Louise Howard leads health and safety at one of Sydney's largest infrastructure projects right now - a new metro line extending into Sydney's North West.  She'll tell you more about that in a minute. 

Louise is an action-researcher, which means learning through research, generally inside the place you work.  She's curious about the relationship between leadership and safety performance on this project.  

Get my free handwritten reflection and your own personal reflection template, along with the full transcript of this episode, at safetyontap.com/ep072

Many of you will know Patrick Hudson from his work on safety culture.  We chat today about that, and I get to poke and prod his model, including the uses and abuses you need to be aware of when you are thinking about safety culture. 

Find out more, and get my handwritten reflection notes, your own reflection template, and the transcript of this episode at safetyontap.com/ep071

  Today I'm joined by Natalie Boehm, the Health and Wellness Manager at Snowy Hydro, Australia's largest hydro-electricity generator, supplying almost 40% of Australia's renewable electricity. With operations spanning three states and some pretty remote areas, Snowy is a pretty unique kind of business. Nat will be speaking at the 2018 OHS Leaders Summit which is being held on the 7th and 8th March in the Gold Coast on the topic of health and wellness and the all important question of how to decide what to focus on. The OHS Leaders Summit is the only event in Australia specifically designed for the Group Heads of health, safety and wellbeing. It offers a unique combination of standout speakers, industry thought leaders, networking and personalised meetings with the leading suppliers of products and services, meaning you can leverage the best of what's out there to help your health, safety and wellbeing programs succeed. Visit ohsleaders.com.au to find out more and get your seat - spots are limited.   Here's Natalie: Some people suggest I don't ask tough enough questions. I dug deeper on that today, did I create some discomfort for you? I'd love to hear what you thought. Before my takeaways, I wanted to talk about name calling. Some people recently have started calling me names, but in a good way. Two of them are innovative, and pioneering. I'm not big on fancy adjectives, but it does give me some insight into how people perceive my mission and how I go about it. One of the things I like to do, is break the pattern, to help people see what new & different might look like when it comes to you and your teams performance. If you have an annual strategy session, planning days, internal conferences, professional development workshops, or if you have none of these but want some help to boost the effectiveness of your team, I've got plenty of value to offer, and guarantee it will not be your standard boring presentation, training or workshop. If you are ready to move away from your status quo to something better, send me an email, andrew@safetyontap.com and let's see what we can do together.   Here's my takeaways from that chat with Nat Boehm: Takeaway #1: Where's the H in your health and safety practice? I might have sounded critical when we were discussing the absent H, believe me I'm not, I am one of those health and safety people who has been traditionally biased towards safety, because that’s what I was more familiar, more confident, and more competent in. The role of a leader is not to do everything yourself, but to lead the people who can do what they are best at. So if health is not your strong point, and it needs a boost in your organisation, be a leader by working on executive support, and either delegating the doing to specialists, or developing that capability internally. Takeaway #2: Are the humans at the centre of what you do? Traditional health and safety, and arguably traditional approaches to work, try and standardise & systematise everything, which means the humans aren't seen, heard, and treated as individuals. It's a bit of a paradox that we need standardising and systematising, but your job as a leader is to preserve the focus on individuals humans too. Takeaway #3: Data helps decisions. Again this might seem like a paradox when we talk about preserving focus on individuals, but having qualitative and quantitative data about the health of the workforce overall helps you identify your priorities, to engage your organisations leaders and to get the resources required to make a measurable impact on the health of your workforce. I still see well meaning fruit bowls and stock-standard EAP programs all over the place, which help us feel like we’re doing something, but are usually as effective as painting everything at your workplace in safety yellow or orange. We can do better than that. Data helps decisions.   Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Seeya! [thrive_lead_lock id='1854'] Here's your FREE download of: - my handwritten notes, PLUS a reflection template for you to use for this episode. AND - The full transcript of this episode. I'll also send you the links to all the available back-catalogue of reflection templates and transcripts so you can access these at any time. [/thrive_lead_lock]

Today I'm joined by previous guest and friend of the podcast Dave Provan. You know, you are pretty amazing. I know this based on one fact alone, and that is that you are listening because you are invested in your own development, your own growth. One of the biggest challenges to improvement that I observe in my work and general conversation with health and safety professionals is seemingly simple - taking action. We know what we might be able to do. We are often motivated. But action doesn't follow. We are too busy, too distracted, too disjointed, or we simply don't know why it is that we have great POTENTIAL which doesn't turn into REALITY. I help people like you to take action to improve, to become more effective - I do this in a variety of ways like coaching, team facilitation and planning, and more. I am an action taker, and can help you to be too. If you want to improve your personal or team performance, I'd love to hear from you to see if we are a good fit and can make good stuff happen together - send me an email andrew@safetyontap.com and we can start the conversation.   Dave Provan rejoins us today, after a deep and somewhat challenging chat in Episodes 41 and Episode 42. He's focussing in on what the role of a safety professional might look like leading a Safety II philosophy, which he explains in the conversation. Dave will be speaking at the 2018 OHS Leaders Summit which is being held on the 7th and 8th March in the Gold Coast. The OHS Leaders Summit is the only event in Australia specifically designed for the Group Heads of health, safety and wellbeing. It offers a unique combination of standout speakers, industry thought leaders, networking and personalised meetings with the leading suppliers of products and services, meaning you can leverage the best of what's out there to help your health, safety and wellbeing programs succeed. Visit ohsleaders.com.au to find out more and get your seat - spots are limited.   The thing I like about Dave, is that we have one thing in common, to such a degree that few others do - we are both focussed, we're both fascinated, by the role of health and safety professionals, people like you. Not many people are out there with such a deep commitment to understanding and furthering you - it's not your organisation, it's not executive, it's not supervisors, it's not systems or training or technology or risk controls - it's all about you. So in this chat, you have a doubleshot, two blokes committed to a better, more effective you.   Here's Dave:     I just realised that at the beginning of this, I probably asked you out on a date, by suggesting I might come out to help you or your team. Which is pretty much a blind date since I don't know you and you don't know me, much. So if you want to go slow, please do listen to more podcast episodes. Connect with me on Linkedin, like a number of you have done recently - but expect me to engage you in a conversation to get to know you, I'm not a connection collector. Or send me an email to say hi, let me know anything that's on your mind, or what you thought about the podcast. I really enjoy getting to know listeners, and I'd love to hear from you.   Here's my three takeaways from that chat with Dave Provan: Takeaway #One: Safety II is NOT the same as the decade old legal requirements to involve or consult with workers. Not true. Dave explained that. I suspect the vicious critics of Safety II using that objection, have probably never read Hollnagel, or Dekker, or much at all about different approaches to health and safety, so judge it on face value. It is far deeper than that, far more human than any legal requirements out there. Takeaway #Two: Don't think that you have your job nailed, all sorted out - because no one does. I am a believer of this, and have been for a while, but it's so refreshing to hear Dave give us permission to be unsure, to be curious about what's working and what's not, about what alternative perspectives or models or ways of working could improve our effectiveness. I'm sure you acknowledge this, but how much do our words and actions reflect it? And what about your boss, your team, your organisation, how confident and zealous are they in the status quo? Appreciate where they are coming from, and consider whether you can start to take them on a journey. Takeaway #Three: I want to help you be more like Dave's example, towards the end there. The way you can be a more informed, more curious, and more effective safety person, is to start by loosening your grip on safety things - anything already labelled safety. Entertain the idea that they might not exist, or might change. When you aren't then buried under all the 'safety' stuff, it will allow your mind to open and behaviour to change, as it did for Dave. Go into different areas of the business, build new and random relationships, ask lots of questions, connect people and resources together, be generally helpful. Looking for less safety things, will probably help you facilitate more safety outcomes in the end.   Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way. Seeya!   [thrive_lead_lock id='1854'] Here's your FREE download of: - my handwritten notes, PLUS a reflection template for you to use for this episode. AND - The full transcript of this episode. I'll also send you the links to all the available back-catalogue of reflection templates and transcripts so you can access these at any time. [/thrive_lead_lock]

 

 

My guest Emma Blee spends her working hours at Australia Post, Australia's national postal service.  In her role as Head of Enterprise Safety, Emma is the architect of her organisation's mental health strategy.  Learn more about the importance of strategy, and key tips for your own in this episode.  

Get the transcript & bonus reflection download from safetyontap.com/ep067

My guest today is Dave Wild, a futurist, innovator and strategist.  Dave believes we can all have a part in creating a bright future.  Dave speaks, coaches and innovates himself in areas such as the future of work, going beyond digital, artificial intelligence, and more.  But don't take it from me, one of his clients said "What I love most about Dave is his flexibility in adapting to the requirements of the culture of the organisation and the desired outcomes. He offers fresh perspectives and exposes you to global trends and innovations. Dave brings a huge array of tools and I have seen him take people through a journey where even people who don’t consider themselves to be creative or innovative start making connections and generating new ways of thinking to start doing things differently for their business".

Get the transcript & bonus download from safetyontap.com/ep066

My guest Carsten Busch is a German born, Dutch raised, Norwegian working and English speaking curiosity - a while ago he released a book called Safety Myth 101 - Musings on Myths, Misunderstandings and More. 

Now apart from his unashamed use of alliteration, it caught my attention because I had  never heard of anything like it before - how many time have we had an interaction with someone in our organisation and thought "you've got it all wrong, that's a myth, it's just not right?"

Listen in! 

In today's episode I'll share how to harness your reason for being, your ikigai. 

I regularly hear that health and safety professionals feel stressed, anxious, frustrated and burned out because their job feels like such a grind.  Some feel unfulfilled, some just unsure about their career and job decisions. 

 

I find that when things aren't working as well as they could in my life, especially when there is high uncertainty, I can always rely on my core beliefs and values to guide me, which come together to form my collective reason for being.   

 

The Japanese word ikigai roughly translates to mean 'reason for being'.   I use this idea of ikigai when coaching people inside Safety on Tap Connected.  NOW you can head over to safetyontap.com/ep059 to download the full, free transcript of this episode PLUS a worksheet to help you take action from this episode. 

This is Safety on Tap! I'm your host Andrew Barrett, and since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! Today I'm joined by Dr Sarah Colley from Pockets of Brilliance.  This episode is made possible by Safety On Tap Connected the world's first professional growth accelerator for health and safety professionals. If you are invested in your own development and improvement, this is right for you.  For the price of about 3 coffee's a week, you can accelerate your development and your effectiveness with access to an amazing learning community, educational content like you've never been taught before, and you get 1:1 online coaching with me - your personal coach to help you accelerate your growth.  This combination of things would usually be out of reach of most health and safety professionals, which is the very reason why we developed it - for you.  If you want to know more, your first step is to head over to safetyontap.com/connected, and your second step would be to join our waiting list. I've had Sarah's partner in crime Jonathan Lincolne on to chat on episode 47, when we talk about the work Pockets of Brilliance does and their 5i change methodology.  If you haven't listened to that episode, make sure you do, since Sarah and Jonathan are like two peas in a pod! So Sarah is an organisational psychologist who has never had a real job, and thinks that she would suck at one anyway.  So instead Sarah leads Pockets of Brilliance, a research and implementation group based in Brisbane Australia.  Sarah and her team have decades of success, dozens of companies all over the world and thousands of people who have benefitted from their human-centred approach to change.  Whilst they are without doubt specialists in health and safety, they've realised that culture, people and change are much broader….which Sarah explains more in our conversation.  So we cover a bit about culture and climate and the difference between these, the research that led Sarah into this space, and what they've learned by putting research into practice.  Here's Sarah:   Here's my three takeaways from that chat with Sarah Colley:

1. Be a ninja, like Sarah.  Some of the stereotypes of a health and safety person is as a crusader, a teller, an enforcer, a zealot.  Now that's not always bad, but sometimes we get blinded by our own passion and enthusiasm, which means we are perceived to be pushy, tactless and un-strategic.  I love Sarah's image of the ninja in contrast - reflective, planned, thoughtful, agile, but swift and decisive when the time is right.  If you think you or your team are a little gung-ho, channel your inner ninja, and see if you can't be more cunning about how you communicate, engage and drive change.
2. Understand climate and culture.  My personal perspective on this is this: I learned about climate and culture, found it to be very loose and vague, and sort of put it to the side as I just leaned into the work of a health and safety professional.  But I came back to it because the concepts of culture and climate are critical to us understanding the big picture, that health and safety doesn’t exist in a vacuum.  And it especially reinforces the idea that it's not all about health and safety, which can feel confronting if we feel like we are overstepping our role.  Bottom line is this - I don't think you can be effective unless you have a solid understanding of culture and climate.  If you couldn't have a comfortable conversation with me about it, you've got homework to do.  This link is a starting point for that homework, plus included in my handwritten reflection the 4 quadrant model Sarah mentioned.  You can get access to my handwritten reflection notes for each episode, which includes a personal reflection template for yourself, if you jump on our mailing list RIGHT BELOW!
3. Take action.  This isn't specific to this episode, but a core component of your ongoing growth and development.  When it comes to research, Sarah mentioned that much of it never gets turned into action in the real world.  Sometimes that's because it's not great research.  But research is only as good as the action that happens from the insights it uncovers.  So if you read something, turn it into action.  Reflective practice is a great way to help you structure how to do this, so go back and listen to Ep 23 with Tim Allred to learn more about that.  If you want to know more about how to take action on what you learn as a framework for professional development, I'm actually putting together a free course which teaches you about the learning frameworks which have made me successful, and how I use these now to help members of Safety on Tap Connected.  Whilst the course is most helpful to managers of teams to help them improve how they do professional development, it's just as useful for individual professionals.  If you are interested in that free course, send me an email with the subject line "free course" and I'll keep you in the loop.

Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya! [thrive_lead_lock id='1854'] Click here for your FREE download of my handwritten notes, PLUS a reflection template for you to use for this episode.   I'll also send you the links to all the available back-catalogue of reflection templates so you can access these at any time. [/thrive_lead_lock]

Ladies and gentlemen, this is Safety on Tap, episode number 50! Wooo hoooo!   I'm your host Andrew Barrett, and I'm so glad you've joined us to celebrate the 50th episode of the Safety on Tap Podcast! Since you're listening in, you must be a leader wanting to grow yourself and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Welcome to you, you're in the right place.  If this is your first time listening in, thanks for joining us and well done for trying something different to improve! And of course welcome to all of you wonderful, regular listeners! Before we get into it, I want to thank Alistair Camm for reading our regular introduction.  Alistair has been a long time listener, and I had the pleasure of meeting him in person a few weeks ago.  I wanted to share two things about that.  First Alistair has seen I had made some comments on Linkedin about stocism, and knowing we would be meeting in person he took the time to find an excellent paper about stocism from a service he subscribes to, he printed it out and he gave it to me.  It was a wonderful gift - so simple and so thoughtful.  It reinforced for me the power of small gestures to help others, especially when it comes to learning.  Second thing about that conversation is Alistair said that he could almost recite the podcast introduction off by heart given he had heard it so many times….so I thought who better to introduce our 50th episode than him! So thanks Alistair for that! Now as health and safety leaders, I hope we recognise that numbers don't mean much without giving them meaning.  So whilst 50 episodes is a pretty arbitrary number, I wanted you to help me make meaning of it, since this isn't much of a podcast without you thousands of listeners out there! I want you to know that there is a amazing community of people, just like you but different as well, with a common interest in improving yourselves as leaders in order to translate our greater effectiveness into better health and safety outcomes for the people we serve. So I put the call out for some messages from you, and so today's episode is just a handful of listeners messages reflecting on their favourite episode and how it’s helping them improve.  I'm pretty intentional about most things, and this is no different.  The intention behind this is to reinforce the power of social learning.  Individual podcast listeners you may be, but this handful of messages may just bring you a unique perspective, a new idea, or just an episode which you haven't listened to just yet.  I wanted to bring you the power of learning from each other, not just me and the people I interview. I've had a really really nice time reflecting on these messages myself, making meaning of them, and have shared my reflections of each with you in this episode too. So it is with great gratitude that we kick off our 50th episode listener messages: I hope you've enjoyed this episode as much as I did putting it together.  It's lovely to reflect on the community of listeners that have grown around the podcast, and to hear that positive impact it is having for them.  I'm especially happy to be able to share the personal relationship I have with some of the listeners you heard from today, because it is in the strength of our connections with each other that we find strength, opportunity, and growth.  Thank you  for our special listener messages from Steve, Cameron, Danielle, Kelly, Genevieve, Russel, Drewie and Sally. We sure covered a lot of ground in a short space of time! If you appreciate what I'm doing here at Safety on Tap one of the best things you can do is to share the podcast with a friend or colleague! Share the love, the podcast only works when we have listeners, and together you and I have some amazing potential to help so many more people, so think of a friend, send them a note, and say 'have a listen to this!.  I'd also really appreciate an honest review from you on iTunes, could you do one for me? That also helps other people find the podcast more easily.  And lastly, I know I'm asking a lot, if you have a guest you think I should interview or a topic in mind, shoot me an email andrew@safetyontap.com and I'll see what I can do!   Thanks for celebrating with me, here's to the next 50 episodes.  Until next time, what's the one thing you'll do to take positive, effective or rewarding action, to grow yourself, and drastically improve health and safety along the way.  Seeya!    

  Today I'm joined by Greg Smith, from Nexus Lawyers in Australia. This episode is made possible by Safety on Tap Connected, the world's first growth accelerator designed for health and safety professionals to be more effective. This is professional development like you have never seen before, where you get long term social peer learning, soft skills that aren't ever part of formal education, and 1:1 professional coaching from me. If you want to accelerate your growth you need to check out safetyontap.com/connected to find out more and join the waiting list. Now Greg Smith is the first lawyer we've had on the podcast, with good reason. I've resisted many suggestions to get lawyers on, on that basis that I think as leaders we probably need to focus less on the legal stuff and more on other things to make us more effective. But Greg has an amazing passion and despite being a lawyer, has some really pragmatic reflections on how we can be more effective. Here's Greg:   Greg mentioned the High Court judgement Slivak v Lurgi, where Chief Justice Gleeson provides a helpful perspective on interpreting what is reasonably practicable - not as complicated as it might seem. You can read more of Greg Smith's writings, blog articles and stay up to date with his latest books by visiting mysafetythoughts.com

Ep48: Industry 4.0 & the future of work is here, now. Innes Willox is my guest today.  Innes is the CEO of Australian Industry Group, the largest cross-industry peak body in Australia.  AI Group represents the interests of business to government, as an advocate and delivering services to their 60000 business members employing more than 1million staff Australia wide.   This episode is brought to you by the Safety Institute of Australia's 2017 Victorian Conference called Safety STEPS, Strategies Towards Efficient Productive Systems.  Innes is one of the keynote speakers this year, sharing his insights about the future of work, alongside a great lineup of speakers.  You can find out more about that conference and grab a ticket at www.sia.org.au, I hope to see you there!   Here's Innes: If you want info about the Net Promotor Score idea I mentioned in my take-aways, send me an email andrew[at]safetyontap.com   [activecampaign form=5]