IPAM films

Largardere is actually a French company we operate travel retail through ports, train stations, airports. We employ everyone from customer service, warehousing, replenishment teams. The daily tasks for our employees are things like moving stock, obviously from that we have soft tissue injuries from time to time. IPaM originally became involved with Lagardere because of the injuries that we were having, we obviously had a reporting process that was in place for reporting injuries, the problem was there was no one really watching what was happening with that process so a lot of the injuries happening weren't being reported.

Planning for safety is a proactive approach preventing injuries from occurring in the workplace. When an employee sustains an injury they obviously have to deal with the injury its self but they also have time off work, they may have a reduction in their income for a period of time and this can affect their financial situation which can have a knock on effect on their family environment.

The concerns were for the safety of the individuals for our employees really, they were the ones suffering from this. On the other side of it though there saw a rapid increase in premiums because of the injuries being sustained as well. So not only we were hurting people it was actually costing us money as well.

When I first started with Lagardere the main safety issues we encountered were lack of communication and committees set up through the region so we obviously had to implement a consultative process with the team, get them on board and ensure that we had the right safety teams ready to start our process.

What was identified through the IPaM assessment process was that there were gaps in the reporting and planning stages of their systems. IPaM were able to do was facilitate identification of those gaps and actions to close those gaps effectively and make those make their systems more streamlined.

I first met our IPaM Representative 6 months after I started with Lagardere they explained the processes that they wanted to implement that would work alongside of what we already had in place.

Some of the suggestions put forward by the Advisor needed a more robust reporting structure but also we needed a way of being able to assess manual handling tasks and the risks within the business

When IPaM was involved with our workplace they came in and they helped us identify a lot of the risks areas to start with but then helped with forming a safety committee and this also then helped with us identifying problems on a pro-active sense.

Through the planning process we have been able to implement our own safety procedures and obviously use some of what IPaM has shown us to incorporate into our everyday business so from the moment an injury is reported to when the employee comes back it's only a matter of days of implementation rather than weeks of investigation and follow up

Part of induction we teach the staff that haven't had any experience working in a place like this

Having the IPaM Advisors available when we needed them was fantastic and essential really to the program running effectively.

One of the important messages for safety and something any business can implement is making sure that your senior management team is on board. I think it is absolutely vital that senior management has a part to play in this as well to provide resource to the whole business.

Employers need to consult with their workers when they are making change but workers also need to consult with their supervisors or their employers if they have any concerns or if they have noticed anything that needs to be addressed. It has been extremely beneficial the employee gets involved, the management team get involved and we make sure these injuries do not occur in our business in the future

A positive safety culture in an organization is one where everyone gets involved in safety and everyone is committed to safety. Having a standard reporting systems is essential to get it right. You need that so you can get everyone on board at the same time, everyone knows what's going on and how it works, how it is supposed to work to get the best results.

Now that IPaM has come in it has bought has bought safety more to the front. The amount of incidents reported has gone up but the amount of incidents occurring has gone down. Lagardere's safety plan for the future is to always reduce risk and hazards and in doing that we've reduced premiums, reduced risk, reduced incidents and we have increased moral. My commitment comes from my job and my role in the business is to keep people safe to reduce the potential for injury.

I recommend all other workplaces work on not only what you've got in place but what you can learn from their program and try and incorporate the two to make one collaborative process. This will streamline the entire work health safety process in your business. I have all the confidence in my business right now that when my employees turn up to work they go home the way they arrived.

Work safe. Home safe.

My name is Grant Tucker, I am the Group Manager of Tarmac Company, we're timber wholesalers and resawers, timber treatment. Traditionally back in the day there would be very few wood machinist that had all their fingers. It was just kind of an acceptable risk.

IPaM stands for the Injury Management and Prevention program. It's a WorkCover and a Workplace Health and Safety Queensland initiative to help businesses foster positive change towards safety and injury management.

I feel a very high level of personal responsibility, having been out there myself I know how dangerous it is and I know from experience what that the results of an accident can be.

Safety responsibility needs to be owned by all workers, at all levels especially given the fact that they're working with large, loud and dangerous equipment often unsupervised. Tarmac Timbers had a wide range of injuries because they had a wide range of hazards. Those injuries may have been caused from poor design of machinery or dated machinery or a lack of sufficient guarding.

From the beginning I think the hazards were all around us and seeing people actually work around the risks and the hazards that we see day to day, I think that was the main thing.

You hear more about the safety kind of thing where as before I guess it wasn't really something you spoke about, it was sort of just put into place but you never really it wasn't really something you really went over.

Through the IPaM program with initial audits we identified some machine guarding that was obvious perhaps but definitely improvable we added some rails and walkways, changed some guarding around chains. We have readdressed some machines and changed the way they operate so that the operator can be away from the hazard.

A systems assessment with the Injury Prevention and Management program is a tailored approach, so that systems assessment may be sitting down and reviewing a system of work or their paperwork and documents, what works, what doesn't work, what they need to add or perhaps remove, or what they need to refine further. That's often done with the highest level management so that everyone has an understanding and it is also about testing that system of work with the workers on the floor.

Traditionally there has been a disconnect between the two sides, those that are actually doing and those in the office.

Within the IPaM framework there is a lot of open communication. Communication flows quite easily which allows you to identify opportunities for improvement and to work closer with the workers on a consultative level. They feel like you are one of them.

When I met Shannon, he said we don't have to do everything at once, so he explained to me everything is done by stages you know if we can do step by step stages, don't have to throw everything into it week by week. To this day, those stages are still ongoing but we have come so far since that first stage, it's incredible.

So the attitude towards health and safety has definitely changed because we get more input from like management and the people in the office where as previously I guess it wasn't really so much like that so it's good to have guys like Noel and Grant.

Grant as our boss if we bring something to him we will have it fixed within that week every time.

Workplace health and safety has always had a high focus and policy and procedures but I think the difference for us has been in transitioning from having our paperwork in a row to actually being able to apply those principals and policies.

Eighteen months on from commencing the IPaM program with Tarmac Timbers the organization now still fosters positive incident reporting and you can see the physical change in the workspace you can see the more practical changes with regards to hazards and risk management and you will also see the systematic changes and the workplace culture also changing.

Stepping up in workplace health and safety hasn't been overnight thing and to involve people in it to get people on board has taken some time. Friday arvo everyone would knock off half an hour earlier and we would have a health and safety meeting with a bar-b-que and that's become a monthly event here and as well as addressing the workplace health and safety its given us a forum for discussing other production issues or just helping to build a team.

So communication is definitely the most important part if everyone is on the same page then we all know what needs to be done and if someone is doing something unsafe then you can pull them up on it let them know this is the procedure. Making sure your staff are all up to speed, they all know the procedures, their all on the same level knowing what they can do to change things if somethings unsafe as you sort of go through things in life, you might get married or have kids or what not you definitely become more conscious of the safety.

Now that IPaM have stepped away from us a little bit I think day in and day out the routines are there now if we can respect each other, the way we work and how we work and the procedures that we can put in especially from IPaM that I think it will help out in the long run for all of us.

It has always been at the back of my mind what if and although we've not had a serious accident here what if so the peace of mind over that is some that is worthwhile but as well as that the attitude of the workers when they can see management implementing change it has definitely improved and I think that's definitely something that quite be measured in dollars and cents.

Safe worker is a happy workers, you know like I guess there is a million different analogies, but it just makes sense.

Ensuring the staff feel valued in the business that their heard, that we are genuine about driving safety culture improvements and getting better safety outcomes then staff directly benefit from it and our product are our people so keeping them safe is of upmost importance to myself and I know to everyone else involved in the projects.

So Norship is a ship repair and maintenance company. We do deliver others services but predominantly it's in the maritime industry.

Most of what we do is high risk construction work, there is a whole range of trades that work here at Norship, electricians, boilermakers, shipwrights, you know we had a lot of people in a very small space, a tight environment for the guys, a lot of work trying to be done, manual handling working with live electrical installations. Since I've been here, Norship has doubled in size and there was a developing need to have a permanent safety role

Everybody knows that change is always needed. The ship building industry is one the industries that has always been a little bit relaxed

We had a pretty good you know safety record the were no major incidents, however there were minor injuries they were quite often relatively common and there were opportunities for improvements particularly in those areas

Before IPaM came in the culture was different there was a real sort of 'do it just because' mentality, it's the way it's always been done, that sort of approach, you know

When IPaM came on board we had a more detailed look, did a gap analysis on those procedures and policies that we had in place and we had a very close look at the hazards that the guys were facing on a day to day basis

IPaM stands for Injury Prevention and Management and IPaM is a partnership program between Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and WorkCover Queensland, it looks to improve the injury prevention and injury management outcomes from identified businesses. IPaM supports the business through a safety advisory services and also agreed business improvement plan but also goes a little bit beyond that and also looks at the systems of the business and also looks at the culture of the organization.

When IPaM first arrived here with us again it was an education process and I think they really lead us on a whole lot of things that we hadn't really thought of.

It was a collaborative approach that we had so there was one on one interaction between the members of IPaM and the workers here on site and that they were able to speak their mind without management of Norship looking over their shoulder and I think their first reaction they were a little bit wary, that changed straight away, they knew why they were here and they looked forward to it

The approach to it is really getting the people to understand why we are doing it to be seen not to be the bad guys not so much as coming in police point of view and picking them up for it but really coaching the guys working with them so they can the benefits of it as well you know

I think the whole process is a learning process there are repeat visits and the follow ups reassures the guys we are serious about improving safety here on site and leading by example, by not walking past the problem by dealing with them then and there

If you don't have that commitment from the top it doesn't totally work. They have to lead by example in the way that they conduct themselves and be committed to the processes that they implement

There not doing things safely because they are told to they are actually doing it because they want to, it makes them safe, makes their work mates safe. The guys feel they have ownership of them and when they have contributed to the procedures and the way that we do things, it's wonderful

Before I felt like I was managing down onto the guys when it comes to safety you know – you will do it and we tried to enforce it but now it's really them managing up as well so they sometimes highlight things that we're not doing correctly they have a much, much bigger buy in the approach and the changes that we are trying to make. It's actually a self-policing culture so instead of us picking it up it's actually picking it up themselves.

It makes the job easy for us. Anything we need we can always go to senior management and it gets implemented immediately

Once we actually started putting safety first and actually start having robust discussions around it inevitably it finds its way from you know the board room through to the senior leadership team through to the actual workforce. We have had some injuries in the workplace, but we haven't lost a shift as a consequence but even those injuries are being aggressive driven down by taking learnings from incidents that not just have happened here but in industry and applying those to our business.

Having people solely focused on safety has made a huge improvement. I think return on investment they should definitely consider it, its money you are going to save in the long run, absolutely. With the company growing we have been able to reduce our actual premiums that we pay

It is a return on investment, what you put into it you are going to get more than that back to it. There is nothing worse than going into an environment where things are unsafe, you don't feel like coming to work. It shows in your attitude, it shows in your productivity.

The broader benefits when you look at return of investment, are really much more significant, the risk profile for instance the key customers will ask, they will look for low risk suppliers. These type of results feed into their risk assessments and they feed into our ability to actually retain work and continue to conduct activities that we conduct here today. The future for Norship is very much about becoming a centre of excellence in what we do and safety is just an integral part of actually getting that piece right.

I think we all think we do the right thing but it is really good to get another set of eyes across your business. It really just highlights things that maybe you hadn't thought of. At the end of the day I want my guys to go home the same way they come to work you know.

It's seeing everyone go home at the end of each day, seeing them proud to actually come to work, is really, really important to me

Cater Care is a private company, catering is core to what we do. We do health care, aged care, canteen services. Just by covering those number of industries and services and the fact that our staff are actually working in other people's businesses - how do we get a common culture across our business and get a consistent message and approach and philosophy that we needed to have?

The people that work for us are really driven to do a good job and to please the customer. So for us from a safety perspective what it means is that we've had to understand that the culture is that they will put other people first.

In a typical day at work we do have significant risks, manual handling risks, slips trips and falls being a lot of kitchen based work, there's cuts and burns and abrasions.

You take examples from different departments you look at the kitchen hand utilities that work in the kitchen obviously that's a lot more upper limb intensive. They're using a lot more of their wrists and their forearms and their shoulders as part of the nature of work they do with comparison to say mine site cleaning that's a bit more of a robust role and more dynamic in terms of there's a lot more torsion and force put on the trunk so you see a lot more lumbar injuries and thoracic injuries and things like that.

IPaM stands for the Injury Prevention and Management Program so we work with businesses across Queensland to help them improve the way that they're managing safety.

It's one of the ways to help an organisation or company get on the front foot with safety so they can identify where some of their problem areas might be and then they can target those areas more specifically. If there's an incident at a workplace it can have a really profound effect on the workplace itself. It can impact morale and it can just have that flow on negative effect into the workplace.

It was at the same time that IPaM came to us as when we as a business were looking to do something differently. In its initial phase it was brought to us as a response to our premium performance. What was being experienced in the business was an increase in costs that was associated with safety. It then become very clear to us that if we continued our success we had to be successful in actially managing, reducing the costs that was associated with safety related events. And it wasn't that the business was not concerned about its people but it hadn't joined the dots.

So when I started with Cater Care, as an organisation we had already embarked on working with IPaM. To me the effect was that the organisation was more focussed on safety and more I would guess open and willing to try new things.  One of the changes we made was to create a dedicated Care Services Team. That team is responsible for supporting our people anytime that their health or wellbeing is affected.

Our initial sort of focus is to provide support for employees across the business to maintain capacity for work and also provide support for them in terms of how to best manage their health and wellbeing in being able to return to work. Also provide support to management from an organisational perspective and maintain the capacity for work and provide the support for their employees aswell.

If we didn't have the Care Services Team, workplace injuries and workplace safety would be immense, they do great work for us in managing that.

So one of the big changes for us is to change the language that we use that is show that people are more likely to change their behaviours if working towards positive outcomes. We talk about work capacity management and the focus of the conversation is very much about what capacity do you have and how can we work with you to help maintain that capacity and regain it to 100%. If an employee reports an incident we actually want to know about these things we want to know about when things don't go so well so that we can understand why and then work with them to come up with some solutions to better support them to be successful in doing their job.

To allowing them more buy in through flexibility and not too many more overarching safety procedures so to speak, we find that it sort of helps them to grow within the business rather than limit them.

They've really made that shift from being a reactive injury management project through to being now being quite a proactive work capacity project so they are really focussing on what workers can do, how they can best support them to keep them at work and that's proving to be really really successful.

When we speak about the financial benefits of doing this, you can often fall into the trap of just looking at 'what's my premium rate' but you have to look at all the other impacts you have. If we're getting much better retention of our people, that has significant financial impacts just on the cost of turnover, cost of training and retaining knowledge within the business. There's a whole range of other things. When we originally started these processes I would say there was a lot of push back but if you do it in partnership and trust that changes the whole relationship.

Every person who is working in our business has the right to work safely and happily within their job, whether they're a catering assistant or site manager or a state manager.

This program is really about working collaboratively with businesses to find out what is going to work well for them, getting to know their business, finding out about where their opportunities for improvement are and really working with them to improve the way they're managing safety and injuries.

The biggest thing you can do is think of people as the solution and build trust rather than distrust.

Shred-X destroy data by description so that's data of any format so that paper digital media anything like that, any form of data we will destroy.

The responsibility for safety comes from all levels. If you start with a company you understand right from the start that you have that responsibility so everyone needs to take ownership. At the end of the day its to come to work and be safe and to go home safe.

Employers need to safety very seriously because if anyone has an injury it was your place, it was your business and you were responsible and you don't want that hurt in your sleep, you want all of your people to be safe and be able to work safely.

Within our industry we do have quite a few risks talking about like first aid injuries, sore backs and everything so the big risk out there is your manual handling.

We got a shredding machine upstairs and that's mainly the hazards for us.

IPaM or the Injury Prevention and Management program, it's a joint initiative between WorkCover Queensland and Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and its working with businesses who provide them with some assistance. It is all done in an advisory capacity, working with businesses to help them to identify areas where they can improve. IPaM approached Shred-X, it was about 4 years ago now because they had been identified and invited into the program saying look we think there may be some opportunities for improvement with the way you have your current safety management systems and also your injury management systems. It was just a general invitation to sit down and have a talk and let's go through and have a look and see if there is anything at all we can help you with.

What we, what we realize that if we didn't get professional compliance and professional help we would always be chasing our tails we would always be looking at what went wrong. With IPaM we started looking at things like LEAN, we even looked at anything else we could do to have outside people tells us, well what do you see here, how can we improve safety and you know our record has been clean up to now which has been great.

The IPaM program's built around a case management model it's just not a one off interaction, there's a life cycle to working with the IPaM program there is a lot of activity in those first 3 months or so when we are gathering information and planning and putting together sort of the strategy and the improvement plan we are going work on over the next 12 months. Once that improvement plan has been delivered to an employer we enter the next stage of the case management life cycle which is constant reviews and check ins to see how we can facilitate the employer to make their own improvements to the workplace, try and build sustainable systems not systems that are focused about us coming in to help them, but things that will still last and be enduring for when we back out and finally exit them from the program.

Happier workforce definitely with our wellness programs that we started up so there is other benefits that do come out of holding a strong safety culture. To me the staff are happier coming in every morning and they know that we have a framework and I think through this program that's where the main benefit been, that we do look after our staff to reduce those injuries.

Oh absolutely, I would recommend the program, the program delivers first of all safety and as mentioned before if you have got safer workers that feel engaged their going to give you more, so your productivity will be consistent.

The communication thing is something that I think that we benefit from as well because we are constantly looking at and reviewing our training standards and our ability to communicate with non-English speaking people.

Possibly one of Shred-X's reasons for going with the involvement is that they are very keen to get accreditation not just for safety but in a lot of other areas as well to make themselves a more professional organization and to give them a good position within market when tendering for other sorts of business as well so it complimented a lot of the other improvements that Shred-X were making at the time and safety as mentioned before was just one aspect that's integrated into the whole of the business.

I think if you look at 3 or 4 years we have been on this path with IPaM the initial cost has more than got the return on investment that you would take on any project. If you stick to it for a while, the financial and other benefits come shining through.

Staff are a lot happier coming in the morning.

So for a small business, large business that's seeking advice, yeh open the door and go and look for it, we certainly have.