to make us more accessible and busier. Find ways to let technology work for you (there are some terrific new productivity apps available to download).

4. Take annual leave – everyone needs to recharge their batteries.

5. Make health and personal life a priority. Allocate ‘me time’ at the top of your day-to-day list.

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HEALTHY BUSINESS

ONE STOP CARE SHOP Breast Cancer Research Centre WA provides 60 per cent of the services patients need – soon they’ll have 100 per cent under one roof

W GABRIELLE CAMPION Journalist

hen Belinda was diagnosed with stage-two breast cancer, she was determined to control the uncontrollable. She hosted a fundraising hair-shaving party and shaved her head the day before she was due to start chemotherapy.

Hearing of her bravery, Professor Arlene Chan of the Breast Cancer Research Centre WA invited Belinda to enrol in the Chemotherapy-Induced Alopecia (CIA) trial, which aims to evaluate the effectiveness of DigniCap. This is a device that cools the head during chemotherapy, decreasing blood flow and lowering the amount of toxins that reaches a patient’s scalp.

WE’RE MOVING FROM A TREATMENT FOCUS AND RESEARCH TO COMPLETE BREAST CANCER CARE THAT WILL BE INTERNATIONALLY RECOGNISED “For the first three weeks after chemo and use of the DigniCap, I didn’t experience any hair loss whatsoever,” Belinda says. “In fact, very surprisingly, my hair started to grow back!

“After four weeks of chemo, my hair was eight millimetres long, and at the end of my chemo, nine weeks later, my hair was 27 millimetres long.”

Belinda completed the CIA 1 6 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

trial and her chemotherapy in March this year and says she experienced minimal hair loss and so “never felt like a typical cancer patient”.

CIA is just one of the clinical trials and research projects underway at the Breast Cancer Research Centre WA, Australia’s busiest breast cancer research centre located at Hollywood Hospital. Since its foundation in 2008, 10 of the centre’s trials have led to better breast cancer treatment worldwide.

Professor Chan has been instrumental in the Australian leg of a number of international trials, including a study involving 3222 women that led to establishing the antibody ‘trastuzumab’ as the most effective standard treatment combined with chemotherapy.

Centre researchers have conducted trials and written papers addressing environmental and cultural factors affecting cancer figures, treatment availability, earl detection hurdles and of course the ever-elusive ‘cure’.

Bringing resources together CEO Carmelo Arto says the centre will expand its services beyond world-leading treatment to a comprehensive breast cancer centre in 2019.

“We look after 60 per cent of breast cancer patients’ needs and then they go to the support services,” Arto says.

“What happens now is the support services are all funded differently and as a consequence they work in silos.

“We’re heading towards a

comprehensive breast cancer centre, where we supply all the services.

“We need to formulate better collaboration [between support service providers] and if there is a gap in services we need to then look at whether we fund those gaps or whether we collaborate with someone.

“We’re moving from a treatment focus and research to complete breast cancer care that will be internationally recognised.

“It will be a one stop shop for patients – that’s our journey for the next three years.”

One in eight women is diagnosed with breast cancer. The disease impacts working women and men at all levels of industry and across every sector. Arto says Breast Cancer Research Centre WA can work with businesses to tailor back-to-work and awareness programs. “We are speaking to businesses at the moment and looking at what we can do for them.” ¢

Breast Cancer Research Centre WA Vice-Chair Professor Arlene Chan won the 2016 Professions Award at this year’s Western Australian of the Year Awards. Professor Chan has recruited more than 1000 patients into 79 trials. She also established the first breast cancer tumour bank in WA with more than 2000 samples stored to be used for future research.

HEALTHY BUSINESS

HANDLE WITH CARE

When an employee signals they’re struggling, it’s vital you respond in the most appropriate way

NATALIE WYBER CCI Employee Relations Graduate

A

n employee is poorly performing and ordinarily you would have commenced a performance management process to steer a future course. However, the employee has also disclosed they are experiencing difficulties due to a mental illness. What should you do?

While you’re not restricted from applying normal performance management processes, depending on the circumstances, it may be appropriate to halt this process while you address the mental health concern. In accordance with your duty of care, it’s important to address the matter in a sensitive and supportive way.

Open the communication lines Have a conversation with your employee about your concerns for their wellbeing and also about how they view their illness in terms of affecting their work performance. Collaborate to explore any reasonable workrelated adjustments that may be appropriate or ways in which the employee may be able to meet performance requirements.

It may also be appropriate to make clear that if the performance issues cannot be addressed through these measures, there may then be a need to revisit the performance management process in due course.

Are they being treated?

If the employee is being treated by a medical practitioner:

They may disclose more specific medical information and give you permission to

contact their treating doctor.

Keep in mind they are not obligated to provide you with specific information about their illness or authority to liaise with their specialist or GP directly.

It may be appropriate to seek additional medical information from the employee’s treating specialist about any work restrictions, suggested reasonable adjustments or information relating to prognosis and return to work.

Where permission to liaise with the employee’s treating specialist has not been provided, you may decide a formal fitness for work assessment is needed. You may wish to provide the employee with a covering letter with the requested information and a copy of the employee’s current position description may be provided to the employee to take with them to any scheduled fitness for work appointment.

Where the employee is not being treated by a medical practitioner:

You may wish to consider any support services you can offer the employee (ie Employee Assistance Programs etc).

If you can’t make reasonable adjustments to allow the

employee to perform to the required standard, or you do so and there is no improvement to the work performance, then you may consider directing the employee to attend a fitness for work assessment.

Fitness for work assessments A fitness for work (FFW) assessment is performed by a medical practitioner to determine an employee’s ability to safely perform the requirements of their position. It’s generally reasonable to require your employee to attend a FFW assessment where there is a reasonable basis for concern. In doing so, the employer should cover the cost of the assessment, provide transport and accompany the employee to the appointment (where possible) and do so during work time whereby wages will be paid.

Provide the doctor with details of the employee’s position and the areas where the employee may be having difficulty (ie regularly turning up late to work). The doctor will make recommendations about whether the employee is fit for work, not fit for work or fit with restrictions.

It may also be useful to request some indication as to timeframes around how long the employee will not be fit/ be partially fit so that the business can arrange for

temporary cover or additional resources if necessary.

If the employee is deemed fit for work, this generally means you can recommence the performance management process if their performance is still not up to standard. If deemed fit with restrictions, the business should consider what reasonable accommodations can be made. Again, in some cases, the performance management process may remain on hold during this time.

If the employee is deemed not fit, they should proceed on paid personal leave (or authorised unpaid leave where there is insufficient personal leave credits) until such time they are fit to return to work. It may be necessary to request another FFW assessment later in the process, depending on length of absence and/or whether the current medical certification is close to expiry.

The important message is that employees should not be performance managed because of behaviours that are related to mental ill health or any medications used to treat their illness. Circumstances should be assessed on a case-by-case basis.

CCI’s Employee Relations Advice Centre is here to help and can be contacted on (08) 9365 7660 or advice@cciwa.com for more information. ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 1 7

HEALTHY BUSINESS

FIT FOR WORK

Pre-employment medical checks can help you determine a candidate’s suitability before you make an offer

I RACHAEL LINCOLN CCI Senior Safety and Risk Consultant

f you’re worried about the physical health or ability of your new employees, asking candidates to complete a preemployment assessment might help you find someone ready and able for the job.

There is a number of providers who offer these pre-employment medical checks, which can give you a baseline health assessment of potential candidates.

Fit for purpose Rather than just signing up your next candidate for a standard pre-employment medical, it’s essential you consider the physical demands of the job they may be performing and assess the candidate’s abilities against these demands.

To make sure you understand the role’s requirements you should:

Consult with current employees. Observe the job and consult with the employees currently undertaking the role to determine its physical demands. This will help you to identify the strengths, mobility and postures that are required for that job.

Identify at-risk body areas.

You should identify the areas of the body that could be injured in the course of work.

The best way to do this is to start at the neck, down to the back and then ankles, and determine if the risk of each body part is high, medium or low.

Armed with this information, you and the assessment provider can agree on what’s required in the medical assessment.

FUNCTION CENTRE

Tiring work When assessing the body’s parts, you should perform the assessments for the same body part in succession of each other, with limited rest. This is especially applicable to the jobs requiring high physical demand.

The activities should be structured to progressively overload the candidate to ensure they experience fatigue. This may be done at the beginning of the assessment as a means of warming up and also to measure the candidate’s cardiovascular fitness.

Fatigue is a useful way to identify pre-existing injuries the potential candidate may not have previously divulged.

To find out if a pre-employment assessment would benefit your business, call CCI Workplace Consulting on (08) 9365 7720. ¢

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HEALTHY BUSINESS

HEALTHY INITIATIVES

Competition and innovation are driving positive change in Australia’s most important sector, writes Health & Aged Care Assistant Minister Ken Wyatt Our health is the single most important aspect of our lives. I believe without good health, we actually don’t have much.

As someone who worked at the Department of Health before entering politics, I feel proud about the Turnbull Government’s commitment to advancing Australia’s health care system.

Last year’s Intergenerational Report highlights the challenges facing us, including: an ageing population

a shrinking workforce as a proportion of the population

technology that comes with a price tag Along with this, health spending continues to grow at triple the rate of inflation and we spend more on health than the OECD average.

IN 1990, 15 CENTS IN EVERY DOLLAR COLLECTED THROUGH TAX WENT TO HEALTH – NOW IT’S 24 CENTS In 1990, 15 cents in every dollar collected through tax went to health – now it’s 24 cents. We currently spend $154 billion across all parts of the health system. At 9.25 per cent of GDP, health contributes significantly to our economic circumstance.

As a government, we are determined to work on developing ways to improve our health system and bring it up to 21st century standards. We are changing direction, reforming and finding refreshing ways of providing care as we move forward, ensuring that we accommodate a changing Australia.

Without the Australian Government’s positive reforms, our health system is doomed to remain stuck in the past – increasingly out of date and out of line with our current and future health needs.

One such area in which we are bringing about reform in the provision of care is the aged care sector. Reforms in this sector are all aimed at increasing consumer choice.

Earlier this year, the Government’s Increasing Consumer Choice Bill was introduced and passed through the Parliament. This bill creates a more flexible, consumer-driven aged care system that will support older people to remain living at home.

From February 2017, funding for a home care package will follow. The consumer will be able to choose a provider that is suited to them and to direct the funding to that provider.

The consumer will also be able to change their provider if they wish, including if they move to another area to live.

Not only does this empower the individual but it opens up a plethora of opportunity for aged care providers.

It gives providers an opportunity to build and grow their companies.

Market-based solutions and consumer choice will increasingly be the driving force for quality, value

and performance of services.

Moving to a market-based system, giving consumers choice and allowing providers to run their own services, is central to the government’s plan for the future.

Currently, providers have a limited ability to offer home care packages. These changes will give providers the opportunity to showcase their best services to consumers, which will in turn drive quality as well as growth in business. Those that offer an exceptional service, like any business, will increase their business. Those that innovate and think of new ways to structure their business and capitalise on this will grow.

I see many organisations as I travel around Australia that have already taken this on board – I hope WA aged and home care providers will follow the trend.

I believe it’s a very exciting time for those in the aged care sector, and more broadly the health sector, with opportunities around every corner. ¢

JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 1 9

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RESOURCES

LITHIUM CHARGES HOPE Global demand for battery power is driving fresh hope in WA’s paused resource sector

M

ining in WA has no shortage of rags-to-riches yarns, but Ken Brinsden’s is better than most courtesy of his impeccably timed switch from iron ore to lithium.

Just before Christmas, Brinsden was still helping his previous company Atlas Iron avoid collapse after iron ore prices slumped to a decade low of US$37 per tonne.

But around that time – almost to the day – Brinsden accepted a new role as CEO of North Fremantle-based Pilbara Minerals to lead development of its Pilgangoora lithium mining project near Port Hedland.

It was a switch that would give him a first-class seat on WA’s lithium boom express train.

who helped steer Atlas through the iron ore boom times and the equally dramatic downturn, Brinsden is keeping a level head about lithium — a rare glimmer of light in WA’s depressed resources economy.

“I’m not sure I like all the hype, but I can tell you that it is much better to have a tailwind than a headwind,” he says.

“As for the hype, I can’t help but feel that people will come to realise over time that the market is only of a certain size and only a limited number of projects will get developed.”

That’s not to say Brinsden, who built five Pilbara iron ore mines in six years for Atlas, isn’t rapt to be part of a high-tech mineral boom driven mainly by the need for lower-emission cars in crowded cities, particularly in China.

I’M NOT SURE I LIKE ALL THE HYPE, BUT I CAN TELL YOU THAT IT IS MUCH BETTER TO HAVE A TAILWIND THAN A HEADWIND After putting his feet under the desk in mid-January, Pilbara Minerals’ market worth trebled in just four months—turning the once little-known explorer into WA’s lithium poster child.

Pilbara Minerals is yet to sell a skerrick of lithium — used in batteries that power mobile devices and, increasingly, cars such as the popular Tesla — and likely won’t until late 2017.

An affable mining engineer

Diverse applications Pilgangoora, 120km south of Port Hedland, will be designed to process and concentrate lithiumrich ‘spodumene’ ore over a 15-year mine life. Found widely in WA, spodumene is a type of hard silicate mineral and an important source of high-purity lithium.

“We are serving a pretty amazing downstream revolution as to how we distribute and

access power, the key to that being the lithium ion battery,” he says. “It’s exciting to be a part of it.

“We are getting approaches from everyone – not just (lithium chemical) converters in China, but cathode makers, battery makers and even bus makers.”

The emergence of the e-vehicle and power storage markets — Tesla’s ‘Powerwall’ battery is now available in Australia — is being driven by the global push to “green” both transport and power production.

It is supported by lithium-ion batteries becoming cheaper and lighter, according to Deutsche Bank.

Battery consumption is set to increase five-fold over the next 10 years, placing pressure on the battery supply chain and lithium market, the bank says.

“We expect global lithium demand will increase from 181,000 tonnes of lithium carbonate equivalent in 2015 to 535,000 tonnes by 2025,” it says.

Lithium carbonate, produced mostly from spodumene, is a key ingredient for producing battery cells.

WA already boasts the world’s biggest spodumene lithium mine at Talison’s Greenbushes mine in the south west.

But with Pilbara Minerals one of several local companies either planning or developing new mines, WA is likely to be a growing lithium exporter to Chinese consumers scrambling to lock-in supplies.

Brinsden says Pilbara Minerals expects to announce Chinese sales agreements before or around the same time as its definitive feasibility study, due in August. The study is likely to lead

to a go-ahead for a $184 million mining project in late 2016.

Opportunities for contractors Brinsden says willing and able WA contractors should contact Pilbara Minerals about building and designing Pilgangoora’s mineral processing plant.

Though relatively small by Pilbara standards — production is forecast at about 330,000 tonnes of spodumene concentrates each year — Pilgangoora will provide a valuable diversification to Port Hedland businesses struggling with the iron ore downturn, Brinsden believes.

There are already plans afoot from at least one company to investigate whether downstream processing of lithium in Port Hedland makes sense.

Brinsden says innovation will be vital as Pilgangoora takes shape.

“As a manager you need to provide an environment where innovative ideas can thrive,” he says.

“I often think of it as being a see-saw, the balance of discipline and systems against innovation and change — being good enough to facilitate change while maintaining the systems that support the organisation, not constrain it.”

With Pilbara Minerals on the verge of a rapid growth phase, the company is looking to bring on board one or more new nonexecutive directors.

“We’ll bide our time, find the right people, and I’d like to think that in certain quarters people would regard it as an exciting opportunity, because we are going to be a growing WA player in a new technology area.” ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 21

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With growing health needs, is digital the best medicine?

RESOURCES

FROM BOOM TO BLOOM

WA needs to change its economic narrative to reflect the positives that accompany a transitioning industry sector, writes Mark Stickells

Mark Stickells goes heavy-duty in the Pilbara.

I

DURING THE TOUR WE SAW ENOUGH GREEN SHOOTS TO BE OPTIMISTIC

n 1975, UWA academic Alex Kerr wrote a major study entitled Australia’s North-West. After touring the towns and industries, he reflected on future development in the region and pointedly noted that “fortunes have waxed and waned, sometimes in a most dramatic way.” This still resonates in 2016. It was particularly evident during my observations on the 2016 CCI North West Resources Tour held in May. The resources sector in WA is now entering the postconstruction phase, a period of considerable, longer-term opportunity as operational efficiency, maintenance and service creates new business opportunities.

A recent Committee for Economic Development of Australia (CEDA) session on predicting commodity cycles, provided an opportunity to take stock of the expansion of WA’s economy and ask what comes next?

The CEDA panel, which included UWA’s Professor Peter Hartley, CCI’s Principal Economist Paula Gadsby and BHP Billiton and Deloitte Access Economics representatives, predicted the

next decade will see flatter commodity prices and a sustained focus on cost control, efficiency and increased productivity from existing operations. This was evident in the iron ore, LNG, domestic gas and nitrates projects and port facilities that I visited on the North West Resources Tour.

Growth projections Despite the slowing economy, the expansion plans through to the end of this decade mean a step change in volume and output. Between 2004/2005 and 2018/2019, iron ore sales will increase from over 200 million tonnes per annum to just over 800 million tonnes per annum.

Similarly, during the same period, LNG sales will increase from around 10 million tonnes per annum to almost 50 million tonnes per annum.

We now have a number of LNG trains on the coast of WA, with Darwin emerging as another hub and Shell’s Prelude, anchored off north-west WA, to be the world’s first floating LNG project.

Iron ore production capacity and economies of scale has resulted in WA now producing 37 per cent of the world’s iron ore.

During our recent period of

economic expansion, WA grew in importance on a regional and world stage. In 2009, UWA’s EMI launched the In the Zone conference to help shed the perception of distance as a tyrant.

The idea that we think along a north-south axis rather than a traditional east-west axis means that we now view our time zone as being home to 60 per cent of the world’s population and the most dynamic global economies.

As we transition to a longer term, sustained operational phase in our resource-led economy, we will be exporting volume that dwarfs our output in 1975 and even 1995.

During the tour we saw enough green shoots to be optimistic about more diversified regional economies, sustained by the long-term operations of an array of world-class resource projects.

WA’s post-boom narrative needs to change from the ‘end of the mining boom’ to our resource industry’s ‘beginning of production’ – a narrative that fosters innovation and service supply, written around diversification and growth.

Mark Stickells is Director of UWA’s Energy and Minerals Institute. ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 23

BUSINESS PROFILE

SHIP-SHAPE OPERATION

Jurien Van Rongen runs a well-oiled ship that proves new technology can mix well with old-school techniques

F GABRIELLE CAMPION Journalist

24 B US I NE S S P U L S E JULY 20 1 6

or Jurien Van Rongen, innovation isn’t just a buzzword he uses in meetings with stakeholders.

‘Don’t compete, create’ is the mantra his father taught him and it’s how he runs his business, Evolution Commercial, designing his own apps and programs to drive efficiency.

Evolution builds commercial and private sailing vessels and other large custom structures from aluminium, steel and fiberglass composites by combining the latest technology with decades of industry experience.

At the company’s Henderson base, the phrase “There’s an app for that” has never rung truer. Since 2013, Van Rongen as Director has been working

to get every operational activity – from job scheduling to timesheets for employees out at sea – recorded and administered on a single custom-built application called EcoSmart. Van Rongen says building the app took three years – and they were years well spent.

From the moment employees clock on in the morning and their times are sent to their supervisors, EcoSmart monitors their job status and reports on efficiency and safety – every employee is easily accounted for at all times. If they’ve gone home, they’ll have clocked off and their name will be removed from the app.

“We have live tracking of every single job that’s going on to the minute,” Van Rongen. “If after five o’clock I still have people in a confined space, it will flag up on the safety manager’s app and tell him where the people are.

“In the case of an emergency evacuation, we can account for

everyone and find out who’s missing.”

EcoSmart is not just a people monitoring tool. If apprentices and tradespeople need to restock tools around the Henderson facility, their orders can be logged in EcoSmart and sent to the storeroom. A storeperson monitors the orders and replenishes stock in the site boxes, which are located around the facility every day.

“Tradespeople remain on the job and our stores personnel deliver consumables and equipment to the coalface to avoid downtime,” Van Rongen says.

A paint revolution Ever on the hunt for new ideas, Van Rongen last year discovered an invention he believes could revolutionise shipbuilding in WA and across the world – a new flame-resistant paint called Enstone Coating.

BUSINESS PROFILE

“Friends of mine stumbled across it at a trade show. They showed me what it could do and basically burnt it in front of me,” Van Rongen says. “From there my mind started racing and I began to think of all the things we could do with it.

“We started doing a lot of testing and we formulated a plan. We became the Australian distributor for it and now we’re in the process of training people to be licenced applicators.”

EIGHTEEN MONTHS AGO WE HAD 50 PEOPLE AND WE’VE NOW GROWN TO 300 Enstone Coating doesn’t freeze above -78 degrees Celsius and doesn’t burn below 3600 degrees Celsius. It’s perfect for a submarine or a rocket re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, according to Van Rongen.

He says the paint’s secret formula will also help private and commercial ship-owners prevent rust and growth on the bottom of

their boats, saving repainting time and improving speed in the water.

People power Just after discovering Enstone Coating, Evolution Commercial was commissioned to build Australia’s biggest super yacht and the company has more than doubled in size since. Van Rongen even enticed some men out of retirement to join his groundbreaking crew – a testament to the workplace’s positive culture and passion.

“In July 2010 I started with five people out of the back of a ute,” Van Rongen says. “Eighteen months ago we had 50 people and we’ve now grown to 300 and we’re growing every week.

“My employees went through the roof and my safety rate went right down to way below industry standard.

“Our efficiencies on our boats are the best I’ve ever seen in my 30 years in the industry.”

Van Rongen’s innovative attitude doesn’t stop with his work practices. To combat the misrepresentation of Evolution Commercial on social media but still allow its growing workforce to share the work they do, fellow director Mark Stothard came up with the Flash Worker – a video series published on the company website that showcases a different employee and the work they do each instalment.

“Instead of doing a blanket ban on cameras in the workshop –

which is hard to do – we invented Flash Worker,” Van Rongen says.

“Our workers can put it on their Facebook pages and that way we can control what’s going out.”

More than 500 people attended Evolution Commercial’s first family open day last year – at the time, their workforce totalled 100. Van Rongen says employees are proud of where they work and what they do and they want to share it with their families and friends.

“We’re regarded in Henderson as the employer of choice – everyone wants to work for us,” Van Rongen says. “I’ve even got an seasoned veteran working for me and he says it’s the most harmonious workshop he’s ever worked in.”

Jurien Van Rongen is a member of the WA Defence Industry Council – hosted by CCI – which advocates WA’s capabilities in shipbuilding and defence to the Federal Government. ¢

STEM in action Echo Yachts – an affiliate of Evolution Commercial – felt the impact of the WA skills shortage in science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM) when it began recruiting for its biggest project yet: the construction of WA’s largest super yacht.

The company has hired 35 apprentices, in fabrication and marine fitting, electrotechnology and cabinet making, to help construct their client’s super yacht, which is housed under wraps in its Henderson facility.

Echo Yachts Director Mark Stothard says working on a super yacht offers young workers and apprentices the unique opportunity to upskill and learn specialised trade skills.

“Working on a super yacht gives them a platform to put more detail and precision into their work,” Stothard says.

“We’ve managed to pull some of the older guys out of retirement, so they can transfer their industry knowledge down the line to the young apprentices and workers.”

The super yacht will be fitted out to the highest European standards with hotel-like facilities, boasting suites for up to 22 guests and 30 crew members. The shadow vessel will house a helicopter, hovercraft, jet boat, catamaran and four jet skis, along with accommodation for 11 guests and 11 crew members.

While the massive super yacht is one of the more glamorous jobs in the WA shipbuilding industry, Stothard says it also proves WA has the skills, strength and capability to take on large-scale projects.

Apprentices at the Henderson workshop in the Australian Marine Complex.

JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 25

SOUND ADVICE

As a business adviser in a tough market, Sue Viskovic is careful to practice what she preaches

Sue Viskovic Elixir Director 26 B US I NE S S P U L S E JULY 20 1 6

BUSINESS PROFILE

CARRIE COX

I

f Sue Viskovic’s face looks familiar, you weren’t spared by the media storm that surrounded the CommInsure scandal earlier this year.

As a respected financial adviser and insurance expert, Viskovic’s comments were sought by various media outlets to make sense of the firestorm that is still the subject of an ASIC investigation. But while her message was clear – that none of the affected insurance-holders’ policies were underwritten at the time of application and none involved the work of independent financial advisers – it became lost in a debate that ultimately threw all insurance providers under the same bus.

“I was surprised and disappointed that (the media) turned that story into a financial adviser-bashing story, because it shouldn’t have been,” Viskovic says.

“The average consumer sees that and thinks why would I get insurance when they’re never going to pay out? And yet that’s precisely opposite to the real message, which is that a good financial adviser would never have let that happen. Those poor people would have had a very different outcome.”

Viskovic is passionate about the financial advisory profession and not just because it accounts for much of her bread and butter. As Founder and Director of Elixir Consulting, she provides strategic advice to all types of business but a large portion is engaged in advising business owners who deliver financial and risk advice.

SOUND ADVICE IS BOTH PRICELESS AND WORTH PAYING FOR As an adviser to advisers, Viskovic is very meta.

“I have a passion about people being able to get access to really good financial advice because I’ve seen the bad side – I’ve seen when things go wrong and what it ultimately costs people,” she says. “Sound advice is both priceless and worth paying for.”

Advice on many fronts But financial advisers have businesses to run too and that’s where Elixir’s services come into play.

“As a financial adviser, you wear so many hats,” Viskovic says.

“You’re a psychotherapist (getting inside people’s heads and understanding how they make decisions, why they might have made bad decisions and helping them to make better decisions), a marriage therapist (because half the time the wife and husband don’t agree on their dreams

or how they manage money), a financial analyst (because you need to know what you’re looking at and whether it’s a good product), a mathematician (because you’ve got to run your numbers and do projections), and then if you’re also a business owner, you’re a HR person who has to juggle staff with their own massive education and compliance requirements.

“There’s just so much to it, but if you’re dealing with just staff and clients all the time, who do you run ideas by? Who is that person you can trust to share doubts and challenges and plans?”

Viskovic says when she finally made the decision to start her own business, after many years of working for others in the commercial sector, including BankWest, Challenger and The Sentry Group, she was faced with a choice: start her own financial planning practice or become an adviser to other advisers. “I chose the latter as I felt there was a gap in the market and I just really love going into other people’s businesses and being that third eye for them and helping them achieve the goals they want to achieve,” she says.

Since opening Elixir’s doors in 2007 (at first virtually and then physically in 2009), Viskovic has grown both her staff and her company’s range of services to include business coaching and bespoke consulting. She’s written two books, is a sought-after keynote speaker, has produced extensive research and analysis of the pricing models used by financial advisers and developed an online business planning program called the ‘Juice Console’.

The juice on Juice Viskovic is almost as enthusiastic about Juice as she is about her four children (aged 5-10). This ‘fifth child’ was born out of her observation that the business planning process is too often unnecessarily lengthy and lacking in deliverables. “A lot of what we do with financial advice businesses is equally relevant to any type of small-to-medium business,” she explains. “A business owner doesn’t need a giant plan that analyses all of their competitors and the state of the world economy. They need to know where they’re at right now and where they want to be.

“The answer to that question can actually fit on one page – it’s about quality rather than quantity. It needs to be precise, accurate, insightful and, most of all, simple. Our coaches use Juice with all our clients, but not everyone can afford a business coach and so we built Juice so that it can also be used as a DIY tool. It was launched last year and it’s been very well received by the business community. It feels like we’ve met an unspoken need in the market.”

Viskovic is a big believer in working smarter, not harder, whenever it’s possible. “My ultimate aim is to work 4/40 – four days a week, 40 weeks a year. I love what I do professionally, but I know that it’s also important to build frameworks so that I have time at home with my kids too and time to do more with the community. Sometimes as a small business owner you have to force yourself to stop what you’re doing, take a step back and take a good, hard look at the bigger picture. It’s possible to work on the business and work on yourself at the same time.” ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 27

A

Q ASK THE EXPERTS

&

We’ve been told we need an EAP. Does that meet my obligations in terms of my staff’s mental wellbeing?

An Employee Assistance Program (EAP) is a work-based intervention program designed to enhance the emotional, mental and general psychological wellbeing of all employees.

Usually, employers contract to an external EAP provider on a short- or long-term basis.

An EAP may be effective as a reactive tool – and as part of a larger toolkit – but it’s not recommended as a stand-alone strategy to improve your staff’s mental wellbeing.

While they can work for some organisations, EAP uptake can be quite low and is not suited to everyone.

Ensuring there is a positive mental health culture in your workplace, supportive management and fit-for-purpose policies are more important than whether you have an EAP or not.

I have to performance manage one of my staff who’s become a close friend over the years – how should I handle it?

IT IS IMPORTANT TO SEPARATE THE PERSONAL RELATIONSHIP FROM THE WORK ONE 28 B US I NE S S P U L S E JULY 20 1 6

Managing a friend can be complex at the best of times, let alone when performance isn’t up to the required standard. It is important to apply the performance management process fairly as you would with other employees, so you can’t be accused of favouritism.

You should try not to allow the personal relationship to impact on the way you enact or avoid performance management altogether (which can have an impact on your own performance).

Performance management is a gradual process and shouldn’t involve proceeding directly to disciplinary action. The process should start with informal comments about performance and ways that you

YOUR EMPLOYEE QUESTIONS ANSWERED can help them to achieve their required standard.

If the performance doesn’t improve, it is important to separate the personal relationship from the work one, to be honest with the staff member and focus objectively on the performance issues.

I’m travelling to a trade show in China next month.

Is there any way to avoid the big tariffs and custom duties I’m facing to bring my goods with me?

Bringing goods abroad can be costly, but there is a solution. You can arrange a carnet, which acts as a passport for your goods by documenting their value and your purpose for taking the goods with you.

A carnet is a fraction of the cost of import duties and taxes and is uniform and accepted across 85 countries. By organising a carnet before you travel, you will be exempt from taxes and duties regardless of the goods’ value.

Carnets also help you avoid potential angst as you re-enter Australia – the origin of your goods will not be questioned, which means you can’t be hit with import duties if you are otherwise unable to prove your goods are of Australian origin.

Carnets are user-friendly, internationally recognised and particularly helpful in non-English speaking countries.

We are paying our staff above award, but are aware that award wage increases are about to happen after 1 July. Is there anything we need to do?

If you are paying well in excess of any underpinning award rates then it’s unlikely you’ll need to take any action. However, if rates of pay are only slightly above award rates, there may be a need to recalculate what you are paying staff and increase your rates.

IMPORTANT NEWS FOR EMPLOYERS Wage and threshold changes will be effective from 1 July

T

Award rates of pay set the statutory minimum that employees in either an industry or particular occupation need to be paid. It is critical they are not paid less than what they would have received if you were strictly following the award.

IF RATES OF PAY ARE ONLY SLIGHTLY ABOVE AWARD RATES, THERE MAY BE A NEED TO RECALCULATE WHAT YOU ARE PAYING STAFF AND INCREASE YOUR RATES Other things to take into account might be:

If you have contracts or an enterprise agreement that require staff get paid a certain amount above award, this difference may need to be maintained and therefore wages will have to be adjusted from the first pay period on or after 1 July.

If you are operating on an agreement that has passed its expiry date then it is important to ensure any base rates of pay in the agreement are not less than the base rates in awards that would otherwise apply to staff. ¢

DO YOU HAVE A QUESTION FOR ONE OF CCI’S EXPERTS?

editor@cciwa.com @ CCI_WA #asktheexperts

he National Minimum Wage (NMW) decision was handed down on 31 May 2016, effectively increasing the national minimum wage by 2.4 per cent. This means that, from the first full pay period after 1 July 2016, the NMW for award/agreement-free employees of national system employers (other than juniors, apprentices, trainees and employees with a disability) lifted to $672.70 per week or $17.70 per hour. The hourly rate has been calculated by dividing the weekly rate by 38 (as the weekly amount is based on a 38-hour week for a full-time employee).

Junior employees: The NMW increase will flow through to award/agreement-free junior employees who will receive the appropriate percentage of the NMW based on their age, in accordance with the junior percentages outlined in the Miscellaneous Award 2010.

Apprentices: Award/ agreement-free apprentices must receive at least a base rate that equates to the relevant percentage for their year of apprenticeship as outlined in clause 14.2 of the Miscellaneous Award 2010, calculated on the Level 3 rate in clause 14.1 of that award. However, award/agreement-free adult apprentices who commenced their apprenticeship before 1 July 2014 and are in their first year of their apprenticeship must not receive less than $622.20 per week (or $16.37 per hour). An adult apprentice for the purposes of the NMW Order is a person who was 21 years of age or over at the time of commencing their apprenticeship.

Trainees: Award/agreementfree employees to whom training arrangements apply (other than apprentices) must at least receive the rate of wage outlined in Schedule E – National Training Wage of the Miscellaneous Award 2010.

Casuals: The casual loading for award/agreement free

employees as well as modern award covered employees will remain at 25 per cent.

Supported Wage System: The NMW order includes a minimum wage of $672.70 per week or $17.70 per hour for employees with a disability whose productivity is not affected.

For employees with a disability whose productivity is affected, an assessment under the Supported Wage System is required, subject to a minimum payment.

Award-covered employees: The NMW decision also flows through to modern awardcovered employees, with the 2.4 per cent minimum wage increase applying to all modern award wage rates from the first full pay period after 1 July. This increase will flow through to junior employees, apprentices, trainees, supported wage system employees, casuals and employees engaged on piece rates or commission under their award.

High-income threshold: The high-income threshold for unfair dismissal under the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) increased from $136,700 to $138,900 on 1 July. This means that award/ agreement-free employees earning over this threshold are not eligible to access unfair dismissal remedies.

General: CCI Members are reminded this NMW decision applies only to national system employers.

For more information or to subscribe to CCI’s Industrial Awards Service, please contact the CCI Employee Relations Advice Centre on (08) 9365 7660 or email advice@cciwa.com ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 29

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CCI ADVICE

MIND YOUR LANGUAGE

Take a deep breath and a mindful moment before responding to an employee’s expletive-filled rant

E KENDALL SCOTT CCI Manager, Employee Relations Advice Centre

ven if an employee calls you the C-word, be sure you treat them fairly or you might end up in front of the Fair Work Commission (FWC), as one employer did earlier this year.

What’s fair?

In a case before the FWC on 16 May, an employee referring to his CEO as an “old ****” was deemed a valid reason for his dismissal, however the process leading up to dismissal was deemed unfair.

The employee made the comment during a phone conversation with the CEO during a conversation about unpaid overtime. He was later terminated via text message by the CEO who wrote: “The old man here. Do not come back tomorrow, thanks.”

The FWC found the disciplinary process was fundamentally flawed because the employee was denied procedural fairness.

He was not given an opportunity to arrange a support person nor provided with a right of reply.

ENCOURAGE A SWEARINGFREE CULTURE AND APPLY PROCEDURAL FAIRNESS WHEN DEALING WITH SUCH ISSUES As a result, the employee was awarded $828 minus tax in compensation, but as there was a valid reason for termination and the employment relationship had broken down, reinstatement was not considered.

Case in point In another matter before the FWC on 13 May, an employer was ordered to provide compensation to an employee who was dismissed after he advised his supervisor to “shove his roster up his ****”. It was found that the outburst was out of character and resulted from the employee being criticised for incorrect use of work by his supervisor.

The employer argued that because the employee was casual, he was ineligible to claim unfair dismissal and said the employee had received prior warnings for his behaviour.

But the FWC found the employee was a regular and systematic casual with an ongoing expectation of employment – he had been employed with the business since 2013, originally as parttime – and therefore qualified to claim unfair dismissal.

Additionally, the employer could not produce evidence of any written warnings and it was determined that no allowances had been made for:

the employee’s condition (he suffered from cerebral palsy)

the subsequent impact of dismissal on the employee in terms of the limited likelihood of sourcing alternative employment

the fact no anger or aggression accompanied the comment As a result, it was ruled there was no valid reason to terminate.

Similar to the first case, the employer was also found to have

failed to provide procedural fairness before the termination.

The employee was awarded $3850 in compensation for future lost earnings, but reinstatement was deemed inappropriate.

Lessons learned If you’re faced with employees using profanities at work, consider taking the following steps: 1. Have a Code of Conduct that clearly outlines what is and isn’t acceptable behaviour in the workplace and incorporate swearing into the mix of inappropriate behaviour.

2. Ensure the code includes the disciplinary processes to be followed when employees engage in inappropriate behaviour.

3. Apply the code consistently where there are breaches, giving staff procedural fairness on each occasion.

4. Educate managers and supervisors to ensure they lead by example.

Encourage a swearing-free culture and apply procedural fairness when dealing with such issues.

5. Consider the context before termination. Was the employee provoked?

Was it out of character?

In what context was the comment made? Take into account prior warnings and performance history.

If inappropriate behaviour is an issue in your workplace, call CCI’s Employee Relations Advice Centre on (08) 9365 7660. ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 3 1

CCI ADVICE

SOCIAL

FILTER Businesses that don’t have a social media policy could find themselves between a rock and a hard place if issues arise

I JESSICA HARCOURT CCI Employee Relations Adviser

t’s becoming increasingly common for businesses to use social media to advertise their products and services to reach a wider audience. It’s also common for an employee of the business to be allocated responsibility for updating and managing the business’s social media presence.

In this case, it can be useful to set parameters and guidelines around what can be communicated via these forums to clients and potential clients so as to avoid any unwanted information being released into the public forum.

It’s also important to outline how to deal with any negative information that is posted. A guidance document should be created covering off on branding, language, tone and style to ensure any communication meets the business’s professional standards.

Beware the venting employee

A GUIDANCE DOCUMENT SHOULD BE CREATED COVERING OFF ON BRANDING, LANGUAGE, TONE AND STYLE 32 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

Of particular concern for the business sector is the increasing trend of employees airing their grievances about their employer on social media. This can have a negative impact on the business’s bottom line, especially if the employee’s audience is wide and the employer is identifiable in some way.

A multitude of recent cases before the Fair Work Commission have seen employees disciplined for posting sexist, bullying or racist remarks relating to colleagues and managers as well as general derogatory comments about their employer on Facebook.

The best way to manage these issues is to have a robust social media policy in place. In many cases, this will prevent the behaviour from occurring in the first place by making clear what the company’s expectations are and outlining the consequences of failing to comply.

A thorough and consistently applied policy can be critical in mitigating risks when it comes to terminating employees for their social media misdemeanours.

With this in mind, what should an effective social media policy include?

1. The scope of the policy The policy should state who it covers and why the policy is being implemented. It should also clarify what is meant by “social media” and give examples such as external blogs, Instagram, LinkedIn, Facebook or other social media sites. It should also be made clear the policy extends to both social media use during and outside of business hours and that it applies to all employees and users who contribute to social media sites and who are identifiable as being associated with the business.

2. Outline company expectations Link the policy to other relevant policies such as equal opportunity policies, workplace bullying policies, Codes of Conduct etc. Be clear as to the

expected behaviour in light of these other policies when using social media.

3. Monitoring If the company intends on monitoring email and internet usage during work hours, this should be clearly expressed in the policy.

4. Policy breaches The policy should clearly state what the possible outcomes are for employees whose behaviour is inconsistent with the policy.

Ensure it’s made clear that breaches occurring outside of work can also be addressed through the same discipline processes.

5. Training Employees need to be trained on any policy that is introduced into the workplace and refresher training should be run every couple of years. This training should also be included within an induction. Additionally, any significant changes to the policy should be clearly communicated to staff.

CCI’s new Guide to Managing Technology and Social Media in the Workplace has been created to assist employers in managing these issues. The guide contains pro-forma template policies and comprehensive guidance notes.

For more information, contact the Employee Relations Advice Centre on (08) 9365 7660 or advice@cciwa.com ¢

BOOK LOOK

UNLOCK YOUR INNER ENTREPRENEUR By harnessing the passion and verve of an entrepreneur, you can improve your business and your whole life, writes Philip Delves Broughton

I

f there was any honesty among those who teach and promote entrepreneurship, they would tear down the inspiring quotes pasted up on their office walls and replace them with pictures of people being rejected at cashpoints. They would hand out t-shirts saying: ‘You built a food-delivery app to change the world – and all you got was this lousy eviction notice.’

That would be more consistent with the facts of entrepreneurial risk-taking.

But they don’t because there are countervailing forces at work. There is the profound psychological need which entrepreneurship can satisfy. To succeed as an entrepreneur is a form of heroic achievement in any economy, but particularly a vigorous market economy. To become a multibillionaire through your own endeavour affords you fawning respect, invitations to state dinners, honorary doctorates, Hollywood biopics.

fly. At the very least, when you find yourself hauled out of bed early on a weekday morning, or taking that last, grey flight home on a Friday night, you can know you are doing it for yourself rather than at the whim of another.

But entrepreneurship also allows individuals a shot at the even deeper pleasure of doing work that they cannot do while working for others. It provides a way to innovate, to challenge whatever currently prevails and to let your originality flourish.

If you are a medical researcher and you know a new drug could help thousands of people, but not enough to make commercial sense for the pharmaceutical company you work for, entrepreneurship offers you a path. If you are a chef chafing on the line, yearning to create dishes which exist only in your imagination, finding investors and opening your own restaurant is a way to turn that yearning into action. If you are a young musician struggling to be heard,

ENTREPRENEURSHIP OFFERS A WAY OUT OF CORPORATE LIFE

which colours people’s views of its risks. Business is often wrongly seen as a set of rational processes.

Entrepreneurship gives emotion its proper place.

To think like an entrepreneur is to journey through this mazy terrain between optimism and despair: optimism engendered by the thrill of self-actualisation which occurs when you start and manage a successful enterprise and despair at the difficulties which this entails and the corpses which litter your path.

This is an extract from How To Think Like An Entrepreneur by Philip Delves Broughton, published by Macmillan. RRP $19.99. ¢

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Entrepreneurship offers a way out of corporate life, out of a system of task-and-reward allocation run by others, to one run by you. You get to decide how to work, what to work on, and how to divide the rewards. If you would rather wear your skivvies instead of a suit, forego all meetings and work via Skype from the beach, you can – assuming your investors and employees still trust you to make your business

you can make your own recordings and distribute them yourself. If you are an ambitious politician, an African American, say, who has only served two years in the US Senate but think you have a long-shot at the White House, it takes entrepreneurial thinking to orchestrate a successful campaign.

Entrepreneurship is a powerful means of arranging life to enable one’s fulfilment, and it is this ineffable opportunity

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JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 3 3

TAKING THE LEAD A good leader looks inward before they look outward – where is your focus these days?

W

hen I accepted my first leadership position I was fresh out of university. It involved the challenge of managing a team that was geographically dispersed throughout the state. It was a big job, but at the time it didn’t faze me. I had studied human resource management and leadership at university and naively believed it would give me all the answers.

It didn’t.

I was suddenly responsible for staff who were three times my age, who didn’t like bosses and had all types of personality quirks. In fact, all came with their challenges – challenges I hadn’t read about in my textbooks. I fumbled my way through and focused on the only thing I knew. Outcomes.

I was great at achieving outcomes and I achieved many during my time. But when the achievement glow wore off, I began to notice a sense of unease amongst my staff. I was determined to “do” something to solve it and I arranged a team building session with personality testing, hoping all might be revealed.

But it turned out the person who learnt the most was me. “I can’t believe the test revealed that I am 100 per cent outcome-focused and zero per cent people-focused – it must be wrong!” I exclaimed to my staff members afterwards.

But the look on their faces showed that the information was in fact pretty accurate. They shifted uncomfortably in their chairs at first, but gradually started to reveal feelings of being micro-managed, not listened to and sometimes treated as a means to an end. This was my wake-up call. I’d thought I was a nice person doing all the right things.

Today’s business environment is characterised by fast-paced change, uncertainty and 34 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

unpredictability. Never before has a people leader had such a high volume and complexity of things to juggle, process and navigate.

And that’s why a leadership rulebook no longer exists. The only thing a leader has to rely upon is themselves – the wisdom that’s generated from the combination of their heads and their hearts.

So what do leaders have to guide them in these complex times? The following principles may help:

1. Leadership is more about “being” than it is about “doing” When I was first a leader, I was doing all the right things. Having staff meetings, giving feedback, doing performance appraisals – all of the things I know are good leadership practice. But something was missing. I wasn’t being the person that my team wanted to follow. I was wearing leadership as a badge of honour rather than living it as a role of service. I cared more about the outcomes than the people who were achieving them. A leader inspires people to bring their best to work. If you are not being that person, then all the “doing” in the world will not help.

2. Lead yourself before you lead others Never before has self-awareness been such an important attribute of a leader. Many of the habits that have worked in the past will not work in today’s environment.

Letting go of the ones that don’t serve you and adopting new personal mindsets are key to inspiring others. If you can’t identify mindsets for success and change your way of thinking, you’ll have little chance of doing it for other people.

3. Be vulnerable Leaders in the past have felt the need to be perfectionists; to have all the answers and to put up a protection shield that made them look unshakeable and invincible. But these leaders often didn’t inspire and their followers could see straight through the facade. Operating from a ‘threat state’, always looking over your shoulder in case you get caught out as a “fake”, is exhausting.

And it doesn’t motivate anyone.

Being comfortable being yourself and being transparent with your feelings, fears and challenges is one of the most powerful acts a leader can undertake.

4. Adopt a beginner’s mind If a friend has a business problem, often you can see an obvious solution – not because you are smarter but because you are bringing fresh eyes to the situation. When you carry around the baggage of past experience, it filters your thinking. A leader who recognises they are not an expert are more likely to listen, to learn from the people they leading, to see things afresh and therefore come up with more creative solutions.

5. Change your paradigm Many common leadership practices are adaptions of ones that arose from the industrial era when the ‘command and control’ paradigm was the foundation.

They had their place when work

was largely routine, but they are no longer relevant in a fast-paced, ever-changing business environment. Instead of viewing work and people as something that is predictable and therefore controllable, it’s more useful to view it through the lens of a living system. A garden, for example, has the characteristics of being unpredictable. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It’s highly adaptable and all the pieces work together without having a central point to direct, measure and manage – much like the qualities of people in today’s workplaces. As a leader of a living system, your most important role is to step back, observe, align to purpose, create the environment, switch people on, weed out the issues and ensure overall connectivity. Sometimes the best thing you can do as a leader is get out of the way and allow your people to thrive.

Times have changed and as leaders we need to be the first ones to change with them.

And the good news is when you start to let go and embrace a new way, you may just find that it’s more satisfying and rewarding.

Susan Pearse is an author and co-founder of Mind Gardener, an Australian consultancy specialising in conscious leadership. Visit www.mindgardener.com. CCI offers a suite of leadership and communication courses at discounted rates for Members.

Contact (08) 9365 7500. ¢

BUSINESS SUPPORT & GROWTH

COACH’S CORNER

CCI Business Consultant Rob Swann answers your burning questions

THE RIGHT ANSWERS COME FROM ASKING THE RIGHT QUESTIONS

Q. Cash-flow is a recurring challenge for my business – how do I buy myself some breathing space?

A. Next to managing staff, managing cash-flow can be one of the most stressful aspects of running a business of any size.

While there is a lot of truth in the old adage that “cash is king”, a closer inspection often uncovers some hard truths about how well a business is performing in the generation of a sustainable margin. The simple fact is most cash-flow problems are caused by inadequate margin, resulting in a “lack of cash” issue, rather than one of simply “flow”.

The margin is simply the difference between the price you charge less the cost of everything you do to make the sale. Sounds simple enough, but the reality is small businesses are generally not well equipped to accurately measure the margin and identify ways to drive improvement. If you’re looking at the profit and loss or bank account to try and get a handle on how well you are doing, there’s a good chance you might be focussing on the wrong areas.

As with most business problems, there’s no one simple solution to improving your margins, although many organisations will try and sell you one! When tackling problems within your business, it’s a lot more effective to think of it as an optimisation exercise rather than

a repair. Optimisation is about small incremental improvements that add up to a better result.

Q. My closest competitor often wins jobs off me on the basis of price even though my service actually delivers better value in the end.

How do I get my message across?

A. Many of us operating in the quoting space are continually beaten up on price. We try to talk value, but all anyone hears is price. This is especially the case in a tougher economic climate.

But the value message can be successfully communicated in any climate. The first step is to restructure the quote template to get price out of the way early (the trick being that humans tend to remember the last thing they read, which will be your solution rather than your price). Here’s an example: Intro Brief paragraph Price Single figure Product What?

Features How? Expertise Why you (authority and past experience)?

Benefits Why is this going to solve the problem (your guarantee)?

The key to talking value is to focus on the solution your customer needs. It might be stopping lost-time injuries due to people falling down steps, but

SHARE THE LOAD: ASK AN EXPERT

they might call this a ‘lighting upgrade’ and send it to their procurement specialist, who looks at product and price only.

Your challenge is to get to the end user and really understand the personal words they use to describe their problem. Speak to that issue in your quotes and suddenly you have people buying rather than you selling. The key to this technique is questioning, not talking.

Q. Things have slowed down, but we still seem to have no time to work on the business. Why is it with less activity, we have the same costs and seemingly less time?

revenue-related activity.

Committees and groups tend to become dysfunctional above 7-10 members.

Officials/bureaucrats tend to make ever increasing amounts of work for each other.

Officials/bureaucrats generally want to multiply numbers of subordinates, not rivals.

When you start looking, you’ll find a surprising number of examples of ‘Parkinson’s Law’ at work. While some may be out of your control, it may also be useful to reflect from time to time on how much of your business’s structure is contributing to its bottom line. ¢

A. The more things change, the more they stay the same.

Increasing overhead costs can often be traced back to structure and bureaucracy. Management scholar Cyril Northcote Parkinson did some work around this back in 1955, basing his observations on the British Civil Service. He found that “work expands to fill the time available for its completion”. His research spawned many other hypotheses:

Bureaucracy tends to expand in an organisation at a rate of 5-7 per cent per year, regardless of revenue and JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ES S PU L SE 3 5

THE FULL SPECTRUM Employers who ‘take a chance’ on a worker with autism report encouragingly positive results, according to new research by Curtin University

BREAKING:

WA RESEARCH

THE WEEKLY COST OF EMPLOYING SOMEONE WITH ASD WAS COMPARATIVE TO EMPLOYING SOMEONE WITHOUT 36 B US I NE S S P U L S E J ULY 20 1 6

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mploying adults on the autism spectrum benefits employees, employers and their organisations without incurring additional costs.

Autism is a lifelong developmental condition that affects the way an individual relates to their environment and their interaction with other people.

The new research by Bankwest Curtin Economics Centre (BCEC) is the first of its kind in Australia to combine the experiences of workers and their employees into a single study of the benefits and costs of employing adults with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD).

Dr Delia Hendrie, senior lecturer at Curtin’s School of Public Health and lead researcher on the BCEC-funded project, says there’s an estimated 157,000 working-age adults with ASD in Australia and these numbers are expected to increase over the coming years as young adults with ASD transition from school to employment and as diagnosis methods improve.

BCEC’s research surveyed employers and employees from across Australia in a number of different organisations to examine factors that contributed to job retention, performance and worker wellbeing for employees with autism and their employers.

Fifty-nine employers and almost 100 employees were

involved in the study and, overall, the impact of having an employee with ASD in the workplace was reported as positive.

“We found compared to their counterparts without ASD, employees with ASD performed at above-standard levels in regard to attention to detail, work ethic and quality of work,” Dr Hendrie says.

“In terms of productivity, employees with ASD performed at similar levels to people who aren’t on the spectrum and the weekly cost of employing someone with ASD was comparative to employing someone without.

“Employees with ASD were also found to have a positive impact on the workplace in terms of the creativity and different skills they brought to the organisation and by increasing awareness of autism amongst employees.”

Overall, satisfaction with the performance of employees was reflected by the majority of employers indicating they would recommend employing someone with ASD and would employ another person with ASD if the employee with ASD left the workplace.

The study also highlighted key factors that promote successful employment of adults with ASD, including the importance of employees feeling included and valued in the workplace, having job expectations clearly communicated and feeling guided and supported in the workplace.

“The findings suggest the need for employers to make attitudinal adjustments towards employees with ASD and the preconceived idea of additional costs for support and workplace modifications,” Dr Hendrie says.

“Adults with ASD are more likely to experience poorer labour market outcomes, with greater rates of unemployment and lower overall participation rates compared to other people with disabilities and the general population.”

“In Australia, the labour force participation rate for adults with ASD is 42 per cent compared with 53 per cent for all individuals with disabilities and 83 per cent for individuals without disabilities.”

Send your breaking WA research news to editor@cciwa.com ¢

Autism on the rise

Once considered rare, autism now accounts for 31 per cent of NDIS participants, making them the largest group in the scheme.

One in 63 Australian school children has a formal autism diagnosis.

THE CASE OF THE DISAPPEARING DOLLAR

Intermediary banks are charging up to $40 per international transaction and it’s time to do something about it, writes John Bromberger

W

e don’t have any sales staff – our reputation in Australia has grown over the last 29 years by word of mouth. We’re a medium-sized family business that manufactures items for hospitals, nursing homes and care centres. We also export overseas to Saudi Arabia, England, the USA and other countries.

To keep our overseas payments simple, we ask our customers to pay us the exact amount shown on their invoice in Australian dollars. They pay for the bank fees associated with converting and sending the money to Australia. We then pay our bank a transfer fee to receive the money.

WHEN THE MONEY IS PAID INTO OUR ACCOUNT, BETWEEN $20 AND $30 IS MISSING FROM EACH TRANSACTION This simple system was working well – until about a year ago. Now when the money is paid into our account, between $20 and $30 is missing from each transaction.

The first time this happened, we checked with our customer

and they had paid the correct amount. Our bank statement also showed our own bank had deducted their usual fees for receiving the money too, but somehow a further charge was deducted. We were at a loss as to why the invoice was short.

So we took the issue up with our bank.

Apparently, when our customer in England sent the payment through, their British bank sent the money to an ‘intermediary bank’, which deducted the extra fee.

The intermediary bank does not send us an invoice and the amount deducted can vary. With one payment of $4,430.32, the deduction was $20. We also had to pay our bank $10 to receive the money, so we were a total of $30 out of pocket.

For another transaction with a customer in Singapore who had an invoice from us for only $142, the intermediary bank deduction was $24 – 16.8 per cent – on top of our own banks fees. Our Singaporean customer also paid his bank $10 to send the money directly to us, bringing the total amount paid in bank fees to $44.

We would have preferred to give him the goods free of charge, rather than have the banks deduct their fees. It’s not the same intermediary bank every time either – we’ve encountered three

different intermediary banks in three transactions.

I think the banks have got together and organised that any money going around the world is directed to go through an intermediary bank. For example in England, if a bank has 400 branches and they all have one transaction each to go to Australia, they send the total sum of money as a book entry to the intermediary banks, which then covert the pounds into Australian dollars. The intermediary bank then sends the dollars to the receiver’s bank in Australia, having deducted their fee before sending the money.

Perhaps the intermediary banks have been around for years, but they previously charged their fees in a different way.

What surprises me is that these intermediary banks can just deduct the money without sending an invoice or even disclosing what exchange rate was used for the transaction.

There must be an ulterior motive for this system. Electronic emails go around the world in seconds – it makes me wonder how this seemingly simple job can cost customers up to $40.

Has anyone else noticed the same disappearing money trick?

John Bromberger is the Managing Director of Pelican Manufacturing. ¢ JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 3 7

RAC

360 Environmental

McMullen Nolan Group

Chevron Australia

City of Kwinana

Geraldton Primary School

L-R: Kristy Thomas, Hayley Ryan, Carlie Ryan Health & Wellness

Kaye Butler General Manager Human Resources

Eastern Metropolitan Regional Council Peter B Schneider Chief Executive Officer

Tamara Smith Director

Sue Wiltshire Manager Human Resources

LD Total

Troy Fiscus Coordinator Healthy Workplace

Scott Anderson CEO/Managing Director

Fiona Angelatos Deputy Principal

Gooding Partners David Crawford Senior Manager

“We know what our workplace is worth�

When your workplace is happy, healthy and productive why not celebrate it?

Join these workplaces and become a Recognised Healthy Workplace today.

Visit www.healthierworkplacewa.com.au Call 1300 550 271 Email hwwa@heartfoundation.org.au Supported by

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A joint Australian, State and Territory Government initiative under the National Partnership Agreement on Preventive Health

WINNERS

WINNERS are GRINNERS CCI congratulates its winning Members on their outstanding achievements

Boab Health Services

Scitech

Gold recognition, Healthier Workplaces WA

ASPAC Creative Science Exhibit Award

Boab Health Services – a not-for-profit primary health care organisation servicing communities across the Kimberley region – has been recognised as a ‘Gold Standard’ healthy workplace by Healthier Workplace WA. Chief Executive Officer Margie Ware says Boab has a strong focus on health promotion and chronic disease prevention for clients, so it’s logical to make it a priority in their own workplace too.

“We are committed to creating a workplace culture that supports and encourages healthy lifestyles, supported by our enthusiastic healthy workplace group,” Ware says.

Key initiatives in Boab’s detailed action plan include: Implementation of a smoke-free workplace Healthy catering guidelines

A work/life balance allowance entitling staff to partial reimbursement on healthy lifestyle activities outside of work including gym memberships, sports association fees or swimming passes

Regular health email bulletins, newsletters and discussion at team meetings

Portable/communal standing desks for each office space Healthier Workplace WA Manager Natalie Quinn says the Recognised Healthy Workplace program is an opportunity to acknowledge and celebrate the growing commitment to workplace health in WA. “Recognition brings direct benefits to employees and can also enhance business reputation, make businesses an employer of choice and assist to grow workplace culture by demonstrating a commitment to health and wellbeing,” Quinn says.

A partnership with Rio Tinto that produced a unique science exhibition has earned WA’s Scitech a prestigious international award.

Scitech was awarded the Asia Pacific Network of Science & Technology Centre’s (ASPAC) Creative Science Exhibit Award for its Rio Tinto Innovation Central (RTIC) showcase.

Developed for children aged 7-17, the RTIC showcase focuses on five themes – need, think, make, try, refine – and provides hands-on experiences that demonstrate emerging scientific theories such as quantum levitation and DIY activities like coding, hobby electronics and 3D printing. ‘RoboThespian’, an interactive humanoid robot, is a highlight of the exhibition.

Scitech CEO Alan Brien, who now serves as Vice-President of ASPAC, says he is proud to be recognised for Scitech’s work on the international stage, having successfully competed against some of the world’s best scientific institutions.

“We are grateful to be able to work with partners such as Rio Tinto to ensure that our visitors learn something new and inspiring that also relates to their day-to-day lives,” Brian says.

Rio Tinto CEO Andrew Harding adds: “To remain competitive in a rapidly changing world, it’s essential that our future leaders are truly innovative thinkers [and that] young people develop the skills and thinking that will make them the innovative leaders of tomorrow.”

Scitech welcomes about 300,000 visitors each year.

IT’S ESSENTIAL OUR FUTURE LEADERS ARE TRULY INNOVATIVE THINKERS

If you have a winning story about your business or organisation you’d like to share, email

editor@cciwa.com JU LY 2 016 BUSIN ESS PU L SE 3 9

FIVE TOP FIVE

AUSTRALIAN HEALTH INVENTIONS THAT CHANGED THE WORLD

PENICILLIN

TBA HAS SAVED

MILLIONS OF LIVES AROUND THE WORLD BY COMBATTING INFECTION

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Spray-on skin Australian Professor Fiona Wood and scientist Marie Stoner developed the world-first spray-on skin at their skin culture lab in 1992.

By recognising the potential of tissue engineering technology to treat burns, Wood and Stoner have significantly reduced the recovery time of burn-damaged skin tissue from 21 days to five. New skin cells are grown from a small patch of the victim’s healthy skin and then sprayed on the damaged skin.

Spray-on skin has been used to treat more than 1000 patients around the world, including 28 patients in the aftermath of the 2002 Bali bombings.

Professor Wood said: ‘’My overwhelming feeling … has been one of feeling very privileged to have been able to have helped.’’

Penicillin In 1939 Howard Florey, with a team of scientists, purified penicillin from a special strain of mould, demonstrating its ability to fight bacterial infection in mice and, later, humans.

The first patient treated with penicillin had been scratched by a thorn and his face and scalp became swollen from the infection.

One of his eyes was removed and abscesses in his head were drained.

Within a day of being given penicillin, he began to recover, however, supplies of the drug were low and the patient relapsed and died.

By 1944, penicillin was used to aid victims of World War II. It has saved millions of lives around the world by combatting infection from common bacteria. Australia was the first country that made the drug available for civilians.

Cervical cancer vaccine In 2006, Professor Ian Frazer administered the first official vaccine against cervical cancer.

The commercial application, Gardasil, is a vaccine to prevent certain types of human papillomavirus (HPV) known to cause cervical cancer. As the secondleading cause of cancer death in women, the vaccination has huge implications for the prevention of cancer.

The world-first National Human papillomavirus (HPV) Immunisation Program for girls and boys began in WA – the vaccine was available for girls from 2007 and extended to include boys in 2013.

The Gardasil vaccine is currently free in WA for girls and boys in Year 8 as part of the school-based National Immunisation Program.

Bionic ear In 1978 Professor Graeme Clark successfully tested the bionic ear. The bionic ear was the first cochlear implant to reliably give speech understanding to severely and profoundly deaf people, along with spoken language to children born deaf.

Cochlear implants are devices that are implanted into the head to electronically stimulate the auditory nerve. Clark began his research into otolaryngology – ear, nose and throat surgery – and the human brain’s response to coded sound in the 1960s.

In the 1980s, Cochlear Pty Ltd produces the implant for recipients worldwide. Celebrated both nationally and internationally for his research, Clark’s device is estimated to have been implanted into about 219,000 people worldwide.

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5 Ultrasound scanner This 1970s invention revolutionised pre-natal care in Australia and around the world, giving expecting parents a window to the foetus without x-ray exposure.

Most pregnant women have at least one ultrasound scan to check on the development of the foetus. Ultrasound technology is also used in the diagnoses of medical problems of the breast, abdomen, and reproductive organs.

Ausonics commercialised the ultrasound scanner in 1976. While studying ultrasound technology, CSIRO’s Ultrasonic Research Centre discovered a way to differentiate ultrasound echoes bouncing off soft tissue in the body and converting them to TV images.

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