Greg Tonner video

RUN TIME: 55 mins 38 secs

Hi everyone. I'm Todd, and I'll be your MC for today. Welcome to the third online Work Well 365 Speaker Series session for 2022. I would like to begin by respectfully acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land we are speaking to you from today and on which you are learning and working from today. We also pay our respects that elders past and present and extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people watching today. In this session, you'll hear from Greg Tonner, head of APAC at Sparta Science, who is passionate about people and technology and how together they can produce outcomes that improve both the lives of individuals and their communities. With over 25 years’ experience in Australia and overseas, Greg's expertise lives in identifying opportunities to grow and help people and businesses successfully navigate the change. Today, he will share his experiences and insights on the increasing importance of physical and mental wellbeing in the workforce and how new technology tools can scale up and increased level of care and outcomes in prevention and recovery. Greg will discuss how advancements in technology can be easily implemented and managed in today's business world to not only gain a strategic advantage, but more importantly, support your people. There will also be the opportunity to ask Greg questions at the end of his presentation so be sure to submit them in the chat box. Welcome Greg.

Thanks Todd. Uh, it's good to be here, everybody. I hope you're having a great day. Thanks for taking some time out today. I'm going share my journey as Todd said with you and, and really get to share with you why I'm so passionate about physical and mental health and about technology. You know, I think technology has changed and we have a huge opportunity to leap forward with what we're doing around this wellbeing space of physical and mental health. And if we do it and we can embrace it, we can make our workplaces happier safety, safer and more productive. And when I think about it and hopefully today you'll leave with an idea or a motivation that we are only about three degrees. We can pivot today with our resources and capabilities using this tech to make a material change.

And when I think about physical and mental health and you break it down right to the lowest level, our lives at home and work are really dependent on what and how we think, and then how we move and how regularly we, we move. And the better you are at both, the more engaged you are connected in your life, in everything you do. Likewise, if we come back from a works perspective, if you look at your waking hours, we spend a half to two thirds relay going to work or being at work. And that has, and why this is important to businesses because the way we are in this physical and mental realm really determines an outcome on our performance.

And by giving our people the tools and the capabilities, we can really, really enhance it. And the results are our people because they're happier. As I said, treat people better and more engaged, more open to ideas can handle change better. And we all grow through the experience. And when you look at our two leading business, future business indicators, customer experience, and staff engagement, you really start, it just fits so nicely into that. Because we know that customer experience, you know, net promoter score, whatever we're covering, we can measure that. And we come back, we know that the, our staff's engagement is the key to that. And we know that staff engagement, what we already measured today is really around the leadership and direction and fairness of which they operate in. But we have a gaping hole, which is the other lead indicator to engagement. And that is how people are feeling physically and mentally.

And that's really starts to shape the way of thinking. Or you can just flip it and go to the other side, which is the pain and cost. We know that one of the two biggest reasons we lose people at work through injury, or we have performance problems generally relate back to some physical, mental, uh, challenges that are going on. And then there's the tech side I want to talk about. We are in an amazing new era of tech that has arrived. That's perfect for operators like myself and probably the majority on this call because we can have more ownership in solving problems, using easier tech that doesn't require the effort we had to in past generations. The other preface, I come out looking at our work health and safety, which I think Australia leads the world in, you know, our passion and care from what I've seen.

Well, our school card looks pretty good insistence in people. When it looks about the administration, when it looks the way we manage risk, whether that's location, whether that's, um, geographic risk locations. It, we, we do really well at that. And even in our ability to manage the process of getting someone injured, treated, I think we do a really, really, really good job. And I think we're well placed for where the hole is. And that is, I don't think we are at the place we want to be. I think we've just started and that's around regular objective assessments of physical and mental health to get tangible measurements. I still think we're caught in the old way, which are subjective. And I'll talk about that, but I do want to raise so with positive, I think in the last 24, 36 months, we have leaped into this area and with the technology at the versions, we have done a really good job, but I think the nature of 1.0 is we've had a lot of raw data and we're getting challenged a lot of, of outcomes and we're a bit overwhelmed.

And I hope at the end of the day, you'll get a smile back on your face to see that the work you've done has enabled you to start to work with data and places you really well to start implementing those strategies. When you see on the slide here in front of you, I'm just going break it down to three sort of experiences. I'm just going go back into the importance in the workforce based on the unique experience I've had and some stories. And then I'm just going talk about the technology change and give you an example of one of these texts that I've discovered in physical health. And then I'm going come back and talk about the implementation side and just some things that I see and witness from my experience with 20 years with technology and change just going forward now to the next slide.

Yes, my personal experience. And I think perspective is really, really important. And I have a bit of a unique one and I want to share that with you. So, if I started a personal level, my relationship with injury started a little bit too young. I was eight years old, and I taught my Achilles, uh, running down a driveway, which meant I couldn't really run properly until I was 15. And it meant I had to sort of couldn't do the things I really wanted. And I was heavily doing sport at aid and loving it. And it sort of stopped on me and luckily had swimming and some other things, but at the age of 15, I start had to learn to run again, which was, which led. And I'll talk about that. And then there was mental health, you know, I'm dyslexic. So, I really struggled in school in a lot of years, had to repeat.

And then I found out how I could learn. So, sitting in a classroom falling behind is really hard mentally. And then from sport, once, once I could run, I, I really fell in love with rugby and had a great privilege of, um, playing a lot of, lot of representative football. And I grew up in Townsville. And what it meant is you had to travel a lot. And during that period of about sort of 17-18, when I caught up to about 23, I was on the road a lot of times for long hours. Cause you're playing Townsville, then north Queensland and then central and you get to Brisbane. And if you're lucky to go on, you have to stay away from home and, and playing two to three games a week meant you had to be really focused on not getting injured because if you got injured, you got sent home.

And so, I spent a lot of time jumping to pools at midnight after games and other things just to ice to, to keep going. And then there was my first job experience when I was at university in Townsville, I worked in the local cement works and calcium mine, uh, working as a trade assistant to plumbers, to electricians. And I did about three, three years and three months. And that was an environment where I'd never seen safety like it. But I also had the in an environment where there's a lot of noise, 24-7. The CO used to walk around dawn because that's when a lot of fatalities happened. But one day I was up above some trains, and I was locked in, and I was grinding, uh, off paint for a, to get ready, to, to paint some, uh, beams and underneath me, um, there was a young man on the Shing of the trains who missed whatever he should have been doing.

He got crushed, be saw it, uh, got crushed and he died and, uh, living through that. And then the train that followed afterwards, you know, really does start to shape your life. So that's, that's, that's probably my early experiences. If I look at my career, you know, I was lucky enough, I did commerce and became a Chartered Accountant. Um, I did that for four or five years. And then I went overseas to England. I shifted out of professional services into media. Then, then I started in tech and telecom and then I went to software. And when I look at that also shifted out of finance to strategy, to operations, to big projects, and then to the front end, uh, which is about connecting business in sales. And if I look at that style, I've probably been involved majority of my life in transformational change and working with ideas to solve problems and then helping to implement them and make the work in environments that were outcome based, uh, really important.

So, you not only had to, but you also had to do the change, why still performing, which is challenging. If I look at a leadership perspective of my career, probably when I came back from England, about 2004 and five, I started to move up, uh, in management, um, moving away from projects. And I had started with the team of about five, went to seven to 12, and then I went up 30 and then sort of headed up to 500. And what's interesting. There is the higher you go, the more you see. And, uh, some of that is not good. Uh, and likewise, the environment that I was working in that stage, there was a lot of change. We had GFC one GFC, two, we were going through because the, you know, the digital change, what I called chapter 11, um, transformation, which is every year, they take 10% of your workforce off you.

And I was reflecting in 2014 that I'd been back in the country 10 years, and I'd qualified in solvency, but I didn't like, um, that side of it. And I'd done 13 major redundancies in 10 years. And what I saw in that leadership or came in my radar as I sort of grew was, was mental health and people being affected in their families or themselves, and the impact that had on the people they worked with and the impact on performance in the organisation. And it was shocking. And so, you know, but 2013 -14, I was really starting to look at how we could take more ownership of, of giving people tools to navigate the stresses that are associated, affecting their lives. The other thing that, that sort of, I also bumped into now, I look back was the relation of physical health to mental health.

And there was an example of a story worth telling where we had this amazing, uh, person in, in, in the sales team was a big team, but one person who was doing really well. And then in three months had three warnings. And I was brought in, uh, at a senior level. They were going to, uh, dismiss him. And I couldn't understand what had gone on and, and no one could tell me, so I sort of intervened, uh, with HR and we came down and met with him. Now about 15 minutes in, he opened up, he had had a hip problem and the doctor had said he was too early for any operations and had given him a lot of medication. Now, this person drove an hour and a half each day to work in Sydney, three hours. Uh, the pain hadn't reduced, so it wasn't sleeping well and was struggling.

And then you tip a little bit of alcohol on this. Uh, it doesn't go well. And so, what we were able to do was not dismiss the person, but ask him to seek, to get some more medical health, uh, advice. And he did get hit replacement. And six months later you saw this dynamic energy back, no pain involved, making a real difference where they worked. And, um, it just triggered me to now from a performance perspective, both mental and physically within our management team, spending more time just having deep relations and being aware of what's going on people's lives. Because I can tell you now you have someone going well, something happens in them in a and they get injured or something changes in their structure. You know that that will explode at work. Um, from a technology side really in, in 1995, when I went to England and I got involved with tech is in the, in the telecom area, I started to see technology and what it can do, it was the same time for the.com happening.

There was a lot of business and I got to work globally, and it was an amazing insight. And from there in early 2000, went across to Oracle, a big software company where I got introduced to data applications and got involved in some projects. One was, you know, we're able to work with a mobile company to identify where triangulate, where you are and then predict where you were going. Likewise, there's a project at B Sky B that was struggling in transformation. And we were able to use this incredible person back from America who had done the first algorithms for the discovery channel, which was one of the first bits of web pages that followed what you did and provided insights. And you know, that really got me on the big data track and how that could help us get insights to support our decisions. And um, so that was there.

And then the other, the other thing that's happened in my life, which was a bit of a step ride in 2015, I sort of left corporate and went up and, and worked with the north Queensland Cowboys in NRL. And yes, I started in 2015. It was a very good decision. We can talk about it later cause we won a grand final. I do want to say that the first three games, uh, we got flogged and I remember talking to Paul Green and Peter Par and they were preparing me that we could be none for nine. So, it wasn't the start I thought, but there's also another tough start I walked into in, in 2015 and we'd had two suicides related to the club, one of our top players, uh, brother who committed suicide. And we also had, uh, an amazing young referee Mackay commit suicide within our community.

And you know, with that brings a lot of, you know, what could we have done and to the credit of the NRL, uh, they did a lot of research that year and they came back with three findings, which I'd love to share with you around our performance of our top players. One was they loved what they did. So, they were involved in their training. They were, they were upbeat. They were, they were putting in. The second thing is they did something away from the game. They had an interest generally, uh, personal development might be about career. It might be a hobby, but they had something else to balance themselves. And then the third one which has carried to me to this day was they all did community service. And what the research showed them was that if you did something for someone else, it created these hormones that, that uplifted you.

So, it, it stopped you from going into depression. And when you were in a football team, every training you are on, you are on performance notice, and you could have injury and you're fighting for your spot and your dream. And so, there's lots of ups and downs every week in that environment. So that was there. The other thing that happened in 2015, the NRL acted based on these sorts of things happening. And we got up in north Queensland, we had to visit from the resiliency project, founder hue, and we hadn't talked to the players to their, to their families, to our staff. And what I got to see was the first insight for me not being a specialist in the area, that there were simple tools to help with mental health. You know, if you look at the resiliency there, number one, mindfulness, meditation, you know, secondly, um, gratitude and the third one acts of kindness, that's sort of linked.

And so that was really, really the other thing I bumped in, which is interesting was we had lots of different psychologists working at the club. You know, the makeup of our player group was, you know, sort of more of a Western culture combined with, you know, our indigenous Aboriginal Islanders and then sort of Western Pacific. And so, when you, when you look at those things, and one of the things I remember was that, you know, in a sort of Tongan or Samoan culture, your income goes back to the family and that's the way their families work, uh, which is different to the west. And so, when, uh, one of our players, you know, had a partner with Weston, you know, we wanted to work with them because we had the player eight hours a day, but they're somewhere else for 16 hours a day. And if you think about life, if you're not happy at home, you're not going to be good at work.

And if you're not happy at work, you're not going to be good at home. And so, there was that whole 360 view on wellbeing that the club had put in place to their credit. And then the other thing I bumped into in 15 that I'd never really seen before or at a level I've experienced as an amateur was career ending injury and how fast it struck and how unprepared we were and, and the fallout from it, and whether it was a season hall, your life, it was just quite shocking. And, and you know, when you live in that environment and you care, you want, you want to work at how you can be better prepared. And the other thing is that I started to bump into injury in relation to acquisition of players. Now you may not know, but, um, you can be a top trainer on a, in a gym, but when you go out on the field at an NRL level, like most elite sports, the cognitive ability to operate at that speed takes your mind 10 20 games to lift to.

And even though you're developing a lot of players, there's only so many games that you can create that capability. And so often because of the injury rates, because on average, you know, when I was involved in NRL, a player's lifetime is 24 games. That's the average only 24 games, which is about one season. Um, but what happened is when you needed players because of injury. When you went to the market, you were looking for players in a bit of a money ball that played sort of 50 to a hundred games because that's when they're at their peak and they've got the cognitive ability and the physical ability, but, and you could, you could vet them in the way that they felt, you know, you know, worked in with your culture, their approach to community. That that'd be a good citizen. Things we took really important, but when it came back to past injuries, they all had injuries because you can't play 50 games of NRL plus and not have an injury because it's so tough.

And when I started to look at the stats that, oh, that's got one knee, what's the chance of that knee happening again was just statistical. There was no objective data to say, well that person's, knee's healed better than this other person. And if you had two or three injuries, you, you might not get the job. And so, it sort of started to open my mind up to how could we find more objective data that's relevant to an individual instead of using past data. Statistically is there, is there some edge we could do that could do that because if you had two knees, but your knee was stronger than when it started, but you didn't get a job because the statistics said don't employ you, it, it sort of, you could lose a lot of talent and performance. Um, so that was the first thing. And then from the sports science side, you know, what could I say?

I was just blowing away. You know, we had four to five scientists, uh, or strength and conditioning scientists who, you know, for all degree through the PhD, they were working out a, a, a fitness program pre and during the training muscles and what to do, we had GPS, we had drones in the air. They'd worked out how many K's you could run in a week, a month, a year to reduce injury. And so, I really enjoyed that part of science. Uh, and then from their technical side, you know, they had, we had software that would follow a player and be able to produce how many tackles everything they did that could come back. So, we could measure what was happening with that, that performance every week. And we got that within half an hour of the game and the video, which the coaches would take the next 24 hours to break down.

It was like a top gun on the following day and the day after analysing it. Um, and we had systems, um, in relation to administration systems of diaries and what people do and putting data in. But when it came to physical health, it was really limited. We were still taking raw data and doing research on what the raw data showed us. And, um, you know, that was there. And then on the medical team's side, you know, what can I say, if you've got any physical injury go and find a doctor or physio whose worked in an elite sport because they are amazing. And, but once again, you know, how do we support them with objective data? We all can't get access to a, a doctor with 20 years’ experience in elite sport or a physio with the same, you know, so how do we, how do we support that?

And I suppose the objective data thing came to us in 2017, I'm sure you wouldn't mind, but if you remember Cowboys one in 2015 went to preliminary in 2016 and in 2017, we got to another final, but we lost both our captains, Jonathan Thurston, and Matt Scott, Matt had done his knee and we were eighth and we'd somehow made it through to a grand final, great ride and a week coming. The grand final Matt was about two weeks away from getting to that length of set time that he could play again. And there was a huge discussion in the club. I mean this amazing footballer, our captain, a great leader, fierce competitor, putting him back in the team to go and play Melbourne could make a huge difference. It could be the difference between winning and losing. And when we sat in the room and all the discussions, they were all subjective for people's opinions.

And so, it was a very hard to quantify risk. Um, so that was another sort of example. Um, and then the breakthrough, if I come back in 2016, uh, Broncos and Cowboys have played in 2015 and went to overseas the UK and by chance, just a, a blessing. I was on a panel in the house of Lords with, you know, with that legend Wayne Bennett and the discussion went to injury and he made a comment that just, just like, you know, symbols in my ears. He said that from his experience that if you use more than a certain number of players might have been 25, 26, 27, you could never win a grand final. And then if you take that back from my background, what it really says is that one of the core businesses of elite sport is injury prevention. And it makes sense, right? And just, I'd never sort of saw it that way from my, my corporate days.

Um, the next thing happened in a journey. I want talk about injury risk and predicting risks. So, we had aging workforce in, in 2016 and 2017 in the injuries we had young end, all getting injured. We had a large, we we'd had a lot of injury. We hadn't seen for many years. We're very proud when I write at the limited injury because they were tracking it. And I asked our medical team and, and scientists to just do an effort in trying to predict injury. And we tried for, you know, 2017 and 2018 we weren't very successful. That's a very hard thing to do. They were very apprehensive about it. It's very hard, but I thought, wow, there must be some software or some way to give some data to support these experts, uh, went through. And then the, the last two things I want to talk about is re-injury so not only we had deal with injury, but re-injury and to get to the Cowboys or a Broncos or any team is about a seven year journey.

And we had a couple of young men who'd worked really hard. They were beautiful people, and they made the NRL team, they got their chance and did really well. And then they got, did a knee. We had a couple and then we rehabbed them. They came back and did a knee. The following year. We rehabbed them and to see their dreams fall away after all that work and to know they're good enough. It really, you know, I, and then when I went and spoke to the trainers and the medical and said, well, what could we learn from this? It wasn't about blame. What could we do to be better? We didn't have an answer because everyone said, well, no, I thought they were right. And they, they demonstrated so, but yet they got hurt again. And so, I just, that was recovery. And the last part and area accounted in me was the cost in my time there, our cost in treating injury doubled and at one year were three times and for a non-profit club to have that amount of money, it's, it's really hard.

And you know, our goal was best treatment for players we could find. And so that's sort of where we are. And then I, I found some software I'm going share with you in the us. I went out and I was over there. We're getting new stadium, looking at new commercial software for stadiums, for CRM, for finance. And I asked when I was in Atlanta, what they were using around this and I going introduce some companies and we had a look at it, right. I just want to go the next, the next slide. Um, and I wanted to share with you, this was sort of my thinking, you know, couple of years into the Cowboys about this high performed, sustain sustainability sort of wellbeing circle and why this important is these were the areas that the club was working on and we're doing really well in those areas.

And I was looking at what would be the, um, the infrastructure, what we could do to support what we were doing even better. And, um, these were the key things that made a difference. And why is really important when you look at that slide, you'll see like what I would call a database in the centre. And one of the things I was, I was looking to do is how do I build an infrastructure that we could collect data put in? And I was thinking based on my past experience, which I'll talk about which wasn't right, and I'm going to share that with you, but I wanted to share what that looks like. And so that's really the end of sort of how I got here. And if I took away the three biggest breakthroughs, number one was that mental health and physical health are linked.

And my priority on physical health went through the roof because most of the mental health issues I saw came as a result of physical injury. And that's really, really relevant. And I'll talk about it because life is relevant to your experience. So, if you are a footballer, it's big, but if you are a mechanic and you can't go to work, or you're an office worker and you can't go in, or you work on a farm and you're sitting in your house injured and you can't work, I can tell you there's a huge correlation to mental health and other challenges. And so that, that, that was there. The second one I, I sort of picked up and I want to talk about is the subjective world we'd live in and that we need objective data. And by the way, objective data, doesn't replace the expert.

It just validates their thinking. It scales their thinking. It keeps consistency. It provides a benchmark to validate what they think it's, it's an added hand. It doesn't replace it, but it gives us something to, to work with. The other thing that's, that's really important with data is that in sport and other businesses, we have people work on us and help us and they leave. And their IP leaves when we've got data, we can actually, we, we don't lose that IP when it walks out the door. And, um, I go, the next slide, this is the other thing I was sort of working through in my mind, when you start to look at objective data and injury is if we could get data that could, could help us validate, we could probably use it for talent ID, for recruitment training playing, and then retirement rehab. And so that's sort of the mission, you know, objectively track and support each individual's physical capabilities from start to finish.

And I don't think that's any different. And I think it naturally falls into what I would call, you know, business it's, it's not any different. And because I think sport what's happening in sport does re does transcend to everyday life and to business. As I mentioned, it doesn't matter whether you are, if you you're at home and not working, you're not going to be in a good spot. And, um, and, and so having a model that takes objective data or movement and on mental health through your life will, will give us the, in not only the individual, the access and awareness to act, but also the organisation where they, where they need to focus. So that's, that's a bit of history. That's how I got here. That's why, you know, I think there's a huge opportunity and why I'm passionate about it. I want to go now to talk about technology, because I think if you don't come from it and I didn't come from, I've worked in it.

I've worked between technology and businesses, all my life. And I like tech people. And, but I don't often follow what they do, but I understand how to solve a problem and how to really work with those technical people to show us how they could help a problem, because it's really important. Um, and I think in the space of mental and physical health are written on the slide, the holy grail is objective data that can tangibly measure outcomes. There is no system in the world that is successful, that doesn't provide tangible, measurable outcomes. Um, what's happened in technology. We should be clapping. We have come to this space in time where our systems are open data, high interoperability, right? We use data, right? The, a API connectivity. It means you can hand your data off. It's like your apple watch or your smart watch can use it.

You can download an app where the data off the watch goes into a third party app like that, that is amazing in the world of enterprise. They've come out in the last 30 years, like in finance, there is, there are finance packages now like zero, you would've heard of MYOB that you can download that, but then go and get an app that improves your reporting does payments and they all interconnect. And you can do that from your home in a click of a button. Well, that, that is not what the world was like. And the other point about this type of technology in this space, it's interchangeable and it's disposable because you own the data. It's really a big change. If you go back to where we started back in the 60 seventies, eighties, we had one system to try to do everything mono or whatever they call it, but it was designed and built.

It took forever. It might take 10 years to build it. And the people who started weren't there at the end, very hard to change, very hard to get data out of it. And then when I started in, it were at this sort of what I would call the best of breed applications, and they did something really good for something, but they couldn't communicate to other applications. And it was very costly. And the process again, to your business was long tenders. So, you wanted to get it fixed, but you had to go through a tender and then build it. And it could take up to 18 months. And it was very, very costly. And now where we've moved to today is that we're in this open data environment, high interoperability. And the biggest benefits is we can just focus on the problem we're solving and get some technology to move fast, to get data, to fix that problem.

And I'm going to give you an example here of this example and MSK that I bumped into, because it does that, but there is a challenge. And it's the third thing I talk about because you can move quickly, right? You have a problem that you can create a lot of projects, unless you've got the governance and the experience, you can do a lot of projects and get a lot of data and overwhelm. And if that happens, you can get caught out. The business can lose confidence in you, executive and return can about returns can lose confidence in you, but it's really important. So, we've got the access, we've got the keys to the, to the lolly shop. We've just got to be able to work on, on the skills that make bringing tech that we can control operationally, that we can have the governance to control it.

Now, why is that important? What the Cowboys went through, the same thing, you know, you come out of large tech, you've got systems integrators. You're all the staff. When you worked at non-profit, you have one person. So, you have to have an environment like all of us, where we can use technology that doesn't overwhelm us or weigh us down, but actually helps us get ahead. Um, basically, uh, what I'm going to show you is it's, it's a muscle, or it's a very simple thing. There's six or seven slides. What's interesting is in two minutes you can do four jumps, do a balance test and it can access the data. Uh, there's 12 years of research, they got AI machine learning. And what you produce is this objective data, you get an efficiency score and a risk of injury score. And so, what you get is a baseline.

Now what we're always looking for in business, good and bad is movement of a standard baseline. Because that gives us an indication at the basic level. The other thing it does is it gives the individual real time feedback on how they're going in a way that's understandable, which leads to awareness, focus, and motivation, right? And the other thing, and this is the big change in the paradigm they want to bring is in the word of physical and mental health. We do. So, we do testing maybe once a year, once every two years, but our body changes like our heartbeat, like our blood pressure. And we do one, one thing once a year, this technology lets us do maybe a functional moving school. We used to do once a year. We could do it 6, 8, 10 times a year, because the test takes two years, and you can do the test yourself.

So, it's really interesting. And then the other point also on the recovery side is our return from injury. We need to have objective assessment to measure how we're going from even an individual confidence perspective going through that. So, I'll just jump into it. It's a jump scan. What you see is that line on the screen is a time series movement. You're standing on a big weight scale. Um, that's what it is. And there's a thousand sensors. You do a jump, and it takes into a big database and the company's built software algorithms and machine learning that convert that into what we call a profile. And the profile on the right gives you at the top. There's a, like a Sparta. They call an efficiency movement score. There's a jump height and there's a balance. And what you see is those lines down the bottom, the jump one has three load explode and then balance, which is sway, which is physical and the other one's mental.

But basically, you had a profile, and that profile was so much data can give you lots of indications. What you see on the left. It goes straight into your phone, the user's phone. It shows you what to work on is examples of why, what you struggle with, what exercises should do and don't do. And basically, you get real time results, and those results are the profile we here. And that means you've got this diagnostic real time. It's really cool, right? That is two minutes to do it and instant results. And then the big one for me is you get actionable results. And you know, this is just, you've got an app. It puts in your phone and, and what they've done on the sports science side is just simply add some movements that can adjust that profile up and down to see what you're doing and there's videos to do it.

And the AI machine learning will follow what you put in to say you've done and then test it when you, when you actually scan again, which is, you know, all about actionable results. This rinse and repeat is just simply, you can do it every week or every month, but it gets real time data, and you can start to see what this is all about. And then my favourite, my favourite from administration is this real time reporting. You know, I know that all of us struggle to do all the work and then to have to do all the report to, to get away from this admin burden that we can, we can see change it shifts. We can identify risk. We can then use that data to focus our resources and validate our, our strategies. Likewise, the data we can handle our square and, and this system, you can actually upload injury data, which just improves the AI machine learning.

I'm just conscious there. So, then I, so that, that gives you an idea of, of the technologies that's out there. You can stand it up pretty quickly. You can do a lot of, lot of things and it's not really hard. Um, what I wanted to come to new now is the last area. And that's about the, the advances in technology have advanced our ability of operators to use technologies and problem solving. We don't need to run a long process. We, we can use our expertise to see what's in the market. We can partner with it, but we can action in ourselves. And that's, that's really the big change. That's most exciting in this space. The other thing is data's not going anywhere. So, it also lets us start to learn to work with data. And I think we've already, we've started that in version 1.0.

And then the other thing, when I, I look at it as an operator, working with technology and investing technology, we have to be able to create the skills to work with that. And, and really we have them, but to sharpen them up. And if you haven't, if you haven't been through a business case or done something, then it can, it can be, it can be hard. So, what I've put down here is the key element, uh, for success, because my experience in 20 years in software, I've lost a lot of time in my life, fixing up contracts that didn't deliver what they promised, right? Or organisations who weren't willing to actually follow through to deliver. And so, I break it up into three areas. The top one is purpose. You know that ability to clearly define problems and benefits. That is where you start. You don't start with how the tech can help me.

Do I have a problem in physical health? Do I have injury rates going up? Do I, I don’t know the risk of the organisation, um, and, and what the benefits you want to get out. And the number two, one here, which is really important for us at the moment is defining what success looks like and how you're going to measure it. That is so important because it'll make you feel good, and the business knows why you're doing it. Then the number, the second area is around ownership. So obviously within your teams, the people responsible, but also within the business and they need to be aligned to the purpose. And that's, that's really, really important. And then the last way is, is really about working with the partner and this tech, the partners will have expertise that you can scope. They can help you work out how to best operate, put in your operating rhythm.

And also, you know, that work with it on checking security and privacy. And then also the big one is how can they create reporting that meets what, what you need? And the last one I want to do here is because the technology really comes out of the box. You can start small. So, in the case of what I've showed you, you could do an assessment of the risk and have a look at it. Or you get a small group of people in an area that want to try it and you might do a six week, 12 week pilot, but it gets you to understand where you are. And that's, that's really, really important. Uh, what I'm sharing here is with that, with the technology. When I was the Cowboys that I found before I went looking, I created myself a bit of a scope and that was really, really important for me because I didn't want any more headcount.

I didn't want any more infrastructure that I had to integrate. I just wanted some out of the box technology that we could use to give insights to our staff and to our players. And what you see here is, you know, that standard objective data, real time, diagnostic, real time reporting analytics that we own the data. And we could put that data anywhere. We wanted, uh, infrastructure, what I said, I just didn't want any more. I just wanted it to work. I didn't have to spend any more money. And the last thing I wanted there was partnership, right? And partnership is I wanted the expertise to guide us, to help us, to train us, to set us up. So, it, it didn't exhaust us getting going, right, because the hardest thing with tech is getting going. And so that that's really, I wanted to share with you.

So simply that's the way I broke it up. And you know, that's sort of what I was after. And then the last thing I want to talk to you is really the operational side of, um, you know, making tech rarely fails. It's the way we implement it. And the way we don't, we don't win the hearts and minds and bodies of people. And, um, when I want to look at resourcing, as more technology comes into the, into businesses in our teams that are very service driven teams, like say safety, where we have a, a centre body and then people work within each of the businesses. We need to build up matter experts, SMEs, I call them. And so, we have to be aware of the team structures and you know, and other businesses that work with technology, they'll have the business owners and then, and SME. And if you take, say in Singapore and the army, they have a team that focuses on physical, a team that focuses on mental, a team that focuses on, on what clothing equipment you have.

And one that talks on facilities, and they support all the trainers there that is not dissimilar to it. I think from a capability perspective, I think everyone who's working in safety at the moment who's passionate about it has the capability. You've just got to identify the problem and check that the technology can get you the outcomes you're looking for. And then from a, um, and the other thing that was very interesting about, um, my requirements was I didn't want something that would take any more time away from people so I could implement it in a minute. It was, it, it sort of worked really, really well and it was, it was ready to go. And so that's where we are. And I think in the second point in communication and value seeing is believing definitely what I've witnessed in this. For me personally, I couldn't comprehend it because I couldn't see it, even though the person told me, so to actually go and demo and show people and work through with it, that is the key for health and physical and mental health technologies go and see it look into it.

And you'll be able to very quickly qualify whether that's going to help you go where you are. And it's also going to help your business partner, conceptually understand what you're talking about. And then the last point, the most important point and objections in Australia, we don't like conflict, but objections. We have to look at them differently when we go to a place, an objection is really most cases, somebody just thinking openly of what the challenges would be or how it would affect operations. So, we want to hear what people's thoughts are. All I want to say to you is the other side of that is don't go with your ideas to a person who doesn't like change, who never does something because that's the wrong place to start pick a place in our businesses. They generally sit in two types of personalities. Somebody likes innovations trying this and their team are working or somebody who's in a lot of, lot of pain. And that means because they're injury or there's things going they're witnessing as teams, and they want change. Um, and look, that's, that's my story. And I, and I hope, um, you've got so out of that and there's something you can take away. That'll help you and your work, you know, helping people be safer, be more productive. And, uh, I wish a good day. Thank you.

Well, thanks so much for that presentation, Greg, and we have some questions from the audience today. And first ones from William who's asked, what's the difference between raw and objective data?

Right? No, thanks Todd. So raw data is data. We, we just capture endlessly for. So, you might take a wearable for instance, and it just captures how many steps you are. You are, you are doing or how long you're running or what goes on, what it doesn't give us. It doesn't give us any diagnostics. It doesn't say whether that, that you are running, that is improving your physical wellbeing or not improving. The other example might be, is, um, we have a lot of raw data in relation to exercise where people in down line exercise app, and it tells you do exercises and you capture that, but you don't, there's no diagnostics to it. I mean, in traditional MSK, we have force plates. We take raw data, which is all these raw bits of, um, movement. And we try and analyse what happens. And so now with objective data, we've actually got the software that takes it and converts it instantly into a diagnostic.

Um, so, you know, in blood tests, you know, we take blood. So now we know we can look at bloods for cholesterol and other things. Well, that's what we can, we can sort of do now. So that's, that's raw data. And the white reason I raise it is you can catch a lot of it. And we think that having data is gold but having data that we can't use is costly. And so, I think we're at this stage where we we're getting out of it shortly. I hope, but everyone, everyone holds their data, but no one's ever going to look at it and it doesn't give you any insights to help solve problems. Does that make sense?

Love it. Yeah. All that insights to solve problems. Great. Yeah. And look, Sarah's asked, um, that she's worried about what the data will show and whether it'll have a negative effect, how do they manage that?

Yeah, no good, good question. So that that's, uh, I think we're all where we, we do our first scam scared of what it will show. Uh, I think at a high level, um, generally from what I've seen in this sort of technology around the core is it fits with the normal bell curve unless it's really extreme. And that is, you know, you're probably looking at two to 5% who might come up that you are concerned with. Um, the other thing in relation to being worried. Um, my other worry, I flip back into being a CEO is I need to know the risk where people are today. And I think the biggest issue around skeletal or physical and mental health risk is we don’t know if we're sitting on a time bomb and a simple two minute assessment can help us actually see within the parameters of that standard test, uh, is, is anybody outside our standard operating?

And so, it's, it's, you know, we're better off knowing now we can, I think this technology and when I've looked at the mental and physical ones can be set up in a way, so it never scares people. Right. And I think that's the key, you know, wellbeing is about supporting people know more about themselves, so they can have more influence in keeping themselves in the right space. And I think that's the other way, you know, we need to approach wellbeing and definitely what I've showed you, mental health is it's a private thing. We're helping, we get insights, but it's it. We got to develop trust.

Yeah. it sort of flows nicely into this next question from Sean. Um, who's asked that what if his company is very sensitive to these sorts of things and don't really want to try this sort of new technology or technology at all?

Yeah, no, no good point. I think with a lot of people out there, we talk about wellbeing, but we don’t know how to start. And I think there's a lot of environments where you're sensitive because there's a lot of injury you're sensitive because you don't know you're sensitive because there's public relations might be union versus something. And I think when I come back and navigating that is that you start by not linking it to anything that can affect people's employment. So, if it's that angle, uh, the other thing is start, is by sharing or showing what the tech does. So, people can see at this conceptualisation, uh, and then you come back to why they were interested. And so, we're not actually talking about selling technology, we're actually identifying problems with they're trying to solve. And I think when you see it, and then the third part I go to all the time is you don't need to go big bang. So, if you've identified your problem, you might be able to test it or do one assessment that makes those people understand how it works. And so, two things let them understand it and build in a way that builds trust with your people. And I think that's, that's the way I would get around the sensitivity.

So just to build on that a little bit, who would be the best people in the organisation to sponsor this sort of technology do you find?

Yeah, well, I good question, Todd. So, I think number one is within the safety programs, we have, we need someone within that to really own it and really understand what it does now. I'm a, an administrator and accountant, and I've really got into this, and I've understood because the technology really shows you what it's about. So, we have the capabilities and then secondly, you know, what should happen in safety is our business leaders, running operations will Al already be thinking about they will know their concerns and what they're about. And so I really think we need, we need two sponsors. And then thirdly, um, the, the sponsor to the right, which comes at the end of the program, which is really important is, is the finance person or executive that oversees the budget. And I think all three need to be included at the beginning.

And, and I spoke about having just some simple objectives of what we're trying to achieve. Those objectives need. We just might want to see if we can baseline data and see what it is. And we're going to do a simple, or we've got a, we've got a group where our injuries are up where our rein injuries are up. We're just going to try it for the, for six weeks and see what it shows us. This is the cost, and this is the data. And so that first initial step is about building trust and learning. And then with that, we can work out how it works into the operating rhythm. Because what I think we're all really sensitive about is I have that person for that amount of time, and I don't have time for them to step out. And their additional one is if they do an assessment they're away for an hour. Well, this assessment's two minutes.

And do you find that implementing this sort of technology actually improves culture in some way?

Yeah. Yeah. I, think, um, we did a trial up north with the, uh, Britty of the third brigade and his feedback, uh, covered it. He's here down in Brisbane and he basically said he saw the people scan for the first time. They could understand the way they work. And he said, there's this huge energy of motivation awareness, because they knew they had something, they had something that they could understand about the way they move. And so, I do think it's motivational. I think everyone that I've, uh, talked to and, and discussed with this, they, every Australian is worried about how they're going to go and then they do the test and they're really, really competitive, so they want to do it again. Um, and I think that's why this seeing experiencing is very key for the first step.

So, when it comes to implementing, then we've got resourcing challenges all the time. Yeah. And if a business is flat out and they're concerned about adding extra technology, that might be too much, how do they manage that?

Yeah. Well, that's, that's, that's a business question and I think everywhere, not just in, in, uh, wellbeing tech everywhere at the moment, we are a little bit overwhelmed, and I think we are transitioning to this new tech, and we've been able to put a lot of new tech in and I think we've got a lot of raw data. I think the issue at the end of the day is what's going to happen, and then not so near future is, is that what I call version tech? 1.0 is going to come in it is in now and it, hasn't given a lot of tangible results, but we've learned a lot. And I think people are, you know, one of the things I want to motivate today is don't give up, keep going, but, but take the fact that what could I've done, what would I need the tech to do better to support me, get a tangible outcome, to prove change. And I, and I say, so I think when we're overwhelmed at the moment and our injury rates are not going down our mental health going up, then we've just got to take stock of what we've got. And as I said, in this tech, you can fast change. Uh, but when we start the next version, just to be very clear about the purpose and outcomes, um, and I think that, you know, strategically we've got a, we can't give up on this area.

So, one of the other challenges organisations may brush up against is the protection of data and the security of the data that could be an inhibitor for people. So how, how do you see that being managed?

Well, very, very, very important. So, Australia, we've got very strong privacy rules. So, our rules means that if you are working with any company around the world, that that data that identified data has to stay within country. I think we are, you know, we're moving to a cloud environment, not non-premise environment. So, what does that mean will a lot of our company service sit with Amazon and Microsoft, and they run pretty good security. The other thing, if you look at the data we are capturing, so there's the access, but if our data was breached, what's the risk of hurting. So, when you look at that, what I said for you just takes your first, last name, takes a time series, um, movement. That is that line and it takes you height and year of birth. So, there's no other data there. So, it's really low risk data that does go back to a global database, what they call a, a, you know, lake, but does this real time analysis, but it's only de-identified data, which is the time movement, your gender and year of birth. And I think that any organisation that you talk about privacy and security with will be able to explain what, what they've got in place. And I think if you are a, a middle size business and you've got it, you just introduce the person who's running cybersecurity for you. There who'll also look after privacy, but I think that's pretty mainstream now. Um, because businesses who can't control data with privacy, don't stay in business.

Thank you everyone for joining us today, we hope you're able to take Greg's information and implement it in your workplace. Today's presentation. Recording will be available on our website, keep an eye out for it in the coming weeks. Be sure to register for our other presentations as part of the Work Well 365 Speaker Series next month is safe work month. And as part of the events on offer, we have two speaker sessions on during this time, we'll have a panel discussion on how effective workplace consultation, representation and participation can improve your health and safety outcomes. Plus hear from speaker Julia Bunn, occupational therapist, and General Manager at EEC occupational health on rehabilitation and return to work plans for psychological injuries. Check out the website, worksafe.qld.gov.au for other events happening during the month, including plenty of great sessions during mental health week. There's also a full range of industry and topic specific video case studies, podcasts, speaker, recordings, webinars, and films available to help you take action to improve your workplace health and safety and return to work outcomes. These resources are free to download and share. So, I encourage you to share them with your staff and networks. Have a good day, everyone, and remember work safe, home safe.