Ask the experts: How can safety leaders deliver on WHS?

Safety industry professsionals Christian Frost, Head of HR Program Delivery & WHS, News Corp Australia, and Diane Smith-Gander, Chair of Safe Work Australia, share their opinions about what leaders need to do to drive safety outcomes.

What are some key ‘rules of engagement’ that leaders can employ when developing a good safety culture?

Diane Smith-Gander (DSG): The number one rule of engagement for leaders is to engage. Leaders should challenge themselves to test just how embedded safety is in their daily routines — and in what they do when they are not at work.

Do you pull the kitchen chair over to get to the top cupboard or go pull out the right stepladder? Do you always hold the handrail when you use stairs?

As the saying goes, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. So, leaders have to be present on the topic of safety at all times.

Christian Frost (CF): I think it’s important to recognise that you are dealing with people. As a result, you need to understand the concerns of people you are dealing with and demonstrate genuine empathy. Leaders should facilitate an environment where the group agrees on the problem and discusses and agrees on the options and solutions. This buy-in will ensure you have the greatest success.

I don’t see the process of creating your desired safety culture as any different to creating the type of culture you want in any other discipline, like compliance, operations, sales and finance. Define your measures in a collaborative way. Set your standards. Give people the freedom to win. Where you need to, you have to move some team members on.

What are some key strategies leaders can use for making sure everyone (including suppliers, contractors and employees) play by the rules?

DSG: Contractors are used to contracts, so a good place to start is with the appropriate clauses in contracts to ensure the attention of contractor management is focused on safety.

But, from that point on you need to treat your contractors no differently to anyone else on your team. The measurements taken need to be the same as they are for your team. Any mandatory safety rules must be adopted without amendment. Process and documentation needs to be standardised.

Do safety walkabouts and see what the real safety standards are for your workers and your contractors — the same rules need to apply. If you see things that look wrong, ask the difficult questions — don’t stop until you have answers and you are happy the problems have been fixed.

CF: First, as a general principle, it’s important that all stakeholders have an opportunity to have input into what the rules are. The best contractor management frameworks at their heart have a collaborative approach. An excellent leader will work with a contractor over time to answer the following questions:

• What are the risks associated with your work and how will you work safely?
• What relationship structure should we have in place to make sure you are supported to work safely?
• How will we both check from time to time that your safety systems are in place and effective?
• How will you let me know when a major incident occurs?

What are the keys to an effective leader-led safety (or risk-based) conversation?

DSG: Effective leader-led safety conversations happen in the field, with a genuine sense of curiosity from the leader and no pre-conceived notions as to what will be found.

I had an insightful interaction with three construction workers under a tree on a hot Perth day a few years ago. By having a very honest conversation we agreed the biggest safety risk for the team was the stop-start nature of the work they were doing at the time. It meant there was a temptation to just start the work up again and not check if the risks had changed.

The team was clear that the cause of the constant stopping and starting was due to poor work design and documentation. We had our quality team dig into the root causes and add some bespoke measures on the construction processes.

Doing this also helped make the construction processes more efficient. So, my advice is that leaders must get out and look at the worksite, slow down and take the time to ask open questions of the people actually doing the work. It really helps, they often have great insights.

CF: Two simple approaches for a leader-led safety conversation could be to ‘listen and learn’, or to ‘informally audit’. A leadership conversation should be undertaken in an employee’s work environment and should only involve one senior person in the conversation. The conversation should be designed to extract as much information in a brief period of time and to create an environment where people feel comfortable discussing areas for improvement. There are four key steps to effective conversations:

1. Prepare by familiarising yourself with the risks in the workplace.
2. Observe work practices for a while.
3. Discuss with employees asking questions that elicit open-ended answers.
4. Follow up and record outcomes.

Discuss your observations with peers. Take action and let the people you interacted with know.

What are some key strategies that leaders can use to ensure the health and wellbeing of workers?

DSG: Ensuring the health, safety and wellbeing of workers starts by being really aware of the specific risks that could arise out of the strategy and operations of the company and then thinking holistically about how to remove or mitigate these.

In these times of constant disruption and change, we ask our employees to be on a constant learning journey and we must explicitly think about how these changes might affect health and wellbeing.

Technology can really assist us to support our efforts. When I was at Broadspectrum, we knew that driving was a high-volume and often high-risk activity for our team. So, adopting technologies that allowed us to reduce the number of kilometres driven had a very positive impact.

Using sensors to measure water levels in tanks, the operation of electric fences and water quality near dams meant fewer trips on some challenging roads for visual observations. Sending drones to inspect gutters and rooftops meant less working at heights.

A big focus on our 24/7 worksites has to be to support good mental health at work. We need to have a close look at the design of the job. We should be asking, “Are the workloads reasonable? Do people have the right tools and equipment to do the job? Are there signs of conflict that we need to address?”

When our people are stressed they tend to make more mistakes and there’s more potential for bullying and other behaviours we’d rather not see. So, a key is designing the work to support good mental health. And letting people know it’s okay to speak out if they are not coping — we can’t help if we don’t know.

Leaders can help normalise conversations by openly talking about workplace mental health issues.

CF: This is the most complex area right now in WHS, and you can read about a range of typical approaches from health experts. I'm sure they will be insightful. However, I will provide a slightly more complex response and perhaps with the lens of mental health. Employers should look to reduce their mental health profile by designing their organisation and leveraging their HR agenda. Organisation structures should be designed to be as efficient as possible, eliminating structures that create competition amongst business units, remove wasteful processes and get products/services delivered as efficiently as possible. Establishing organisations that are designed well creates a mentally healthy environment. The HR agenda needs to focus the business on this and needs to have a credible communication plan, connecting its employees to the purpose of the organisation in a human way. Focusing on meditation and mindfulness may be useful, but energising your staff, empowering them, giving them the resources and support to do their job and connecting their work to a meaningful societal contribution should be the focus for the WHS profession in the coming decades.

Christian Frost, Head of HR Program Delivery & WHS, News Corp Australia, is an experienced WHS and workers compensation leader having worked in large, complex organisations and high-reliability environments. His experience includes establishing and leading a function in a start-up environment, leading a large functional transformation and consulting firm. Christian holds a science degree (psychology major) and various tertiary, industry and professional qualifications. He is also a judge for the National Safety Awards of Excellence and served on the subcommittee supporting the development of Exemplar Globals international OHS auditor examination.

Diane Smith-Gander (DSG) is Non-Executive Director AGL Energy, Wesfarmers Limited, Chair of Safe Work Australia, a board member of Keystart Loans, Henry Davis York, CEDA and President of Chief Executive Women, Australia’s pre-eminent women’s advocacy group.

Diane has held a wide range of non-executive roles in the past including chairman of Broadspectrum, deputy chairperson of NBNCo, non-executive director of the CBH Group, commissioner of Tourism WA and board member of the Committee for Perth.

Diane’s last executive role was group executive at Westpac; a member of the leadership team of the corporation, responsible for all Information Technology, back office operations, global vendor management and property. Diane was a general manager at Westpac for 10 years in the 1990s responsible for back office functions, retail networks and support functions.

Want to learn more?

This topic and more will be under further discussion at the upcoming SAFETYconnect conference. For further details visit www.safety-connect.com.au.