, Director, Orange Umbrella

The new workplace health and safety (WHS) legislation presents WHS professionals the opportunity to lead the way using culture change initiatives.

The Safety Climate Project (SCP) is an original industry example of systematically achieving superb outcomes and unparalleled engagement in WHS assessment, reporting and improvement over 5 years. The average lagging incident data across participating companies has decreased 30%. Individual companies have achieved leading indicator improvement, a positive return on investment, reduced non-conformances, and improved risk management. Workers are well-engaged with the SCP with high averages for the survey response rates (90%) and action plan workshop attendance (85%).

How has the Safety Climate Project achieved positive buy-in from organisations? The SCP helps Electricity Supply Industry organisations identify the critical risks that are created by workplace culture, so that the right solutions can be implemented at an employee work group, company and industry level. Information is gathered via surveys and workshops with front line staff to senior management, and from office to worksite. The process provides key ‘culture’ measures for safety, identifies and validates safety issues, then helps operationalise the safety improvement within the business.

Aggregated SCP findings and key case studies are shared across the industry via the Electricity Engineers’ Association (EEA), allowing common issues to be addressed. SCP provides participants with information to strategically manage health and safety using

Leading indicators of WHS risk and mitigation impact A collaborative approach to WHS culture improvement Industry benchmarks.

The health and safety of people is the foundation of a strong company. The right business and culture drivers reduce risk and frustration for the people carrying out the work, and optimise performance, productivity, efficiency, innovation and quality.

This presentation shares SCP findings, challenges, and transformations via case studies allowing WHS professionals to consider this leading industry initiative to strengthen their own practice.