Joanne Farrell on bringing
The elephant in the safety room: the E in EHS
How Orrcon Steel is improving safety through innovation
Are you writing plans instead of eliminating safety risks?
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important role to play in actioning the strategy in the workplace, writes Craig
Donaldsonacross the country, providing a unifying vision and goal. “Underpinning the vision of safe and healthy work for all is that everyone who goes to work has the right to return home safely. Our overarching goal is to work towards making this right a reality for each and every worker,” said Farrell. For the full story please turn to page 16.
Craig Donaldson, editor, OHS Professional
Setting a WHS strategy for the nation for the coming decade is no easy task. However, this is what Safe Work Australia achieved earlier this year when it released its new 10-year national strategy to reduce workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses in Australia. It represents a national commitment to work together to reduce worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses over the next decade.
The strategy was developed under Safe Work Australia’s tripartite governance processes and has been agreed upon by the Commonwealth, state, and territory governments. This is particularly important, in that all levels of government have overcome their differences (evident in the lack of legal and regulatory harmonisation across jurisdictions) to agree on goals and potential solutions to the big WHS challenges facing the country.
In an interview with OHS Professional magazine, Joanne Farrell, Chair of Safe Work Australia, explained that the strategy is an important document for WHS stakeholders
Also in this issue, we look at how environment has become an important focus for many organisations, which in turn have looked to their health and safety functions to upskill in the increasingly influential discipline of HSE. Many traditional OHS and WHS roles have evolved into HSE, EHS (or similar) roles, which can encompass a range of priorities, including emissions, energy conservation, wastewater discharges, carbon footprint, water conservation, waste disposal, contaminated land, hazardous materials management, and complying with environmental regulations. Keith Hoskins, executive general manager HSE at Endeavour Energy, notes in this feature that “the skillsets required for environmental management do differ in many areas from health and safety, but there are also some common skillsets and tools such as a risk assessment approach in managing
KAREN WOLFE General manager of high reliability, ANSTO
KYM BANCROFT Deputy DirectorGeneral, Office of Industrial Relations, Queensland
O'CONNOR HSET group manager, SRG Global
environmental risks that can be applied.” For more information please see page 22.
The profile feature for this issue (beginning page 26) is on Patrick Hudson, who was recently recognised with the Harold Greenwood Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to the field of health and safety. As one of the world’s leading authorities on the human factor in the management of safety, Hudson reflected on his major achievements in an interview with The University of Adelaide’s Professor Dino Pisaniello, Chair of the AIHS College of Fellows, and Hudson said that he thought of himself as the “missing link” in that he always tried to link theory to practice. “What I know is that there’s a lot of theory going on out there, and there are a number of people who will talk endlessly about theory. But the thing is that what really counts is getting it to work. And that’s where I’ve been more involved,” he said.
There have also been some important developments at the AIHS in recent months. Chief among these is the relaunch of the Certification Program (page 8) to recognise OHS professionals and more closely align with international best practices, as outlined by the International Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organisation (INSHPO) in the Global Capability Framework. We also feature a story on the AIHS College of Fellows (page 10) which supports a range of strategic outcomes for the AIHS, with another story on an Investiture of AIHS Fellows (page 11) which was recently convened in Canberra. The Patron of the Institute is the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and Her Excellency, Mrs Linda Hurley, penned “The Song of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety” for the special occasion. n
HOWARD Executive director of safety, Transport for NSW MICHAEL TOOMA Managing partner, Clyde & Co Australia
ROD MAULE, GM Safety & Wellbeing, Safety, Australia Post
STEVE BELL Managing Partner –Employment, Industrial Relations and Safety (Australia, Asia)
With the release of a new national WHS strategy, OHS professionals have an
“Underpinning the vision of safe and healthy work for all is that everyone who goes to work has the right to return home safely”
The AIHS has always worked towards not only raising the profile of the profession, but also raising its capability, writes
Julia Whitford
In the last three months, Safe Work Australia (SWA) has released its ambitious ‘Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023–2033’, which provides a blueprint for the future of WHS in Australia. As the peak national body for the profession, the Australian Institute of Health & Safety (AIHS) commits to supporting the strategy and has used it to inform our own strategic plan, ‘Vision 2026’. Along with our commitments and vision for the future, Vision 2026 will also detail how, in practice, we will support SWA’s 10-year plan.
SWA puts the vision of the new strategy simply as “safe and healthy work for all”. The first step identified in enabling the vision begins with embedding good WHS practices in all work, across all industries. The AIHS has always worked towards not only raising the profile of the profession, but also raising its capability, as encapsulated in our capability agenda. We will continue to support this goal through a number of different channels. Certification of the profession is, and will always be, central to ensuring good WHS practice. By raising the capability of workers, and ensuring an emphasis on continuing professional development and high ethical standards, we can better assure employers and governments of the quality of advice needed to prevent physical and psychological harm in our workplaces. Another way to embed good WHS practice is to promote and showcase innovation and exemplary WHS practices. The AIHS has long celebrated best-practice and innovation through the Australian Workplace Health & Safety Awards and our various service, education, and research awards.
The second enabler of the strategy is identified as a desired focus on improving the evidence base that informs regulation and policy development, particularly to address established evidence gaps. The AIHS will support this in practice by continuing our stewardship of the OHS Body of Knowledge as a comprehensive and sound knowledge base for the profession to utilise, free of charge. We have also committed to continuing to support Australian researchers in providing employers and
governments with evidence regarding current and emerging risks to deepen knowledge and broaden understanding. There is a distinct focus in the strategy on consultation and collaboration at all levels. Everyone has a role to play in improving WHS outcomes, and collaboration across industry, government, regulators, unions, and PCBUs is essential. Every stakeholder holds different expertise on what works and what doesn’t. And to effectively work towards the ambitious targets set in this strategy, we need to share resources, collaborate on initiatives, and work together to tackle complex challenges. The AIHS commits to driving informed collaboration as the independent experts who sit alongside unions and employer organisations to respond to WHS challenges effectively.
The release of the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033 is a significant milestone for WHS in Australia. As we look forward to the future of workplace health and safety in Australia, the Institute will always return to our central and guiding vision, ‘Healthy and safe workers in productive workplaces and communities’. We have learned that the industry will continue to change. Roles and responsibilities are expanding, the landscape in which we work has permanently changed, and the profession is growing. As we work towards the ambitious targets set out in the strategy, the AIHS will continue its commitment to embedding good WHS practice, ensuring access to a solid evidence base, and working collaboratively and sharing knowledge to ensure the level of safety and wellbeing that workers deserve. n
“Certification of the profession is, and will always be, central to ensuring good WHS practice”
Workers exhausted and unprepared for technologydriven future of work
Australian workers are exhausted, unwell, at risk of quitting, and largely unprepared for future workplace challenges driven by automation and artificial intelligence, according to a new research report. It found Australian workers were in poorer physical and mental health since the pandemic began, with workers aged between 25-55 years of age significantly impacted – one-third of whom had considered quitting. “With high rates of fatigue and exhaustion among younger and middle-aged workers, it’s no surprise that over a third of primeaged workers in Australia are considering quitting their jobs,” said Dr Brendan Churchill from the University of Melbourne Work Futures Hallmark Research Initiative, which conducted The 2023 State of the Future of Work Report.
Managers contacting remote working employees out of hours is causing extra job stress and policies and laws are needed to protect employees from these increasingly common “outof-hours intrusions”. A global research study found that workers reported higher stress levels and depressive moods associated with managers contacting them or requesting responses after work hours. While COVID disruptions sold many the illusion of freedom in working from home and flexible work hours, these results reveal the opposite, said Professor Mayowa Babalola from RMIT University, which conducted the study together with other researchers in the US and Europe. “Borderless workplaces are giving managers 24/7 access to employees where constant connectivity with managers is an expectation rather than an option,” said Babalola.
About one in five injured or ill workers said the COVID-19 pandemic had an impact on their return to work and recovery, according to a new Safe Work Australia analysis. It found that injured workers under the age of 25 were the most likely to respond they had been stood down or had their hours reduced during the COVID-19 pandemic. Furthermore, workers suffering from a psychological injury and those experiencing distress were more likely to report that the COVID-19 pandemic had impacted their recovery and return to work. The analysis asked 1620 workers about their experience recovering from an injury and returning to work during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also found the largest impacts on workers from COVID-19 on their return to work were limited access to social and family support, limited access to treatments, and limited access to mental health support.
A specialist agricultural team of inspectors, liaison officers, and an advisory service should be established to conduct inspections, attend industry events, and develop advisory material for the industry in Western Australia, according to the WorkSafe WA Commissioner’s independent inquiry report into the agricultural industry. The report also recommended that steps be taken to raise industry awareness of safety with the participation of industry groups, including specific agricultural industry web pages and the utilisation of public events to educate farmers. With the release of the report, the Commissioner has indicated his support for the majority of the recommendations, however, two have been noted as they will require further work or consultation if the State Government wishes to progress them.
A new code of practice that addresses psychological health risks at work, such as exposure to traumatic events or isolated working, recently came into force in Queensland. The new code, Managing the Risk of psychosocial hazards at Work Code of Practice, commenced on 1 April and is the first of its kind in Australia to be legally enforceable. The code includes advice on how to comply with existing health and safety obligations after a national review found many employers were unsure of their duties to manage psychological health and safety risks at work. It also provides practical examples of managing psychosocial hazards in the workplace, industry-specific case studies, and a range of helpful templates that businesses can tailor.
New paramedics experience an increase in insomnia and depression during the first six months of their employment, according to recent research. It found sleep disturbances before emergency work were identified as potential risk factors for the development of depression and PTSD among paramedics in the early stages of their careers. The research also found that new recruits who already experienced higher insomnia symptoms before starting their careers as paramedics were more likely to have higher depression symptoms after six months. The joint Monash University and Ambulance Victoria study, published in the journal Sleep, investigated whether poor sleep pre-exposure to paramedic work increases the risk of future mental health outcomes.
SHARING
Amazon
APA Group
Appenate
Avetta
Boral
Wolters Kluwer Enablon
Aurecon Australasia
Australian Unity
Brisbane Catholic Education
Clough Projects Australia
Compita Consulting
Downer Group
Engentus
Fifo Focus
Guardian Angel Safety
Herbert Smith Freehills
HOK Talent Solutions
Pilz Australia
Port of Newcastle Operations
Ai Group
ASHPA
Australian College of Road Safety (ACRS)
Australian Institute of Management (AIM)
Australian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy (AusIMM)
Australian Transport Safety Bureau (ATSB)
Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organisations (CSIRO)
Environment Institute of Australia and
Everyday Massive Programmed Safety Champion Software
SAI360
Transurban
Zenergy Safety Health & Wellbeing
Safesearch
Sustainable Future Solutions
The Safe Step
Trainwest Safety Institute
Tru-Bilt Industries
Uniting SA
University of Queensland
Virgin Australia
INVESTING
Alcolizer Technology
Area9 Lyceum
Ashburton Assurance Australasia
Australian Army
Codesafe
Coles Group
Defence Housing Australia
EY
Federation University
K & L Gates
Kitney OHS
Minter Ellison
Presien
Relevant Drug Testing Solutions
Sydney Metro
Teamcare Insurance Brokers
Transport for NSW
Uniting
BEING PART OF THE NETWORK – BRONZE MEMBERS
5 Sticks Consulting
Airbus Australia Pacific
AusGroup
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Complete Security Protection
Ecoportal
Employment Innovations
Flick Anticimex
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Health & Safety Advisory Service
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Isaac Regional Council
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National Storage
National Training Masters
Office for the Commissioner of Public Sector Employment
Safetysure
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New Zealand (EIANZ)
Farmsafe Australia Inc
Health and Safety Association of New Zealand (HASANZ)
Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia (HFESA)
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National Road Safety Partnership Program (NRSPP)
Management (NZISM)
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SafeWork SA
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Queensland
Would you like to become a Corporate Member of the AIHS?
Please contact AIHS on 03 8336 1995 to discuss the many options available.
The Certification Program was recently relaunched to future-proof the program, enhance usability, and provide pathways to certification for potential applicants with a range of OHS qualifications and experience
The Australian Institute of Health and Safety recently relaunched the Certification Program to recognise OHS professionals and more closely align with international best practices, as outlined by the International Network of Safety and Health Practitioner Organisation (INSHPO) in the Global Capability Framework.
Certification has long been a tool that assesses and acknowledges generalist OHS Practitioners and Professionals’ education, experience, and capabilities. The OHS Certification Program was initially launched by the Institute in 2007. A full review of the Certification Program was undertaken in partnership with the Certification Governance Committee (CGC) in 2022/2023.
“The certification reform was undertaken to ensure we are futureproofing the program, enhancing usability, and providing pathways to certification for potential applicants with a range of OHS qualifications and experience,” said Sarah Hemingway, learning & professional development manager for the AIHS. “The program now closely aligns with the International Network for Safety and Health Practitioner Organisations (INSHPO) in the Global Capability Framework.”
Although certification of generalist OHS professionals has been standard practice in countries like the USA, Canada, the UK, and Europe, Australia initially lagged behind in implementing a certification scheme. However, in 2007, the Health and Safety Profession Alliance (HaSPA) confirmed in its minimum standards that the certification of OHS advisors is essential in achieving the highest level of protection for employees, employers, and other workplace health and safety stakeholders against risks to their health and safety. Worksafe Victoria also noted the need for a specific OHS professional certification program in the Maxwell review of Victorian OHS legislation.
The research paper, The emergence of the occupational health and safety profession in Australia, published in the journal Safety Science in August 2019, and authored by David Provan, managing director of Forge Works and researcher, Griffith University, and Pam Pryor, former manager, OHS Body of Knowledge, noted at the time that the OHS profession in Australia had made considerable progress towards establishing itself as a profession within contemporary organisations. However, they observed that the individual professional criteria
surrounding role, career path, and professional status were “wildly variable across industries and organisations”, while the external professional criteria were “equally variable with the OHS profession having a low societal awareness, and a largely negative perception within Australian society”.
As a result, the consolidation and expansion of the OHS professional structures implemented in Australia at the time required the joint effort of government, universities, industry, professional associations, and the OHS professionals themselves. In particular, they noted universities needed to establish a consistent nationwide tertiary education curriculum in partnership with the OHS Body of Knowledge, industry needed to promote the professionalisation of OHS by demanding the certification of their professionals, and professional associations and OHS professionals themselves needed to enhance their professional reputation through the effective performance of their role within their organisations and society more broadly.
Chapter 3 of the OHS Body of Knowledge, The Generalist OHS Professional: International and Australian Perspectives, is dedicated to evaluating the status of OHS as a profession. This chapter (2021 edition, authored by Pam Pryor, David Provan, Tristan Casey, Safety Science Innovation Lab, Griffith University, and Xiaowen Hu, QUT Business School, Queensland University of Technology) noted that while some consistency in OHS organisational structures has developed through informal processes, there is no clearly defined universal career path for OHS professionals in Australia. “Most OHS professionals remain within a single industry or closely related industries. The multiplicity of role titles and a tendency for the OHS function to be incorporated with other functions such as environment, security, and quality add to the lack of role clarity.”
The chapter also noted that the OHS profession may generally be considered ‘emerging’ – that is, it is yet to achieve the structures, capability, and recognition necessary to be considered ‘established.’ It said two key factors would influence the ongoing development of OHS as a profession:
• Widespread adoption of the INSHPO OHS Professional Capability Framework for the activities of OHS professional bodies and OHS education. This will
require continuous updating of the INSHPO framework to reflect current and emerging OHS knowledge and practice.
• Individual OHS professionals taking the initiative to ‘craft’ their role to adapt to changes in work, business models, and organisational structures and to engage, influence, and add value to their organisations.
Certification is an essential recognition that verifies an individual’s proficiency in a particular field. In the OHS world, certification assures that professionals have the required expertise to create and maintain safe and healthy work environments. The AIHS recognises the significance of developing competent and qualified OHS professionals and offers certification at varying levels based on the Global Capability Framework. This framework sets standards for education, experience, and demonstrated knowledge and skills, which are then evaluated to ensure that professionals possess the necessary aptitude to carry out their roles effectively.
The AIHS offers certification at different levels based on the Global Capability Framework for health and safety professionals. The three certification levels are:
Certified OHS Practitioners: these professionals maintain OHS administrative processes, conduct basic training, and oversee monitoring and compliance related to technical and behavioural risk controls. They work under supervision or mentoring, focusing on known contexts within established parameters.
OHS Professionals: these professionals design OHS strategies in the context of business processes and external influences. They provide advice based on conceptual and technical knowledge, experience, analysis, and critical thinking. They work solo or give direction to others.
Chartered OHS Professionals: these professionals possess high-level specialist or strategic skills and are influential with senior management or policymakers. They consider the broader organisational and social context of their advice.
A key addition is the new Practitioner Pathway Program which recognises those professionals that have three-plus years of work experience as an OHS practitioner but not the required qualification (though there is still a requirement of a Cert IV in OHS/WHS to complete this pathway, as the minimum qualification was previously a diploma or advanced diploma).
“This pathway is a 6-module program and then an exam based on the framework capabilities. Candidates who complete and pass this program are then eligible to apply for Certified OHS Practitioner,” she said.
“Looking to the future, AIHS plans to explore another pathway which recognises potential certified OHS professionals with three-plus years in an OHS professional role or 10-plus in a senior OHS role, but not the required qualification. In partnership with the Certification Governance Committee (GCG), there are plans for the exploration of this pathway next year.”
The benefits of becoming a Certified Member are:
• Enhanced credibility
• Employer confidence
• International alignment with the INSHPO Global Capability Framework
• Access to lifelong learning via AIHS Professional Development
• Connected and promoted via ‘Find a Safety Professional’
The Institute also recognises that many OHS professionals have been working in high-level roles for many years but may not have the qualification to match. The newly released Practitioner Pathway Program aims to provide a pathway for those professionals to have their skills and experience recognised, aligned to the Global Capability Framework, and awarded Certification. The Practitioner Pathway is a 6-module online course suited to people working in OHS with
a minimum of three-plus years of work experience at the Practitioner level and hold a certificate IV in OHS.
“Certified members are an integral part of AIHS and the profession,” said Hemingway. “Certification provides enhanced credibility, employer confidence and alignment with international best practices. We will continue to drive the message that having a capable, credible, and certified health and safety professional within the business should be a requirement for all OHS professionals. Our pilot program ran earlier this year to test the Certification reform. After surveying this group, 100 per cent said they would recommend the program.”
To determine if you are eligible for certification, AIHS offers different levels of certification based on the Global Capability Framework for health and safety professionals. The certification levels include Certified OHS Practitioner, Certified OHS Professional, and Chartered OHS Professional.
The AIHS Certification Eligibility Questionnaire is designed to help you assess your eligibility for certification as an occupational health and safety professional. By answering a series of questions about your education, experience, and demonstrated knowledge and skills, you can determine which certification level you may be eligible for according to the Global Capability Framework. n
For more information, please visit www.aihs.org.au/forms/ certification-eligibilityquestionnaire or scan this QR code
Many AIHS members may be wondering what the College of Fellows is and what it does. Essentially, the College is a senior network within the institute. It fulfils a number of ceremonial and practical roles, including support for research, policy, mentoring, awards, ethics, and technical standards. It reports to the Board via the Chair of the college, who is a Director ex officio. The current Chair is Professor Dino Pisaniello from the University of Adelaide.
Established in 2002, the College currently has around 200 fellows with a number of honorary fellows. Its purpose is to provide value and positively impact OHS knowledge and professional practice. Fellows also support a range of AIHS strategic outcomes with evidence-based advocacy, and community and workplace engagement.
The college has a committee structure, and each committee chairperson is a member of the college executive, which has a formal role in assisting the CEO and the Board. At each meeting of the AIHS Board, the college Chair provides a report summarising the committees’ work. In
addition, the executive liaises with the Australian OHS Education Accreditation Board, the OHS Body of Knowledge, and the International Network of Safety and Health Professional Organisations (INSPHO).
In the area of awards, the College Awards and Membership Committee provides recommendations for various individual awards, such as service awards and admission for fellowship and life membership awards.
In the area of standards, the College Standards Committee nominates AIHS members to technical committees of Standards Australia. Prominent health and safety-related committees are SF-001 Occupational Health & Safety Management and SF-053 Protective Clothing. The AIHS can also provide input into international standards, for example in the area of nanotechnology.
In the area of mentoring, the College Mentoring Committee serves a vital role in coordinating the highly regarded mentoring program. This is valuable for both mentees and mentors.
The Ethics and Professional Standards Committee oversees the AIHS offerings in ethics and provides a service to individual members with ethics-related queries.
The Research Committee is a relatively new committee that aims to support the policy and advocacy-related work of the institute with scientific evidence. It also aims to support researchers and organisations seeking to engage WHS researchers and students to help tackle OHS challenges or evaluate interventions.
New and emerging WHS issues, such as climate change and artificial intelligence, will be addressed.
Finally, many expert fellows contribute to the OHS Body of Knowledge, either as authors or reviewers.
Fellowship is something that all AIHS members should aspire to, as it formally acknowledges experience, leadership, commitment, and positive influence. The journey to fellowship can entail multiple pathways.
Some fellows have started their OHS career on the shop floor, some in military and emergency services, some in government and many other areas of work. Professor Pisaniello says the college encourages diversity in skills, experience, and personal backgrounds. It promotes robust evidence-based debate on challenging topics. This diversity and debate can only strengthen the institute in its mission to improve workplace health and safety and the standing of the OHS profession. n
If you’d like to know more about the College of Fellows, please contact the College Chair at COFChair@aihs.org.au.
The AIHS College of Fellows supports a range of strategic outcomes for the institute, and its purpose is to provide value and positively impact OHS knowledge and professional practiceThe University of Adelaide’s Professor Dino Pisaniello, Chair of the AIHS College of Fellows, says fellowship is something that all AIHS members should aspire to
“This diversity and debate can only strengthen the institute in its mission to improve workplace health and safety and the standing of the OHS profession”
Fellows of the AIHS are the most senior and distinguished subgroup of members of the Institute.
They form the College of Fellows and are recognised formally. The Patron of the Institute is the Governor-General of the Commonwealth of Australia, and Investitures of Fellows have previously been conducted with the GovernorGeneral.
An Investiture of AIHS Fellows was held at Government House in Canberra on 6 March 2023. The most recent Investiture prior to that was held at Admiralty House in Sydney in October 2009.
Thirty-two Fellows were invested, including two Life Member Fellows. All who registered for the event physically attended the ceremony. This included guests of the Fellows.
Officiating on behalf of the Institute were Professor Dino Pisaniello, Chair of the College, and Julia Whitford, AIHS CEO.
On the day, and immediately before the ceremony, a gift on behalf of the AIHS was given to their Excellencies, the GovernorGeneral David Hurley and Mrs Linda Hurley.
Both were very down to earth and welcomed us.
The formal ceremony went without a hitch. Speakers were the GovernorGeneral, Dino Pisaniello, and Julia Whitford.
Pledge scrolls were presented by the Governor-General to each Fellow on stage. Individual photographs with the Governor-
General were taken. Fellows then read the pledge to affirm their ongoing commitment to exemplary service and conduct.
Following the ceremony, the Fellows and guests mixed informally with the Governor-General and Mrs Hurley at an afternoon tea.
Mrs Hurley is a passionate supporter of choirs and singing as a way of bringing people together in a supportive and friendly way. To our surprise and delight, she took to the stage and sang a song she had thoughtfully prepared for the AIHS. She then invited all present to sing a verse of “You are my sunshine” three times. The first was her to us, then between pairs, and finally all together. Then the lyrics of the AIHS song were presented to the CEO.
By this time, everyone felt that the Governor-General was not just a Patron, but their Excellencies were genuine friends of the Institute. The GovernorGeneral’s staff were very supportive and engaged, recognising the significance of the event.
Overall, the Investiture was a very enjoyable and memorable event for all.
The AIHS would like to thank their Excellencies, the Governor-General’s official staff (especially Tim Grainger and Alex John), and the AIHS Events Team (especially Amanda Frazer) for their excellent organisation. The success of the Investiture bodes well for future Investitures with the Governor-General.
Written
Health andThe Australian Institute of Health and Safety has a special vision
Safe and healthy work for all Australians they are driven
All Australians whatever their job rural or in the city
The right to healthy and safe work really is a given
Evidence-based and practical advice to leaders on health and safety
Prevents work related psychological and physical harm so greatly
WHS education and training good practice comes alive
Promote and showcase innovation where members all can thrive
Through certification assure employers and governments too
An effective WHS workforce a career path guiding through
Promoting innovation good standards a safe workplace
Support Australian researchers seeing risks that workers face
Thank you AIHS for keeping workers safe
Your commitment to a healthier safer workplace is great
An Investiture of AIHS Fellows was recently convened in Canberra, and its success bodes well for future Investitures with the Governor-General, writes
Professor Dino Pisaniello
EHS professionals can leverage their expertise to support the broader ESG agenda, write EY’s Roberto Garcia, Patrick Miller, Karen Mealmaker, Samantha Thomas, and Andi Csontos
The Environment, Health & Safety (EHS) and Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) agendas share a desire to transform organisations and create long-term value through the effective management of nonfinancial risk and by optimising business processes. Both strive to engage and inspire people in the workplace to act for the greater good, to think about what we do every day, why we do it, and how we can continually improve.
The role of EHS in progressing the ESG agenda is obvious to most – the “E” is selfexplanatory, and the majority are now making the link between occupational health and safety and the social agenda (after all, the only “S” metrics many organisations publicly disclose are health and safety metrics). There is, however, a higher-level contribution that the EHS profession can and should make.
As a profession, we have a lot to contribute from our experience. We bring a wealth of relevant knowledge and transferrable skills to the table, as well as lessons learned over many decades of pursuing EHS maturity and performance. As leaders and stewards of organisational change, EHS professionals have an important role, and ethical responsibility, to contribute to the ESG conversation. We should do so proactively and with confidence.
EHS professionals need to understand broader ESG issues and take the opportunity to leverage the current attention ESG is attracting in the board room and at the executive table to elevate the visibility of health and safety in organisations.
ESG encompasses a comprehensive set of factors for defining and measuring organisations’ non-financial risks and impacts on sustainability – essential for evaluating and benchmarking sustainability performance. These factors include:
• Environmental: Climate risk, carbon emissions, energy efficiency, biodiversity, use of natural resources, waste, pollution
• Social: Occupational health and safety, human capital, employee development and labour practices, diversity, equity,
inclusion, community, and human rights, including First Nations peoples’ rights
• Governance: Board diversity, corruption, fraud, bribery, business ethics, compensation policies, general risk tolerance
A plethora of ESG frameworks and indices have emerged globally to provide organisations with guidance on capturing the complexity of non-financial disclosures in a meaningful way.
However, there is now a recognition of the need for international consensus regarding ESG reporting – increased collaboration on requirements and metrics will enhance ESG reporting overall and make performance data more relevant. In fact, 89 per cent of investors surveyed in the EY 2021 Institutional Investor Survey responded that they would like to see ESG performance reporting set against globally consistent, mandatory standards.
The launch of the International Sustainability Standards Board is a significant development in this regard. It is poised to bring muchneeded consolidation, consistency, and comparability to ESG reporting, developing a global baseline of sustainability disclosure standards.
The growing harmonisation of standards comes at a critical time given the lack of relevant, decision-useful information to allow market participants to assess risk and encourage investment in adaptation and mitigation efforts
– increasingly seen as a barrier in the transition to a green economy.
Momentum is building around the ESG movement, and much work is needed. Among the top challenges organisations face as they implement their ESG programs are activating leadership support, establishing governance structures, engaging stakeholders, assessing materiality and risk exposures, facilitating culture change, investing in systems for better measurement, and tracking data and demonstrating improvement.
EHS professionals will immediately recognise the above program challenges – they are similar to (if not the same as) those faced by EHS. While the technical aspects of ESG may differ significantly from EHS, the need for program design, leadership, implementation, change management, and review are common and familiar. By drawing on our knowledge and experience, we can help ESG avoid the pitfalls of the past and fasttrack its maturation.
EHS professionals possess several transferable skills and knowledge expertise relevant to the ESG agenda. We are well-versed in the topics of reputational risk and ethics and are comfortable discussing these in the boardroom or on the factory floor. EHS professionals’ approach of assessing risk and prioritising based on risk, our ability to collate, analyse and draw insights from
Embracing ESG has fast become a strategic business imperative and board priority. However, ‘greenwashing’ and ESG marketing ploys threaten the development of meaningful and measurable ESG goals and transition plans.
In order to gain better visibility of ESG factors, organisations need to collaborate with their stakeholders and establish open communication and two-way sharing of information about ESG factors.
ESG requires commitment, visible leadership, and investment to achieve its goals. Executives, employees, customers, and stakeholders must understand what the organisation stands for and why sustainability is vital.
As ESG reporting standards are consolidated, and more organisations start to disclose sustainability performance, ESG systems and data will come under increased assurance scrutiny.
Establishing a sound materiality filter is key to identifying, assessing, and prioritising the ESG factors that matter most to an organisation.
ESG systems are in their infancy, and many organisations rely on amalgamating sometimes dubious information across disparate systems and structures to inform their ESG program.
Advanced technology will be needed to bring together ESG solutions and enable organisations to better monitor issues such as child labour, conflict minerals and human rights standards.
Leading EHS professionals are familiar with the gap between lofty ‘Zero Harm’ goals, corporate slogans and the reality of near-term action plans and credible improvement ambitions. We have finely tuned radars for detecting superficial platitudes and discerning what is important. Action planning is the backbone of EHS success and a core element of EHS management.
Leading EHS professionals are uniquely positioned to draw diverse teams together to consider ESG factors, collaborate and problem-solve. We are adept at engaging across organisational structures and silos and facilitating cross-functional conversations. We navigate complex industrial landscapes and have sensitive dialogues with board and c-suite stakeholders, regulators, unions, and the workforce.
Leading EHS professionals have been directly involved in designing and implementing initiatives and development programs to empower people with the necessary understanding, capability, and confidence to lead EHS. Our experience has taught us how to gain sponsorship, build EHS leadership capacity and support people in operations / outside the EHS functions.
Leading EHS professionals can offer insights into developing effective lead indicators, collating accurate, high-quality data, designing meaningful reports and establishing appropriate, independent assurance programs.
Leading EHS professionals bring a different perspective and deep understanding of risk management, probability and consequence to materiality discussions; we can meaningfully contribute to prioritising ESG factors, ensuring a robust and complete outcome. Further, EHS professionals can offer our experience in specific “S” issues such as labour standards, human rights management in an operational context and psychosocial risks associated with cultural diversity.
In contrast, EHS systems thinking has evolved from the heavily prescriptive, compliance focus of the past to a more streamlined, risk-based approach. Effective EHS systems are integrated, simple, focused, and agile. We have learned that removing complexity post-implementation is much harder and more costly than investing in well-designed, user-centric and outcomesfocused systems from the get-go.
EHS was a latecomer to the digital revolution and to using technology to monitor, simplify, and improve. However, we have become quick adopters with experience building the business case, deploying, and measuring the benefits. Wearable technology to monitor driver fatigue is one example. Another is autonomous vehicles and equipment to remove operators from high-risk environments.
data, and our capability to problem-solve with leaders and workers are all relevant. We know that leadership, management systems and incentives will influence behaviour, and we have gained insight into what works… and does not.
When helping to progress the ESG agenda, EHS professionals can start by informing themselves of the emerging challenges and opportunities of the ESG agenda – asking better questions, listening, and reflecting on where EHS professionals can have an impact. The seven levers of the EY HSW Transformation model can assist with structuring our thoughts. Use the thought
prompts and questions below to start a conversation with your sustainability colleagues today.
The EY Climate Change and Sustainability Services team, working closely daily, includes EHS and ESG professionals. Together, we are working to advance ESG and EHS for the betterment of our organisations, our communities, and our planet. To discuss how we can help, please contact your EY HSW advisor.
• There is an increasing demand from investors for greater transparency of organisations’ sustainability and ESG performance.
Ask:
• How do we better integrate EHS and ESG initiatives and outcomes?
• How can EHS help operationalise ESG?
Ask:
• How can EHS leverage existing relationships to encourage collaboration?
• Where do opportunities exist for ESG and EHS to consolidate and collaborate?
Ask:
• What is EHS’s role in leading the ESG agenda?
• How can EHS leadership programs help build ESG leadership capacity and sponsorship?
Ask:
• How can ESG leverage existing EHS data collation, reporting and assurance processes?
• Is there more meaningful EHS data we should leverage to give a more fulsome view of ESG performance?
Ask:
• How do we consider ESG impacts and opportunities in a holistic way?
• Where might EHS insight alleviate bias or inform blind spots?
Ask:
• What lessons were learned from EHS systems’ evolution that inform ESG systems design and implementation?
• How can EHS professionals help facilitate better ESG system design?
Ask:
• How can we help ESG embed and integrate non-financial digital systems in businessas-usual activities?
• Where can shared technology help solve ESG and EHS challenges?
• Interest in ESG has grown to historically high levels, partly thanks to the expectations of a new generation of investors calling for action on ESG to secure long-term value.
• According to EY 2021 Institutional Investor Survey, 78 per cent of investors believe companies should invest in improvements relating to ESG matters, even if it dents short-term profits, but only 55 per cent of business leaders hold the same view. n
Roberto Garcia, Patrick Miller, and Andi Csontos are partners, Karen Mealmaker is a director, and Samantha Thomas is a senior manager with EY, which is a gold member of the AIHS.
How well do most organisations in the rail industry fare in general when it comes to hiring and training future talent (particularly from an OHS perspective)?
The rail industry can sometimes feel like a merry-go-round, with the same people hopping on and off depending on their life circumstances. While having familiar faces can be advantageous for retaining knowledge and creating trust, it can also be limiting.
Sadly, like many industries in Australia, the rail industry is facing a significant shortage of skilled labour. The closed circuit of the same individuals creates a culture of poaching rather than upskilling. People switch brands, resulting in a limited influx of new talent, which in turn hampers the industry’s ability to grow, given the aging workforce.
If we continue to rely on the same players without upskilling them, we will face a generational gap in skilled professionals to construct and maintain new infrastructure projects. While some companies have recognised the need to attract new talent to the rail industry, it poses its own set of challenges. It can take newcomers over a year to fully comprehend the technical requirements of projects, and the pace at which projects are delivered means that there is a slim margin for retaining them for future delivery.
Furthermore, there is a misalignment with safety training in the industry. While workplace health and safety (WHS) knowledge is fundamental, the Rail Safety Act governs the rail industry, resulting in a knowledge gap for generalist safety professionals. Although one can move from being a safety professional in the rail industry to a generalist in construction, the opposite is a significant risk to rail projects since the necessary rail knowledge is lacking. This misalignment with training poses a significant challenge to the industry’s safety, limiting
rail organisations’ ability to attract and retain good quality rail safety professionals.
What are the most common challenges for them in this process?
The rail industry values hands-on experience over university degrees, which offers individuals the opportunity to learn practical skills at the coal face level. While senior roles require various degrees, having extensive industry and life experience is highly regarded and often trumps most qualifications. Additionally, the industry recognises the value of safety veterans and offers grandfather rights to those with extensive experience. This approach acknowledges the importance of experience while increasing operational risks to projects, but the industry is committed to ensuring safety by upskilling safety professionals regularly and keeping them current with legislative requirements.
However, to maintain safety standards, it is essential for safety professionals to regularly update their qualifications and upskill themselves. Safety qualifications are now more accessible than ever, and people can quickly acquire them and be considered for safety roles in high-risk industries. While this is a positive development, the industry must also ensure that safety professionals undertake regular training to remain current with legislative requirements.
How does Alium Works work with partners to bridge these gaps in practice?
Since becoming a registered training organisation, Alium Works has partnered with several Tier 1 organisations to develop and deliver accredited training. Our Certificate IV in Work Health and Safety (BSB414190) has been contextualised to meet industry standards meaning we now deliver training that is relevant, practical,
and industry-specific. Since our initial delivery in 2021, we have expanded our product lines to deliver contextualised training in other industries.
What have been some of the more significant milestones in the business over the past five years?
Alium Works, like most businesses, faced significant challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, the company’s initial focus on cadetship evolved when it became a registered training organisation in early 2021. Its primary focus now is safety training, which has resulted in a partnership with ARAN (Australian Rail Apprentice Network) to attract and train more safety trainees across Australia.
Recently, the company expanded its business offerings to include mental health first aid training in the workplace to address high levels of stress and burnout caused by the pandemic. This program initially targeted corporate environments, working with senior leadership teams before rolling out to the
rest of the organisation. Utilising LinkedIn extensively to promote its mental health training services, the company has developed a free five-question Mental Health Scorecard to help business owners and team leaders identify gaps in their organisation’s mental health support.
Despite having team members located globally, Alium Works has embraced remote working and built a culture of people empowerment with a shared goal of providing better outcomes for employers and employees. Its innovative recruitment process ensures that all new team members are job matched to their roles, resulting in minimal staff turnover and high job satisfaction.
The company invests in providing accredited training to all its staff and holds regular performance reviews to identify any professional development gaps and tailor training. External recruiters actively pursue staff, with many of their junior staff members offered high salaries because of the perceived value of their training.
In addition, Alium Works participates in the B1G1 initiative, allowing it to contribute
to the United Nations Global Sustainability Goals. Since joining the B1G1 family in 2022, the company has provided funds to deliver the equivalent of 200 years of education to children in need worldwide.
common goal. Alium Works aims to build a strong support network through strategic partnerships with other small businesses, empowering individuals to succeed in their respective fields.
As it continues to grow and develop, the company aims to be recognised as a trusted brand and a standard-bearer for excellence within its industry and the local community. Beyond the workplace, the company sees itself as playing a vital role in shaping the next generation of leaders. It works with local schools to inspire and empower the next generation of school leavers, recognising education as the key to success.
Its vision for the future reflects its commitment to making a positive impact on the world, empowering individuals to achieve their full potential. The company sees itself as more than just a training provider for high-risk industries; it is a community of industry leaders and small business owners, all working together towards a
In conclusion, Alium Works is an inspiring story of resilience, determination, and innovation, navigating a challenging market to achieve 80 per cent projected revenue growth in FY 22/23. It is excited about the future and the opportunities ahead, particularly in its innovative mental health training, and looks forward to making a meaningful impact on the lives of individuals and the community. n
“While I find this topic of WHS fascinating, I realised that it left others of my generation cold”
In February this year, Safe Work Australia released its new 10-year national strategy to reduce workplace fatalities, injuries, and illnesses in Australia. The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033 sets a national vision of safe and healthy work for all and provides a platform for delivering key work health and safety (WHS) improvements.
The strategy was developed under Safe Work Australia’s tripartite governance processes and has been agreed upon by the Commonwealth, state and territory governments. It represents a national commitment to work together to reduce worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses over the next decade.
who goes to work has the right to return home safely. Our overarching goal is to work towards making this right a reality for each and every worker,” said Farrell, who retired in early 2020 after a 40-year career in the mining industry holding executive roles in health, safety, and environment along with communities and HR. In addition to being Chair of Safe Work Australia, she currently serves as a non-executive director at the Royal Flying Doctor Service (Western Operations) and the WA Museums, Deputy Chair of the QEII Medical Trust, Chair of Brightwater Care Group, and a member of the Senate of the University of Western Australia.
Practical applications of the Australian WHS Strategy 2023-2033 and AI
employers are looking to understand how the mining workforce can interact with new automated systems in the safest and healthiest way,” she said.
“While it is likely that automation will be a net benefit for WHS, because people may be removed from hazardous situations, to ensure that is the case, systems need to be designed with people’s capabilities and limitations in mind to ensure that workers aren’t exposed to additional risk,” said Farrell, who added workers must be consulted about any emerging risks and the best approaches to managing these effectively.
Joanne Farrell, Chair of Safe Work Australia, explained to OHS Professional that the strategy is an important document for WHS stakeholders across the country, providing a unifying vision and goal. “Firstly, it is great to see the AIHS getting behind and supporting the vision of the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033,” she said.
“Underpinning the vision of safe and healthy work for all is that everyone
She explained that the strategy recognises that all stakeholders in the WHS system, including employers, workers, researchers, experts, and practitioners, must play a role in owning, contributing to, and realising the national vision of safe and healthy work for all if we are to be successful. “In terms of practical application, the strategy provides a framework for workplaces, particularly PCBUs in workplaces, to be proactive and to think about emerging trends that may impact the health and safety of workers,” she said.
For example, the strategy notes the rise in using artificial intelligence (AI), automated processes, and related technologies. Farrell said the strategy encourages businesses to think about how they will ensure that new technologies are adopted safely for workers. “A practical example of this can be found in the mining industry, where many large
Importantly, while AI can add significant value to organisations and the work environment, she said PCBUs would need to understand the WHS impact and potential harm to workers of such emerging technology, including the emergence of new WHS hazards.
“The understanding of potential WHS implications in using AI and resources for assessing and mitigating potential hazards and risks continues to evolve. However, organisations need to be aware and anticipate the impacts of AI on workplaces beyond the intended process and product change. That is – PCBUs need to undertake appropriate risk assessments and identify hazards and clearly communicate and consult with workers on the possible impacts and risks of AI, both physical and psychological,” she said.
Ongoing investment (both time and money) in safety systems, educational infrastructure, consultation, and training are needed to complement any new technology, added Farrell, who explained that the strategy promotes this way of thinking and encourages workplaces to put safety at the core of designing work
“Underpinning the vision of safe and healthy work for all is that everyone who goes to work has the right to return home safely”
with new and emerging technologies.
Farrell said there are other parts of the strategy relevant to organisations and their workplaces, whether large or small. For example, the strategy describes the health and safety vulnerabilities of particular workers, including migrant and culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) workers, labour-hire workers or younger workers. “The strategy encourages individual workplaces to consider and ensure that these vulnerabilities are taken into account when consulting with workers, and that workplace hazards and processes to eliminate and mitigate workplace risks are understood and followed by everyone in their workplace,” said Farrell, who noted a ‘one size fits all” approach may expose workers to unacceptable workplace risks.
“Of course, while the strategy seeks to encourage improved outcomes for work health and safety with specific targets and focusses, businesses must remember that the strategy does not replace duties under WHS laws,” Farrell said.
The role of WHS professionals in supporting the strategy
WHS professionals have a “pivotal role” to play as safety influencers to support the successful implementation of the strategy and ensure that worker health and safety is core to how we do business in Australia, said Farrell. “WHS professionals will play an integral role in realising the vision of the strategy because they are out there on a day-to-day basis providing advice to organisations, collaborating and influencing the evidence base and policy on WHS practices,” she said.
“We want the strategy to be able to contribute to the work and understanding of all in the WHS system, to motivate all businesses, small or large, to make an active decision to prioritise safe and healthy work for their workers each and every day. I think driving collaboration will be key, including between unions and employer organisations to respond effectively to WHS challenges and inform policy.”
Health and safety leadership is key to achieving Safe Work Australia’s vision of safe and healthy work for all, and Farrell said a practical manifestation of this includes those in positions of influence, emphasising the importance of the WHS profession and promoting the opportunities in WHS as a career path.
A continuing focus on building the capability of PCBUs is also critical to ensuring Australian workplaces are appropriately identifying and eliminating
or mitigating work health and safety risks, she added. “Many smaller businesses still struggle with how to apply WHS principles in practice and greatly benefit from the expertise that WHS practitioners, health and safety representatives (HSRs), and WHS regulators can provide to put their duties into practice,” she said.
The strategy encourages PCBUs to conduct regular risk assessments with effective consultation to understand and identify the risks in their own business, according to Farrell. She explained that the best way to achieve this is to talk to workers and their HSRs to better understand the issues and hazards they are encountering and what is working/ not working. “This combined with the knowledge and expertise of WHS professionals, and the guidance available from regulators and Safe Work Australia, industry bodies and professional organisations, will enable workplaces to proactively eliminate and address risks to worker safety before an incident occurs,” she said.
Engagement with key stakeholders, such as executive leaders, board directors, and line managers, is critical to the success of WHS professionals. Though every organisation will be different, and for WHS professionals (either embedded in an organisation or externally based), Farrell said drawing the organisation’s attention to the critical importance of WHS is paramount.
“Keeping workers safe and healthy should automatically rate as a high priority around the boardroom table or during supervisor/manager meetings. But if you need an additional angle, take a look at Safe Work Australia’s recent economic modelling report that demonstrates the broad economic benefits that can be realised with better work health and safety,” she said. Safer, healthier, wealthier: The economic value of reducing work-related injuries and illnesses
“The strategy encourages individual workplaces to consider and ensure that these vulnerabilities are taken into account when consulting with workers”
The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033 strategy provides a framework for workplaces to proactively think about emerging trends that may impact the health and safety of workers
The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023-2033 outlines targets to measure progress over the next 10 years, including reducing:
• worker fatalities caused by traumatic injuries by 30 per cent
• the frequency rate of serious claims resulting in one or more weeks off work by 20 per cent
• the frequency rate of claims resulting in permanent impairment by 15 per cent
• the overall incidence of workrelated injury or illness among workers to below 3.5 per cent
• the frequency rate of workrelated respiratory disease by 20 per cent
The strategy also has a target of no new cases of accelerated silicosis by 2033. Two proactive action targets of the strategy are to increase the awareness of PCBUs about their duty to protect workers from exposure to harmful substances and to build the capability of PCBUs, regulators, and workers to ensure compliance with the duty to manage psychosocial hazards at work.
The strategy said high priority must be given to the six industries in which workers face the highest rates of harm. According to the latest data, 70 per cent of fatalities and 58 per cent of serious workers’ compensation claims occur in just six industries: agriculture; construction; road transport; manufacturing; health care and social assistance; and public administration and safety.
The first five industries also represent those with the highest frequencies of serious claims per million hours worked. Based on the most recent claims data, psychological hazards, including workplace harassment and bullying, occur most frequently in public administration and safety, and healthcare and social assistance.
For more information, visit www.safeworkaustralia.gov.au/ doc/australian-work-health-andsafety-strategy-2023-2033.
Safe Work Australia’s report, Safer, healthier, wealthier: The economic value of reducing work-related injuries and illnesses, found that Australia’s economy would be $28.6 billion larger each year in the absence of work-related injuries and illnesses. In addition, 185,500 additional fulltime equivalent (FTE) jobs would be created, and workers across all occupations and skill levels would benefit from an average wage rise of 1.3 per cent annually.
The recent research report, conducted by Deloitte Access Economics and commissioned by Safe Work Australia, examined the cost of work-related injury and illness in Australia and estimated how much value could be created within the Australian economy by removing work-related injury and illness. It found that the impact of an additional 185,500 FTE jobs every year would have translated to a 1.6 per cent increase in GDP every year, which is comparable to the current direct contribution of
the Australian Agriculture industry or the estimated economic growth foregone during NSW’s COVID-19 lockdown in 2021.
The largest impact on GDP (45 per cent of the total) would have come from workers who experienced a work-related death or injury which caused them to be absent from the workplace.
The report found that each year there were, on average, 623,663 work-related injuries and illnesses between 2008 and 2018. This led to significant productivity losses arising from absenteeism and presenteeism and ongoing losses to labour supply from work-related deaths and injuries or illnesses causing permanent incapacity. These long-term productivity losses continue to influence the economy through 2065. Further costs were incurred by the health system totalling $3.4 billion annually, while annual payments of $4.5 billion went towards workers’ compensation and other financial costs.
shows that Australia’s economy would be $28.6 billion larger each year in the absence of work-related injuries and illnesses (see box for more detail).
“The significance of these impacts cannot be overstated. To put it in perspective, the potential economic gain is nearly equivalent to the annual economic contribution of the agriculture industry in Australia. The findings clearly demonstrate that WHS is critical to our prosperity, driving economic and productivity improvements. Workplaces that are safe and free of injury and illness provide benefits for all Australians, including more jobs and better pay,” she said.
“This economic modelling and the strategy provide excellent conversation starters for engaging with your own stakeholders on the importance of WHS. I encourage all WHS professionals to use the new strategy as an impetus to prioritise time with senior management within your organisation to consider how the work you do will help realise the ambitious outcomes set by the strategy over the next decade.”
The strategy recognises that all stakeholders in the WHS system, including employers, have a key role to play a role in owning, contributing to, and realising the national vision of safe and healthy work for all, according to Farrell. This includes working towards the goal of reduced worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.
“In terms of measuring success, the strategy provides a framework for PCBUs in workplaces to be proactive and to think about emerging trends that may impact the health and safety of workers. This includes two focus areas in the strategy’s targets: action to increase awareness about the duty to protect workers from exposure to harmful substances and building capability to ensure compliance with the duty to manage psychosocial hazards at work,” she said. These targets are in addition to targets around reducing worker fatalities, injuries, and illnesses.
The activity-based targets in the strategy reflect the importance of taking positive action to ensure safe and healthy workplaces. “While there is a place for lag indicators to help us understand the incidence and prevalence of WHS issues, in isolation, these measures are not a reflection of safe and healthy work,” Farrell noted.
“Understanding the broader factors
that contribute to safe, healthy and productive workplaces, including education and training, hazard identification and management, proactive risk management, and job design that puts safety at the core of hybrid or emerging ways of working, are all practical and important ways PCBUs and organisations can drive positive change aligned to the strategy.”
The practice of WHS in Australian workplaces will continue to evolve over the next decade as areas of work increase in complexity and WHS risks become more multi-faceted.
More than ever, Farrell said WHS professionals will need to keep pace with new trends and challenges in the way work is performed. “As we witnessed recently with COVID, such changes often emerge from events or policy spaces external to the immediate WHS context, and we need to be constantly monitoring our environment to prepare,” she said.
New ways to engage workers, such as gig work, the increasing awareness and recognition of psychosocial risks, and the rise in hybrid work models, are examples of trends that will require a more nuanced approach to support positive WHS outcomes at a workplace level.
There is a section of the strategy called “driving systemic change”, and in this section, Farrell said clear goals are set to be achieved by 2033 for Safe Work Australia. “However, these goals can also support and guide the actions of WHS professionals. For example, the principles of collaboration: sharing what works and advising of new risks that may be emerging in workplaces that are the first to trial a new way of working or a new technology,” she said.
Helping business understand and operationalise the WHS framework, including WHS laws, regulations and codes of practice, will always be critical work for the WHS profession, Farrell added. “However, in 2033, I hope to see the WHS profession transcending influence beyond this traditional paradigm and being increasingly perceived by industry as a key partner to achieving thriving and productive workplaces, with worker health and safety at the centre of how we do business in this country,” she said. n
WHS professionals provide advice to organisations, collaborating and influencing the evidence base and policy on WHS practices
The Australian Institute of Health and Safety (AIHS) endorsed the vision of safe and healthy work for all Australians in the Australian Work Health and Safety (WHS) Strategy 2023-2033.
“It may be a small note in the purpose and scope, but the recognition that this strategy should also contribute to the work and understanding of all in the WHS system, including researchers, experts, and practitioners who play a role in owning, contributing to, and realising the national vision is an important reminder of the critical role of our profession,” said Naomi Kemp, AIHS Chair.
“We believe every Australian, whatever their job, whether in rural workplaces or cities, has the right to healthy and safe work. As the peak national body for the health and safety profession, we commit to supporting the vision of the new strategy. Each and every day, our members provide evidencebased and practical advice to organisational leaders on health and safety matters so they can prevent work-related psychological and physical harm to their workers and meet their duties under work health and safety legislation.”
Alongside Safe Work Australia, its members, and this new strategy, the AIHS will:
• Uphold standards for WHS education and training to enable good WHS practice based on the OHS Body of Knowledge.
• Drive informed collaboration as the independent experts sitting between unions and employer organisations to respond to WHS challenges effectively.
• Promote and showcase innovation and exemplary WHS practices that prevent work-related psychological and physical harm.
• Build an effective WHS workforce by promoting the career path and ensuring professional and ethical standards.
• Raise the capability and credibility of the profession through certification to assure employers and governments of the quality of advice needed to save lives in our workplaces.
• Support Australian researchers to provide employers and governments with evidence regarding current and emerging risks to deepen knowledge and broaden understanding.
• Shape contemporary policy and practice by providing regulators with the evidence base beyond the WHS system to inform policy and regulation.
The function and practice of OHS have evolved in a number of ways in recent years. One of the more important trends has been the shift to incorporating environment-related responsibilities, and many traditional OHS and WHS roles have evolved into HSE, EHS or similar roles. The “E” component of such positions can encompass a range of priorities, including emissions, energy conservation, wastewater discharges, carbon footprint, water conservation, waste disposal, contaminated land, hazardous materials management, and complying with environmental regulations.
Such priorities are not the historical or traditional remit of OHS, but the “E” in HSE roles is “critically important”, according to Chris McNicol, manager for Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia at Zenergy, a search, recruitment services and consulting organisation specialising in safety, health, wellbeing, and environment. “It’s very important for companies (size-dependent) to have a dedicated team and functional leader responsible, who reports to the head of HSE,” McNicol observed. “Most industrial organisations of size and environmental impact will (or should) be structured in this way. Strategic leadership of the ‘E’ should be non-negotiable.”
this: “Unfortunately, if lacking, this will stifle the ability of competent HSE professionals. Vice versa is where HSE functions are too compliance-driven and reactive, with minimal capacity to influence positive change – even when business leaders and workforces are crying out for it,” he said.
“Companies with well-established and mature HSE teams are always looking to enhance their capability and improve the health of the organisation: two areas here include contractor management and mental health. Both are very complex topics.”
Fiona Murfitt, global VP HSE for Evolution Mining, an Australian gold mining company that employs more than 2000 employees across projects in Australia and Canada, says sustainability runs across HSE, risk and social responsibility and is integrated into “everything we do”.
“In many instances, we are moving away from the traditional HSE category and are trying to be specific in what we are looking for,” said Murfitt. “For example, when an environmental role is required, we will be specific about that and the required skills and behaviours. If it’s an overall generalist role with HSE, then the enviro piece remains very important. So, my question is about unpacking for the specific role what is important, what can be learned and what you would bring to the role.”
common skillsets and tools such as a risk assessment approach in managing environmental risks that can be applied,” he said.
Nonetheless, there may be gaps in this space in terms of skills, competencies, and experience at both a strategic and operational level. McNicol noted company maturity and appetite for senior leaders to ‘own’ HSE can influence
Keith Hoskins, general manager HSE at Endeavour Energy, a large electrical distribution business servicing 2.7 million people across Sydney’s Greater West, the Blue Mountains, and the Southern Highlands, Illawarra, and South Coast of NSW, said that HSE practitioners need to gain both experience and qualifications in managing environmental impacts and risks arising from the activities performed within their organisation. “The skillsets required for environmental management do differ in many areas from health and safety, but there are also some
Similarly, HSE practitioners need to understand and be aware of social and community expectations often referred to as ‘your social licence to operate’, according to Hoskins. “Not engaging with communities and seeking their opinions and feedback can have far-reaching implications for an organisation,” he said.
Terminology is also an area to be aware of as it can create complexity leading to confusion resulting in sub-optimal outcomes, he added. “As such, I suggest practitioners need to use language that is simple to understand and can be easily communicated across your organisation and to other stakeholders such as community interest groups,” he said.
“At a strategic level, HSE professionals need to gain experience in undertaking material impact assessments across their organisation engaging with the various
Environment is an important focus for many organisations, which have looked to their health and safety functions to upskill in the increasingly influential discipline of HSE
"In many instances, we are moving away from the traditional HSE category and are trying to be specific in what we are looking for"
stakeholders to ensure that material environmental risks are identified and that the associated environmental management plans are implemented in managing these environmental risks.”
And while many of the tools and methodologies (such as incident investigation) can also be easily applied in managing environmental impacts, Hoskins also said practitioners need a solid background understanding of how these environmental risks can be effectively managed ranging from contaminated land to dealing with cultural heritage considerations.
Matching organisations with HSE priorities, skills, and experience Most organisations are unique in what they require from HSE leaders and professionals, though this is often industry specific in terms of regulatory and other requirements. However, some baseline competencies and skills are required in this field, according to McNicol,
For HSE professionals at all levels, Chris McNicol, manager for Victoria, Tasmania, and South Australia at Zenergy, described networking as “a great place to start”, he said. “Your peers, both internal and external, will be able to share their experience and how they learn and develop with you, and vice versa. Even the most respected and successful HSE leaders will tap into their networks where they feel they can leverage certain expertise and solve complex problems,” he said.
Keith Hoskins, executive general manager HSE at Endeavour Energy, also underlined the importance of networking with others who have more experience in EHS. “This was about learning from what they’ve discovered as a result of their journey. Learning from other people through networking is really important in terms of building up your skillset and capabilities. Education will get you so far, but you still have to be able to bring that to life, and you’ve got to practically be able to bring an organisation on that journey,” he said.
who said that a rounded skillset with a contemporary approach to HSE is a good starting point.
Similarly, Fiona Murfitt, global VP HSE for Evolution Mining, recommended that HSE professionals engage in networks broader than their established areas of expertise. “Be prepared to learn and seek to understand, and this could mean getting involved in working committee for associations if you are just starting out. Seek out mentors and ask to have coffees with people,” she suggested.
In doing so, she encouraged selfreflection on what is important to you, from growth in knowledge to leadership development or even money and travel. “There are a multitude of opportunities out there, and if you widen your network, then you get to understand the breadth of what could be available,” she said.
“The most successful professionals have high emotional awareness, excellent relationship skills, and the ability to positively influence in all directions,” he said. “HSE heads need to guide and develop their teams to foster engagement in all levels of the workforce, especially high-risk operations. The effective use of
“The other thing to think about if you are starting out is if you are willing to travel and relocate as some of these roles that help gain you invaluable experience can be easier to obtain in the field. Those locations are also in beautiful parts of the world.”
“The most successful professionals have high emotional awareness, excellent relationship skills, and the ability to positively influence in all directions”
data to drive decision-making is becoming more prevalent, as well as the adoption of an agile approach.”
In terms of the ability of HSE professionals to meet the requirements of organisations, McNicol said compliance and reporting are typically done well, depending on the state of the company. “The shift towards a genuine partnership model where HSE teams are seen as enablers, positively influencing the workforce to be empowered and accountable: this is where the most successful HSE teams are positioned,” said McNicol, who observed the highest performing HSE professionals can successfully transition into different industries, based on their technical grounding, application of the principle, and rounded (soft) skillset.
Murfitt also noted the type of industry would be important when determining the technical capabilities. If it’s an operational role, for example, she said understanding the basics around water, chemicals management, and environmental impact should be important. “The basic skills of any professional of understanding the legal obligations also come into play, as there are likely to be strong interfaces to approvals and licenses. These skills translate,” she said.
process he learned about the E in HSE while bringing in specialists with more environmental experience. “You can’t be an expert in every area. For example, I’m not a specialist in terms of how to deal with contaminated sites. So, you do need to identify where those gaps are in terms of your skillset and where you need that specialist, whether you bring that expertise in internally or externally,” he said.
Resilience and the ability to influence are also important in senior EHS roles, according to Hoskins, who explained that these skills and abilities help navigate roadblocks to change and success. While Hoskins said he has been lucky in that the organisations he has worked for have been committed to EHS outcomes, he said it pays to learn how to influence. “There are moments when you will say, ‘Okay, well, it didn’t work this time, maybe I’ll try a different angle, or maybe I’ll approach it differently,” he said.
“That’s why influencing skills are important, and there are some common skills in looking at work, health, safety, and environment. You have to engage in relationship management, use subject matter experts and know where you need them to help you on your journey and tap into your networks.”
“Critically, it’s not about citing legislation or saying ‘the law says’. Rather it’s about knowing the context in which you are operating and being able to unpack the risks (or have others help you unpack them) and then help control them. The leadership elements: the ability to collaborate, garner support across the operations and lean in to provide support, are the softer skills that continually need to be developed. Understanding the nature of the operations continues to be important – and that is true for any role,” said Murfitt, who also noted that she “would also be good to see more curiosity” as there are also opportunities to revisit what “traditional” means.
Hoskins reflected on his own journey and recalled how environment was gradually added to his role. In the
In influencing internally, Hoskins said that being part of a benchmark “is quite helpful” as this helps others to understand how the organisation is performing from an HSE perspective. “Just pick a benchmark like the Dow Jones Sustainability Index, or whatever index you choose, and you can use that as a roadmap in terms of your journey. They can assist you with understanding how you are performing via materiality assessments for your organisation in order to understand where you might have some gaps,” he said.
“When we first went into our benchmarking ESG index, we said ‘we’re not going to just tick a box, and we’re not going to just get a good score. We’re going to go get value out of it. That’s an important skill to have because it will help others understand how the organisation performs and compares, which is important for Boards, shareholders and other important stakeholders.”
Environment is an increasingly complex and regulated area of business for many organisations, and Hoskins said it is important to stay on top of these trends for a number of reasons. “As an essential services business, I have
seen a significant shift arising from the expectations of our customers and the many communities we interact with daily,” he said.
“Over the past couple of years, we have witnessed significant weather events (such as storms, bushfires, and floods) due to the ever-changing climate. Communities expect that our electrical distribution network is safe and resilient due to these extreme weather events.”
As a result, he explained that environmental management and sustainability are “critical enablers” – especially when modelling how these weather events might impact Endeavour Energy’s network, as well as new technologies that might make the network more resilient in the face of extreme weather events.
“Our business strategy has also embraced sustainability, and we have linked this to financial incentives – such
“Communities expect that our electrical distribution network is safe and resilient due to these extreme weather events”
as being the first network distributor in Australia to achieve a sustainabilitylinked loan. The sustainability linked loan includes setting ambitious targets in reducing our carbon footprint, biodiversity through the replacement of more vegetation than we are removing, eliminating all waste going to landfill, and improving the health and wellbeing of our employees,” he said.
Practitioners also need to have a good understanding of the environmental legislative requirements to meet the various compliance obligations within the jurisdictions they operate in, Hoskins added. This point was echoed by Murfitt, who has witnessed increased complexity within the regulatory space, including approvals for project and rehabilitation management, in addition to increased complexity in disclosures and reporting. “Clearly, the focus on emissions and carbon reduction is becoming
Keith Hoskins, general manager HSE at Endeavour Energy, said it is important for HSE professionals to continue developing their knowledge and take on new challenges that will help them evolve in areas they wish to further develop. “For example, I did not understand what a sustainability-linked loan was until our treasury colleagues were looking to raise new debt and came across the benefits of a sustainability-linked loan which provides a discounted interest rate by linking our debt to some stretch sustainability targets. Partnering with our treasury colleagues has allowed the business to benefit even further and has helped us on our sustainability journey,” he explained.
Sustainability is a broad topic that enables an organisation to establish a framework across the entire organisation, covering social, economic and environmental considerations, according to Hoskins, who explained ESG provides criteria (as well as governance and disclosure requirements) for how an organisation will measure its performance in specific areas such as carbon emissions, waste and water usage. “It is important that you establish the initiatives and programs you want to focus on through your materiality impact assessment,” he said.
increasingly dynamic, and the creation of the carbon reduction pathways and broader ESG discussions at the boardroom are driving this,” she said.
McNicol also said the noise surrounding ESG (environmental, social and (corporate) governance) and sustainability “has been getting louder in recent years (finally).
“It’s a broad area, and some companies are far more advanced than others. Kudos to ESG and sustainability leaders who have been successfully driving these strategies for 10-plus years already. It’s not too late, though, and companies across the board, listed or otherwise, are starting to invest in capability. It starts with a genuine appetite from business leadership; then the appointed head needs to develop a strategy that is fitfor-purpose, results-driven and tangible, realistic, as well as commercially viable for the company,” McNicol explained. n
“It is also important to network with colleagues and look at external events that will help you further evolve your knowledge and capability. I am fortunate to have a great team of environmental specialists who can provide insights on specialist areas such as cultural heritage, hazardous waste management, and so on. If you do not have this capability internally, it is important that you know when to reach out and engage specialists in these areas to support you in managing these specialist areas.”
The AIHS recently awarded Patrick Hudson the Harold Greenwood Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to the field of health and safety
Patrick Hudson is one of the world’s leading authorities on the human factor in the management of safety in the oil and gas industry, commercial aviation, mining, and medicine. He is a psychologist with wide experience in safety management in a variety of high-hazard industries and is currently an emeritus professor at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands. Hudson is perhaps best known for his safety culture ladder and his work with Professor James Reason to operationalise the Swiss cheese model for investigation through the tripod model first developed with Shell and his work on bowtie hazard and risk analysis. His work is extensively cited in academic texts, including the OHS Body of Knowledge, peer-reviewed journals, and Australian and international regulatory publications.
Professor Hudson was awarded the Harold Greenwood Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award last year. This award is the most prestigious of all of the awards bestowed by the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. The award recognises the outstanding work of Harold Greenwood Thomas, a founding member of the Safety Engineering Society of Australia (established some 70 years ago) and the forerunner of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety.
Professor Hudson also serves as an honorary fellow of the AIHS College of Fellows and has been an outstanding international contributor to the health and safety field, influencing safety professionals across Australia through his prodigious research output.
The University of Adelaide’s Professor Dino Pisaniello, Chair of the AIHS College of Fellows, recently interviewed Professor Hudson about winning the Harold Greenwood Thomas Lifetime Achievement Award and his greatest contributions to the field of health and safety.
Well, my colleague at Leiden University and I were approached by Shell in about 1986, who asked us if we could help them. That’s where we started. In those days, safety was not really regarded as quite as important as we see it these days. But Shell decided to take safety seriously. And to do this, they realised very early
on that they needed more than just engineers to tell them what to do. They had to bring in a psychologist. Now, we were just down the road from them, as our head office was in The Hague. We put a proposal to Shell, and this was important as we made it clear that what we were trying to do was not just analyse accidents (which people were doing and scoring). Instead, what we were trying to do was understand why accidents happened – with a view to preventing them from happening.
Shell said that’s a new idea, and they hadn’t thought of that. And that’s really where we started. They threw what seemed like quite a lot of money to support our efforts at the time, and they were very pleased with the return on investment. We were given free rein to explain what we saw, and they were free to run with what we recommended. So, they’ve been listening to me ever since. I’ve trained people there, so now they’re working on their own, and I’ve taken a step back.
So, it was just a coincidence that Shell was down the road from, and you were of that discipline that was complimentary to the engineering discipline. That’s how it started?
I was in the right place at the right time. That’s one of the things I’ve learned. It’s not necessarily who you are. It’s just having a good sense of place and timing. What I’m most proud of is that I’ve been
kind of the “backroom boy”. That’s why I’m so pleased to receive this award. I’m very proud that the AIHS has seen fit to recognise me with this because I thought I was the backroom boy while everyone else got the awards. So it’s really nice to get one myself.
Westrom. And what I realised was the most important thing we did was we had a picture of how this worked. If you look at all the other work that some very eminent people have done, many of them in Australia, there’s a lot of words, but it’s kind of hard going. What they need is a picture. That was the secret to my success: having a picture. So, if you have a picture, it helps understand where you are, where you’re going, and how you can actually get there. If you don’t know where you’re going, you might wind up someplace else, as Spike Milligan once said.
We’ve seen the Swiss cheese model applied in all sorts of areas, including COVID-19. People have adopted this framework to layer up controls and develop them into interventions, perhaps incorporating a hazard control hierarchy as part of that framework.
consistent. I stick to saying that you have to work out what your problems are, work out what you’re going to do about them, make sure you do them, and then go looking for other things that you may have missed.
That’s what the ladder gives you. It’s also Swiss cheese that can help you with that. The bow tie model integrates all of these, as well, because bow ties are really just lots of cheese, little slices of cheese all over the place.
And what I have done is integrate the organisational, cultural, and regulatory factors with an understanding of the bow tie model, so you can see what it is. I think the most important thing for people working in the profession is to realise that they’re not simply in the business of trying to prevent things from happening.
There are a number of people who are very well known, like Jim Reason. And I’m the one who makes it work. That’s what I certainly do. For example, Jim and I have worked with CASA, the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in Australia. We went around teaching people about safety management systems. Jim gave the theory, and then I was the missing link; I tried to link theory to practice. What I know is that there’s a lot of theory going on out there, and there are a number of people who will talk endlessly about theory. But the thing is that what really counts is getting it to work. And that’s where I’ve been more involved.
How would you describe your impact on health and safety, both as a profession and in the field, and how has this contributed to your success?
I’ve been thinking about this, and what I realised is that I came up with a model. Now it wasn’t originally my model; there’s a guy called Ron Westrom who had three stages on the safety ladder. I increased it to five, and there have been other versions with seven or eight. It turns out that five is probably just about the right number of levels. And what it does is it gives people a way of coming to grips with some very difficult concepts like safety culture. They know this is important and want to do something, but it’s hard to get into.
The other model that I’ve been involved with is the Swiss cheese model, which we also developed. This was originally paid for by Shell, and it was done together with Jim Reason and my colleague Ron
The model can become much more sophisticated. I find that many people’s understandings of the Swiss cheese model are pretty primitive. And they see it as a simplistic model. But what the Swiss cheese model really does is it doesn’t tell you how you have accidents. It explains why you don’t have as many accidents as you really could be having. Because we’re all doing terrible things all the time, whether it comes to personal safety or technical areas, we’re non-compliant and don’t do what we’ve agreed we’re going to do, or we don’t get around to implementing it. Nevertheless, we spend most of our time getting away with it.
The Swiss cheese metaphor basically brings home the idea you’ve got quite a lot of cheese left. Although I have said from time to time, especially in court, my favourite line is it was all hole and no cheese. And this makes you understand how drastic it was, but even with a little bit of cheese, you can actually get quite a long way and stop bad things from happening.
Thinking about the kind of messages you would give to health and safety professionals at all stages and levels, what are the most important things they should think about and do to get to the point of influence?
The critical issue is developing the correct understanding of how accidents actually happen so that we can prevent them. That was our original line, analysis of accidents with a view to prevention. And I haven’t changed at all from that. I’m boringly
We’re in the business of making organisations run better. When they run better, they run safer. And we’re not just talking about safety. We’re not just talking about personal safety; we’re talking about process safety, we’re talking about things like equality, and we can fit the environment into our understanding. And we can work out, in many cases, what it is that we are doing, what we shouldn’t be doing, what we want to do and what we can do.
I’ve been working in all sorts of strange, increasingly strange areas. I did some work last year for a big jet engine manufacturer, which I won’t mention the name of, but they also have cars named after them. And what we were doing there was trying to ensure the engines kept running. It wasn’t that anyone was going to get hurt, though if both engines stopped, that is not a good idea.
And what we found was that using all these concepts from some of our other work, we managed to reduce things like in-flight shutdowns by 50 per cent. Now, given that’s something you don’t want to have happen, even if everybody walks away, that’s fine. It’s very important that we make sure that we provide people with a guarantee that they can come back from the day in the same fit state they were in when they left in the morning. And that’s their right.
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“Creating workplaces that are safe and free of injury and illness provides broad economic benefits for all Australians, including more jobs and better pay”
“The most important thing we did was we had a picture of how this worked”
Steel Queensland’s Orrcon
Northgate Distribution Centre won the Large Enterprise: Health & Safety New Initiative Award at the Australian Workplace Health & Safety Awards 2022
BlueScope is a provider of innovative steel materials, products, systems, and technologies, headquartered in Australia with operations spread across North America, Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific Islands, and throughout Asia. It is one of the world’s leading manufacturers of painted and coated steel products and provides vital components for houses, buildings, structures, automotive, and more. With more than 160 operations and sales offices across 16 countries, the company employs over 15,000 people.
BlueScope Steel Queensland’s Orrcon Steel Northgate Distribution Centre is involved in the supply and distribution of steel, tube and pipe products to a diverse customer base, including steel fabricators, furniture and trailer body manufacturers, housing and construction companies, pipeline and infrastructure engineering firms, and more.
Tim Stokes, the state manager of Queensland for Orrcon Steel, explained that working from heights is a known workplace hazard and the risks of persons falling off the back of trucks were well understood by the business. However, these were in addition to other taskrelated risks associated with crane and mobile equipment operations, workplace and equipment design, and load composition at the distribution centre. This means existing working at-height platforms and fall restraint devices were ineffective for all load types.
Stokes explained this required a broad risk and evidence-based approach.
One of the tasks at the distribution centre involved unloading trucks from ground level, and Stokes had the goal of eliminating the working at heights risk by taking the lessons learned through early initiatives to minimise the requirement to work at a height and change the way
operators undertook all unloading tasks. To achieve this goal, the following conditions needed to be managed:
1. Ability to use a tool to effectively lift steel products from a trailer.
2. Ability to sling loads without the operator having to touch the product or a sling mechanism under tension, without introducing new risk.
3. Ability to separate ‘bundles’ of product for unloading without having to use a manual handling technique.
4. Ability to effectively view all aspects of the load and ensure operators were out of the ‘line of fire’ if product shifted.
5. Ability to remove the need for mobile stands and restraint PPE.
Stokes explained the following innovations were designed and trialled, and ultimately implemented. An in-house engineered solution of an overhead crane spreader bar was developed to sit across the load, with the capacity to lift an entire row of product on the truck. This included attachments hooks for slinging.
An extension hand tool was then developed to enable the spreader bar to be hooked up from ground level, enabling the operator to pull the slings through the row of product at the relevant height to sling the layer of product.
Next came an in-house engineered solution of magnetic rubber vertical dunnage. This is positioned by the loading site in the middle of the load to create enough gap for the sling to be positioned around the product at the unloading end. “Without this, the operators have to get on the truck and pry the product apart,” said Stokes. “The dunnage is magnetised to prevent the dunnage from coming loose and falling onto the road during transit. The vertical dunnage is sent back to the loading site upon being unloaded.”
Work trials utilising the designed products were conducted to test for any additional or introduced risk through
working with all operators and to account for different working abilities and attributes. Once tested and updated, all operating procedures and practices were updated to reflect the new way of work, according to Stokes. “Northgate Distribution understood the risks of unloading trucks from a height and undertook an evidence-based process to eliminate or minimise a number of risks associated with unloading trucks, including a risk of falls from height,” he said.
The concept for this project was to eliminate the working at heights risks by setting a goal to work towards an aspiration of never working at height on the back of trucks, Stokes explained. “At that time when the team set that
goal, the Brisbane Distribution centre was unloading vehicles from approved platforms at minimum 70 per cent of the time,” he said.
“We already had success in reducing the rate of working at height and were seeking to improve on that success where possible, known from an industry level that across Australia, there is a high rate of injuries and fatalities from workers falling off trucks and trailers.”
An internal review of Bluescope’s risk register and incident and hazard data was also conducted to understand the mechanisms of incidents and the underlying conditions contributing to risk during normal operations and when an incident occurs. “We gained information from our workforce about what aspects of work they find difficult, dangerous,
different (for different contexts or load configurations), or dumb about rules and processes that were in place for other reasons that were impacting how they undertook their work,” he said.
In actioning the initiative, Stokes said a consultative arrangement through a ‘plan-do-check-act’ methodology was adopted. A working committee was established that involved the operations manager, logistics manager, warehouse supervisor, employees, engineers and HSE professional across three sites, including a manufacturing site that loaded product to send to distribution sites.
“Engagement commenced at a local site level with the operations manager,
line leaders and loaders to determine high-risk activities to prioritise,” said Stokes, who explained that consultation was then expanded to other capital city distribution centre operations managers and supervisors. Trials were also conducted with feedback from loaders and other employees, including truck drivers (contractors to BlueScope), for their input and feedback. “Feedback was passed to the working committee for review, analysis, and update, who then disseminated information back to the site, and so the engagement cycle continued. Upon successful trials at the Northgate site (Brisbane), the same trials were set up for the Westall site (Melbourne) to see if further issues were identified and to test the reliability of the Northgate trials. Feedback was again coordinated by
the working committee to evaluate and improve the process,” said Stokes.
Once confirmed, he said internal operating work procedures were updated, and critical controls standardised in the risk register. He explained that assurance reviews include questions about how the process is managed and continually improved as “business as usual”.
“The success of the initiative has been intrinsic and explicit and has changed how we view and ‘accept’ risk,” said Stokes. This intentional change to unloading tasks has resulted in a number of outcomes:
1. Eliminated the need to work from height on the back of trucks by unloading from a ground position 100 per cent of the time.
2. Removed operators from the ‘line of fire’ of the load on the truck during unloading activity.
3. Removed other risks associated with access and egress from mobileraised platforms, including manual handling risks in moving the mobile platforms into position.
8. Operators are now seeking further solutions for eliminating or minimising the need to be on the back of trailers for loading activities through the same PDCA model.
9. As operators across sites become more confident in the process and with the engineered devices (spreader bar, magnetic rubberised dunnage, no touch tools), it has enabled, dependent on crane capacity and load configuration, to unload multiple layers of product without increasing risk to workers or damage to plant or product.
“Once the latent and underlying conditions of work were better understood and the risk associated was assessed, we were able to determine other aspects that needed to be managed before full implementation of working from the ground could be successfully undertaken,” he said. “This resulted in specific engineered tools and attachments to be used to enable crane and mobile equipment attachments to be positioned for successful unloading – ultimately resulting in the overhead crane spreader bar, extension no-touch tool and magnetic rubberised vertical dunnage.”
4. Eliminated the need for extensive workplace re-design, such as fixed unloading bays.
5. Provided significant unloading efficiencies by 50 per cent (from 90 minutes to 45 minutes to unload) for time and demurrage costs being reduced by 98 per cent
6. Reduced the number of operators for unloading loads from two to one
7. Operators actively plan how to unload trailers depending on load configuration and any load shift during transit and undertake a continual improvement process introduced as part of the project as part of business as usual.
“Again, through the risk and evidence-based PDCA model, we are able to assess and confirm safer and efficient work practices,” said Stokes.
10. Implementation of this process has enabled the greater ability to ensure consistent implementation of other critical controls such as exclusion zones, improved clearance around trucks for visibility and movement from removing platforms and steps, minimised hand injury risk with greater ability to use ‘no-touch tools’ to position slings and tynes.
11. Operators are assessing other tasks and processes within their work areas, actively seeking to identify and remove risks to health and safety with confidence and evidence that they will be listened
“The success of the initiative has been intrinsic and explicit and has changed how we view and ‘accept’ risk”
to and engaged for a solution. “This has resulted in other engineered solutions to other risks that have reduced hazardous manual tasks risks in other tasks,” said Stokes.
12. Assurance processes include human and organisational performance principles and practices to better understand the conditions of work that workers are actively managing every day to enable us to propose and implement the highest level of control to manage risks to health and safety.
The big picture and business benefits
Stokes explained that the simple advantage of implementing this initiative is improving safety in the workplace and ensuring a safer system of work for valued employees. “Bluescope has been undergoing an evolution in how we think about and manage risk through the implementation of human and organisational performance principles and practices,” he said.
“Under the guidance of Professor Todd Conklin and his associates, the business has embraced the underpinning ideals and used that as the basis to
understand our context and how that drives behaviour and decisions, how we respond to success and failure, how we can better engage with our people to understand all aspects of work that they find difficult, different, dangerous, or dumb rather than looking at risk from the perspective of only data and consequences of incidents.”
all distribution sites in the Bluescope group,” said Stokes, who explained that, at a local level, other engineered projects have been completed and proposed that are further reducing risks to health and safety, particularly with respect to hazardous manual tasks.
This process reinforced that codesigning work with all stakeholders results in greater success and promotes an environment of trust and curiosity for “what else” can be done. Stokes said the success of this particular initiative across a few sites has shown the business that “we can and must continue to seek better ways of doing work”.
“The expectation is that this work practice will be implemented across
“Overall, less incidents onsite results in less disruptions for the plant and a happier and engaged workforce. Less disruptions to the plant lead to a smoother supply chain – which is a flow-on effect all the way down to our clients. A happier and engaged workforce encourages employment retention in our business to further grow our capacity and expertise. But most importantly, it’s a benefit for the Illawarra and surrounding communities, especially given that BlueScope has a deep and rich history of supporting our workers and their families,” Stokes concluded. n
Finalists for the Australian Workplace Health & Safety Awards 2023 will be announced on 21 June 2023, with winners announced at a gala evening in Melbourne on 31 August 2023. For more information, please visit www. awhsa.org.au or see the advertisement on the back cover of this issue.
“Less incidents onsite results in less disruptions for the plant and a happier and engaged workforce”
Safety management systems and associated practices are typically discussed in terms of their intended benefits, which generally help organisations navigate and standardise decisions and approaches to risk management. However, such systems may also have a contradictory effect on safety when written “artefacts” (such as plans, documents, processes, and risk assessments) enable work to happen by encouraging a belief that the risks have been managed – when in reality they have not been.
This was the focus of a recent research paper, Writing plans instead of eliminating risks: How can written safety artefacts reduce safety? published in the journal Safety Science and authored by Ben Hutchinson, Sidney Dekker, and Andrew Rae from Griffith University’s Safety Science Innovation Lab.
The research paper was theoretical but drew on a large variety of published research to form the arguments. “We then applied these concepts to real-world data in later projects,” said Hutchinson.
Elaborating on the paper’s findings, he explained that system documents and processes also facilitate the commencement of work. “Consider the requirement for an emergency plan to be written before workers mobilise to site, or a risk assessment be undertaken to evaluate a high-risk shutdown activity. The production of these documents allows work to progress past a procedural or contractual gate,” said Hutchinson.
Sometimes, however, safety documents may enable work to commence even though the safety issues have not actually been addressed, said Hutchinson: “In these cases, there is an apparent ‘decoupling’ between the intended risk mitigation versus the intended goal of the document/process.”
In the case of risk assessments, for example, Hutchinson said a risk assessment might facilitate the night shift approval process without the agreed controls being implemented, nor do the controls need to be effective for their intended purpose. “Therefore, the procedure or process that requests the document facilitates a dangerous disconnect between beliefs and actual risk control. This is decoupling. It’s when safety documents, like plans, registers, risk assessments, SWMS etc., allow work to progress even though the document hasn’t helped to manage the risk, but people believe otherwise,” he explained.
without actually having to solve the issue, and
• increasingly become the unit of management instead of the issues and then take on a life of their own.
“This work suggests that practitioners should more critically evaluate the often invisible and potentially pervasive symbolism vested in safety artefacts to direct effective and sustainable risk interventions,” said Hutchinson.
One central idea in the research paper is that people often mistakenly create a document when what they really intended was to solve an operational issue or risk. “Consider a confined space entry. We investigate an incident and decide that the process of entry or task sequencing needs to be revised. So, we rewrite the process, publish it, and hold toolbox talks,” Hutchinson said.
The paper also introduces the term “enabling device” to help explain the situation where a written artefact facilitates the commencement of work. “We explore how enabling devices can become excessively symbolic, where they facilitate work to commence even when they may be decoupled from the issues they were designed to manage,” said Hutchinson.
The paper argued that highly symbolic artefacts acting in their enabling function:
• become more speculative than functional,
• make assumptions and beliefs
“appear more real” by giving them an observable form,
• fill a need for people to solve issues
“When you think about it, what we mostly did was rewrite a process. We didn’t directly change how people actually enter a confined space, nor how they sequence the tasks. This is obvious, of course: a document isn’t the work, but we highlighted a range of times when the two are confused as the same thing.”
Sometimes, Hutchinson observed that rewriting a process and holding a toolbox will have a direct influence on operational work or risks, but in other cases, it won’t. “The key point is that we invest far more time on finessing a document over properly learning about, influencing, or improving actual realworld work,” he said.
Something else important to note is that most of the time, the negative effects of this form of decoupling are probably not that serious, he added. But in other more remote cases, and mostly
“The procedure or process that requests the document facilitates a dangerous disconnect between beliefs and actual risk control”
surrounding complex and high-risk work, Hutchinson said they could introduce or aggravate serious failure modes. “Other authors like Lee Clarke, or Jan Hayes and Andrew Hopkins noted examples when safety systems facilitated major accidents,” said Hutchinson.
“That is, the creation and use of safety management systems allowed major risks to run unchecked. In the cases of the San Bruno pipeline explosion or the Exxon Valdez tanker spill, safety documents were so symbolic and unrealistic that they were called ‘fantasy documents’. They provided reassurance that risks were adequately described and mitigated, despite having little operational impact where needed,” he said.
There are a number of important implications in the research for OHS, according to Hutchinson, who says an
important one is a stronger focus on real everyday work.
“If you believe that a change of entry process is needed for confined spaces, then focus on how confined space work is planned, resourced, and undertaken. Focus on what challenges or disrupts effective confined space entry. Actually focus on confined space entry rather than indirectly via a document,” he explained.
“This isn’t a universal law, but a written process should be the final output following on from a deep focus on work –not the product itself.”
Hutchinson said a second point related to the first is to focus more directly on the elements of harm. For example, if mine ventilation is of primary importance or a permit to work system, or managing plant/pedestrian interfaces, then try to focus more directly on those elements.
“An immediate thought is to work from the bottom-up – learn about the types of
work where these exposures occur, what enables or hinders safe and reliable work, what introduces uncertainty or difficulties into the work scope, how well controls are understood, and how available they are in the face of time or resource disruptions,” said Hutchinson, who noted this information should then get fed upstream into workplace and organisational design principles: the top-down focus.
“I find it interesting that organisations now place so much focus on critical risks or controls – but still have few means to proactively measure (quantitative or qualitative) or learn about said risks or controls outside of investigations. Even fewer examples exist of real-time indicators of the controls,” he said.
“What’s been described here is obvious stuff, of course, but it’s easy to invest too much time into managing documents and processes, all the while believing that you are managing the critical issues.”
In the December 2020 edition of the OHS Professional, I enthusiastically reviewed Safety Insights: Success and Failure Stories of Practitioners, the first book jointly edited by Nektarios Karanikas in what has become a series on workplace insights. Overall, I found this second book to be even better. Almost all of the case studies were interesting, well written, and well edited, with the few exceptions occurring when authors were unable to discuss failures and successes realistically. Hopefully, an even tighter editorial rein will be applied to the next book, which will be about healthcare, because the formula is excellent – most readers respond well to documented humility in learning from failure alongside a case that more traditionally and obviously demonstrates an author’s expertise.
I read the book from cover to cover rather than dipping into cases of particular interest. I am glad I did so because I learned a great deal from cases such as those in residential aged care, Indian tractor seat design, and high-pressure tyres that are outside my usual interest. Readers will be able to learn much about the rigorous application of human factors and ergonomics from the outset of a project’s design and the need to engage frontline workers throughout and incorporate both domain and systemic
Book: Ergonomic Insights: Successes and Failures of Work Design
Editors: Nektarios
Karanikas & Sara Pazell
Publisher: CRC Press, 2023
RRP: $90.99 (paperback), $231.00 (hardback), $57.39 (eBook)
understanding. They will also gather insights into the potential impact of workplace politics and the necessary use of soft skills to ensure that what may be a technically excellent report is likely to be implemented in practice with support from team leaders and middle and upper management as well as workers at the frontline/sharp end.
Quality Work in Residential Aged Care by Valerie O’Keeffe;
6. When Success is Not Success, We Strive to Do Better by Sara Pazell;
7. Reshaping Lifestyle Changes in a Heavy Weight World by Keith Johnson;
8. Indian Farm Tractor Seat Design Assessment for Driver’s Comfort by Bharati Jajoo;
9. Off-The-Road TyreManagement: The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly by Paulo Gomes;
10. The Human Factors Practitioner in Engineering Contractor-Managed Investment Projects by Ruud Pikaar;
16. The Ergonomics Consultants Lot is Not an Easy One by Rwth Stuckey and Philip Meyer;
17. Tread Softly Because You Tread on My Dreams: Reflections on a Poorly Designed Tram Driver Cab by Anjum Naweed;
18. Creating Conditions for Successful Design-in Use by Lidiane Narimoto;
19. New Scientific Methods and Old School Models in Ergonomic System Development by Thomas Hofmann, Deike Hebler, Svenjo Knothe, and Alicia Lampe;
20. It’s Only a Reporting Form by Brian Thoroman; and
In addition to a five-page Preface from the editors and a 28-page Index, the book comprises 21 chapters across 271 pages from various domains and countries. Chapter titles provide a good idea of their contents. These are:
1. Human Impacts on Work Design by Graham Miller;
2. The Underestimated Value of Less-Than-Ideal and Proactive Ergonomic Solutions by Kym Siddons;
3. Return-to-Work and 24/7 Warehouse Operations by Wenqi Han;
4. Designing a Visually Comfortable Workplace by Jennifer Long;
5. Opportunities and Challenges for Designing
11. Deciphering the Knowledge Used by Frontline Workers in Abnormal Situations by Christopher M. Lilburne and Maureen E. Hassall;
12. The Tyranny of Misusing Documented Rules and Procedures by Nektarios Karanikas;
13. Creating Ownership and Dealing with Design and Work System Flaws by Stasinos Karampatsos;
14. Stuck in a Holding Pattern: Human Factors Training Development for Sports and Recreational Aviation by Claire Greaves and Reuben Delamore;
15. Undertrained Workforce and Poor System Design by Jose Sanchez-Alarcos Ballesteros;
21. SAfER Way to Design Work by Maureen E. Hassall.
The book’s stated aim is to encourage learning from practitioner (including industry, academic and consultant) stories in real-world conditions, primarily for professionals and graduate students in the fields of ergonomics, human factors, and occupational health and safety. This aim has been well met. In reading these chapters, the whole is definitely much more than the sum of the parts. I highly recommend it.
Reviewed by: Kym Bills, FAIHS (Life), Visiting Research Fellow, University of Adelaide & AIHS Branch Chair SA
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“In reading these chapters, the whole is definitely much more than the sum of the parts”
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