 Office of Fair and Safe Work Queensland is pleased to be part of the Safe Work Australia virtual seminar series and excited to be sharing with you how we are working directly with industry to progress the work health and safety agenda in Queensland. Over the past five years we have increased our focus on education, awareness and engagement with business and as a result we have reduced significantly serious injuries across all industries. We have achieved even greater reductions of between 16 and 31% in our priority industry sectors of manufacturing, construction, transport and agriculture. An opportunity now exists for businesses to take the next step to drive further safety performance improvements. We consider safety leadership the foundation for achieving these improvements and we will be working with industry to increase the number of Queensland organisations implementing safety leadership and culture initiatives. We are developing a series of films featuring executives from a range of businesses and industries sharing their personal approaches and views about safety leadership. I'm pleased to present one of these films to you today featuring Mick Crow, Managing Director, GNS Engineering, speaking about his involvement with the Mackay Area Resource Industry Network and the business benefits of being part of a safety network. Through the safety leadership project and in collaboration with Safe Work Australia we are reaching out to Queensland business leaders to get involved, commit to safety and inspire others. GNS is a heavy engineering service provider. We provide blue collar mechanical or electrical trades supporting heavy industries so maintenance and construction, mining, sugar, iron ore on a national basis but largely focused in Queensland. While GNS has a national exposure we're predominantly in the Mackay region and the Resource Industry Network is a local businesses that have all been together to collaboratively improve. So I'm involved in two levels on the board which is an interesting whole of industry but more specifically last three or four years I've been the chair of the Workplace Health and Safety Committee which drags members together to collaborate on safety in the region. The reason I got involved was I suppose we've got 1,300 employees in GNS and so I get exposure to relevant statistics so I get weekly reminders that hazards occur, incidents occur and risks are in the workplace and it always connected with me that inside Mackay there'd be companies that don't have that level of exposure or the warning signs but over the last five six years there's been deaths in 20 person industries and to me it really hit me that those people don't get any warnings so two things how can we work together collaboratively to say you might only be 20 but if there's 50 of them there's a thousand people and what do our stats look like and what are our trends and then if you can get that awareness up how do you then help people improve that so we seek to basically share and collaborate so we hurt less people and share and collaborate so we can influence the industry sector so it's actually easier for people to be safe. Being involved in industry networks around safety for me it's just like an acceleration program you're automatically being exposed to a broader range of experience, a broader range of problems and a broader I suppose group that helps personalise the issues you have to stay so focused on it you need to know of every time there's a learning and if you're just looking at yourself you're slowing down how fast you can learn. You'll also get energy from others who are doing good things because it is safety's hard work you know you have to stay on it you have to stay focused and being around other people who are getting wins as well helps remind you that hey this is worth it we've got to stay on this so I just think it's a the collaborative environment the increased knowledge just for exposure it's no different to anything else if you want to be great at your sport you're not going to get that new landroom at home by yourself and being part of a network you get more learning opportunities so hopefully your learning opportunities are minor issues not major issues and that's a big goal in any safety program make sure you're learning off the near misses not off the injuries to people. The resource sector in Queensland is big and diverse and there's lots of different companies that compete and everyone takes an absolutely serious approach to safety one of the downsides of that is they'll all set up rules that pertain to their own particular sites and a lot of our members are exposed to multiple sites to get great safety the exposed person has to believe why you're doing it every time you do something to that exposed person that makes them think this is more about ticking boxes than it is about my safety you shift their risk bar you know I'll do that because I have to not because I care about me and you care about me and look this is difficult stuff okay you could never have a site that didn't completely own the safety with people and make sure they were trained similarly if you take people who visit multiple sites and give them the same information for different ways it essentially says the same thing that's not engaging them around safety so we're working hard with sharing that message with our clients to say hey look appreciate you've got a complicated problem but the end game of all of this is safer people on the ground and the key to that is their mind in the game and every time we give them some repetitive non-value ad piece of safety experience that degrades how far their mind is in the game then there's more practical things like common standards around vehicles because probably the biggest risk to our employees is actually road traveling on the road and minimizing that is a way to reduce exposure to people and that then means again engagement clients with different standards to make sure we can use common vehicles between sites it's some of the bigger picture stuff at the end of the day each individual business has to own its own safety problems and lead in that way and the network can help people do that but then probably a broader approach is what can we do to actually reduce the the base level of risk in the industry as I said better inductions more consistent messaging and reduced travel time the resource industry network safety committee is an influencing body members there voluntarily because they were interested in improving their safety but also in improving the region I think we've only grow the capacity through through motivating aligning and assisting in keeping our various members committed to the cause are we no different too when you decide you want to get fit what are you a personal trainer for but you go better with a personal trainer because there's someone coming along who's just reminding you on the right things to do and sharing a few smarter ideas but largely just keeping you on the path and sticking at it you know that the strength in any network is its actual members and what they do and I think we build the capacity in the region through collaborating and through keeping everyone motivated and committed to the cause I think the leadership style and safety for me you always start with the person you're trying to influence and the personal trainer influence is a guy who's on his fourth night shift it's rainy it's cold he's doing a dirty job he he he when he finishes this job they can go home he wants to go home he's been away from his family and it's all these things that are making him think about everything except the job so so the leadership style needs to connect to that guy because the the person who gets hurt isn't the clean area everything laid out no pressure happy to be here it's the person who's under pressure and so to connect with that person your leadership style has to be relevant to them and you know thousand people particularly with high turnover in the project spaces how do I know so for me you have to keep it very very simple and very very honest and that particular person might have a risk profile that's considerably outside what we'd like it might be a compliant safety person so for mine you just you just be honest and you have to be transparent and you have to be available and you have to bring it back to things that matter to them which is I don't want to meet your family for the wrong reasons so it's got to be of value in your people and you got to keep through your leadership showing that it's your priority and and that you expect them needed to be their priority and your supervision and we need it to be the priority in the worker and and how well you lead will be a factor of how well that happens but I've worked overseas as well and I've worked in places I've got I've got a safety award shirt shirt for an LTI for a year and we killed seven people that year but in that country if you weren't alive at the start of the next shift you weren't deemed to have missed a shift okay so when people talk to me about you know all this safety stuff you know it gets in your road I mean well there's countries you can go live in where it doesn't just you know keep in good touch with your mates because you're not sure how long they'll be around so as a leader if there are things that frustrate your people about safety you've got to make it easy for them to be safe you know and where it's not easy you've got to absolutely communicate the why it's no different to anything if you want someone to do something that is harder than another option you've got to work spend all your time on the why and the why is why are you here at work in the first place who matters to you in the world what would happen to them if you weren't around and okay from that basis now how are we going to do today's job if your actions aren't there to make sure no one's life is seriously harmed through your actions but what are you doing and draw on that and that'll help shape your behaviour and you know what your people will respond to it people respond to no one that you care and know what you're worried about them and then once they realise that they'll help you in that cause and then it helps the rest of your business too because they're engaged so that they see it as we're here for each other my advice to people who want to strengthen their safety leadership commitment can only come from me and that's what works for me what I do is I think about what happens if I fail as a safety leader as the person accountable for the well-being of all the people in our organisation if I fail and the reality is if we fail in that we could have a death or a serious permanent injury I strengthen my leadership by thinking about what more can I do and then and then using the the the the unacceptability of if it went wrong if someone in our care wasn't there for their kids wasn't there for their family and that was under our control and that's the primary thing I use to strengthen my resolve because that's unacceptable I don't know I don't know how you'd have that conversation with someone's partner and kids knowing that you can avoid these injuries with enough effort you can avoid it so it's a it's a it's a circular loop the consequence is unacceptable as a leader you're in charge you know you can influence the outcome and avoid it ever happening so think about what all of your work is going towards and that and that's your motivation for doing whatever it takes