16th August 2024
Lights, camera, safety!
A little over a week ago, health and safety leaders from across New Zealand converged at Eden Park in Auckland to tackle the biggest challenges facing the health and safety world. This meeting of safety minds was a milestone in itself, as this was ecoPortal’s inaugural Health and Safety conference, ePIC (ecoPortal Ignite & Connect) 2024.
The day saw leaders from various industries such as logistics, retail, and manufacturing, amongst others, unite for the common goal of engaging with each other on the most pressing safety issues facing their workforce, and, ultimately, was geared towards achieving better safety, together.
Start with your “why”
As part of their opening address and introduction to ePIC, ecoPortal CEO Dr Manuel Seidel and COO Dr Helene Seidel-Sterzik gave context of the historical landscape and story that’s shaped the ecoPortal we all know today.
In a moving sentiment shared by Helene, she expressed the purpose-driven “why” that underpins the people-focused ideal of enhanced safety cultures as a proudly New Zealand-owned business, “If we want to lead the charge in innovative health and safety practices, we must nourish the fertile soil from which our teams flourish.” A beautiful metaphor, which also gave insights into the manuka flower as the symbol and logo for the conference, as well as the reason behind creating a forum such as ePIC for safety leaders to network, engage, and empower one another through shared experiences and learnings.
Manuel told the story of ecoPortal, tracking its 14-year journey to becoming the 100-employee strong health and safety engagement software that continues its focused mission of getting people home safely every day.
He spoke to the identified need to simplify health and safety processes for organisations and create better systems that were more efficient, whilst adding value to all employees across all levels of the workforce. He shared further insights into health and safety being more than just a compliance checkbox and how ecoPortal was able to help organisations reduce risk but also improve performance. This highlighted how engagement had always been at the forefront of ecoPortal right from the start, a fitting testament to its suitability as the theme for the day.
How many safety leaders does it take to build an engaged safety culture?
Our MC for the day was ecoPortal’s Risk and Safety Consultant Craig Bleakley, a familiar face for those who have tuned into our monthly webinars.
Craig also presented a session that took an introspective look at the next era of health and safety in New Zealand. The prominent concepts highlighted were those of engagement, innovation, and protection, and how these can inform a better safety future.
Having trained health and safety reps for nearly 10 years, Craig took a retrospective look at the The Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum report from 2023 and showcased some shocking statistics that displayed essentially the same data as we now see in 2024. A key example of this is the fatality rate being 4 to 5 times the size of that in the UK and more than double the contemporary Australian rate.
Craig raised an important alarm around psychosocial risk as an area needing improvement, with statistics showing that 17% of workplace harm is accredited to poor mental health. Even then, this is severely under-reported, as we learnt in a webinar earlier this year on how to build a mental health strategy.
Craig challenged business leaders to take up the mantle and turn talk into action, positioning health and safety leaders as the influencers in an organisation. He outlined how leadership’s engagement is critical for a strong health and safety culture, emphasising that the more visible a leader is, the better health and safety will be within an organisation.
Stop, collaborate, and listen: putting the lead in leadership
Flowing on perfectly from Craig’s call for visible leadership, we were treated to an anecdote from Anton Tyers, GM Safety and People at Nexus, as he shared their Verdantix Award-winning success story for empowering and engaging a workforce and how they were able to achieve this through their partnership with ecoPortal.
Anton detailed how their business had looked a bad situation straight in the eye and made safety their number 1 priority. Increased focus meant better systems across every facet of the business, with annual objectives having safety built right into it. Safety metrics were aligned with performance targets and the 4 “E’s”—Enable, Empower, Encourage, and Engage—became their new mantra.
Encouraging other business leaders to embrace failing forward, as he noted how his own team celebrated failure so they could fix it, through building an open culture of accountability. In fact so much so, that the Nexus workforce feels empowered to stop the business at any time due to safety risks.
Anton credits the shift towards an ongoing culture of safety improvement to, “...building a safety strategy where people feel safe to tell you what’s going on.” An important culture driver was that senior leadership were leading by example, making sure they were on the ground and talking with their employees.
Next up to bat was Asmuss’ Manager Health and Safety Melanie Costley, who discussed the impact of engagement on changing behaviour. She, too, credited collaboration with HSR and leaders as a differentiator between tracking an event versus a near-miss. Talking about the definitions, assessments, and the risk of an event helped her team find the root causes of incidents and near misses.
Melanie cited improvement in the quality of information from “real” reporting as a means of simplifying their processes with a spotlight shone on behaviour that provides more intel. The results were more engagement and skill in the business, with proactive use of strategic tools. Simplification was the name of the game, as she said: “Just tell me who, what, where, when, and why.”
Put your sunglasses on because the future is bright!
That’s the advice of ecoPortal’s product and design leaders as they took the stage and gave the audience a tour of the user-centric design principles that govern our ongoing product enhancements.
The rockstar team included Product Marketing Leader Jessica Medforth, Product Manager Stacey Chaussoy, Product Design Lead Luc Sengers, and Front End Lead Sean Oldfield.
They shared some of the freshest feature and interface developments to give users a real sneak peek behind the curtain to see what’s new and where we’re headed. The team unpacked health and safety advancements with AI, all things experiential, and the importance of design thinking for engagement.
If you’d like to find out more, explore details about our product offering here or chat to one of our friendly team by reaching out via our website.
Just before lunch we were left with some major food for thought from our keynote speaker Francois Barton, Chief Executive of the Business Leaders Health and Safety Forum.
He unpacked insights from the Forum’s recent report "Been There, (not) Done That" in context of what needs to happen to ensure a thriving New Zealand amidst a tough economy and cost of living crisis. He explored how we could meaningfully align and build cultures to let our businesses thrive during these times and landed on the importance of sharing and connecting with one another.
This gave rise to his heartfelt expression of gratitude to ecoPortal CEO Manuel for having taken the time and resources needed to put together a day like ePIC and having the foresight to know that this space was needed for leaders to come together and strategise on solutions.
Francois remarked that we (health and safety leaders) can do better, and we have the opportunity to do better, if we could just understand what is holding us back.
This brought us to the crucial point of his address, which challenged the room with some tough—albeit necessary—questions around our health and safety legislation and needed reform. While the legislation is there, what's seen is a lack of clarity when it comes down to understanding and interpreting the law. There appears to be a gap in businesses understanding how the law translates in a practical sense and therefore exposes the workforce to unknowns. He pointed out a lack of alignment and coordination and a profound lack of regulatory clarity with incentives and sanctions for the performance of the health and safety area.
A lack of ownership of these issues was outlined as a major pain point for health and safety in New Zealand. This coupled with a change of government points to an imminent review of the Health and Safety Act.
In view of this looming threat facing the health and safety community, the Forum have taken it upon themselves to assemble a task force to bridge the gap between business and government in clarifying the interpretation of the health and safety legislation.
This fed into an interactive session where the leaders in the room were asked to critically analyse the current status quo and share their thoughts on what they would ask of the minister as well as what systems they would like to see implemented for a healthier, safer, and more productive New Zealand. This sparked lively discussions that continued into lunch, with the leaders present remaining fully engaged throughout the day.
Striking a balance between complexity and customer success
In keeping with the imperative of sharing, connecting, and learning with one another, Yolanda Oosthuizen, General Manager HSEQ at the Horizon Energy Group (HEG), shared The HEG story. In particular, Yolanda channelled the navigation of health and safety engagement in a complex organisation spanning multiple verticals and geographical regions.
Yolanda spoke about the challenge of finding the time for the actual business priority vs health and safety, but shared her view that safety should be the actual business. Her key piece of advice was that “...a paper system is not an online system...” and that reliance on a paper-based system would only complicate health and safety processes. The session was well received as she expanded on their journey with ecoPortal and how this bolstered engagement in the team.
True to form when it comes to engagement, our Customer Success team, led by Chief Customer Officer Yann Teboul, was waiting in the wings to take our attendees through a few updates. Yann extended a hand of support and elaborated on how we can help our customers, highlighting avenues for engaging with our team to leverage our intel for the best results.
Yann was joined by ecoPortal Head of Customer Success Stephanie Lloyd-Smith, who provided insights into the extended team and the positive implications that would have for the future.
Following on from them were our Safety Solutions Partner Sam Williams and Customer Success Manager George Blackburn, who together dished out top tips and takeaways that have been enabling ecoPortal customers to achieve big wins.
Safety tech and table talk: tips for embedding a safety culture
As we turned a corner towards the final leg of the afternoon, we delved into a topic that's become something of a buzzword these days: AI.
We were captivated by the dynamic duo of Nexus GM Safety and People Anton Tyers (of the above-mentioned Verdantix award fame 🏆) joined by Alex Topp, H&S Manager at Briscoes Group.
They delved into their own experiences with utilising AI and VR in health and safety, sharing accounts of the challenges and learnings along the way.
Reminiscing on his own journey with AI and VR tools, Alex said, “We started this journey to make sure our people got home safely.”
What a lovely reminder that was for us all—that we were all there in that moment for the same unified purpose… isn’t that exactly what an engaged safety culture should be?!
To drive the point home (pun intended), we turned to our panel of experts, including Hayley Alexander, CEO of the Alexander Group; Marie Snowball, Health and Safety Manager at Hamilton City Council; and our keynote speaker, Francois Barton. Together, with facilitation by our own Craig Bleakley, the group discussed how to embed a safety culture and manage change.
When asked what safety culture looked like in their organisation and how one would know if it was going well, Marie responded, “Engagement, collaboration, getting out into the business and understanding what your workers do—that is where the gold is.”
Francois once again reminded us that leadership is where it all starts since this is what drives culture, and culture, in turn, drives results.
Hayley, on her personal approach to being a senior leader in H&S had this to say: “It is easy to get disconnected. The best day is when I go out in a truck. Health and safety is embedded in our business as a homegrown New Zealand business. I learnt to drive the trucks, reminding myself what the risks are. It’s really important that they (senior leaders) go out and understand the role and where the risks sit.”
Getting in the hot seat, before getting home safely
As the day drew close to a close, time had been earmarked for table discussions amongst the attendees. Even though it had been a long day, the energy in the room was still vibrant and pulsating with excitement. I looped the room to get a sense of the conversations taking place and was thrilled to see the level of enthusiasm that these leaders had—such passion for what they did and the people they did it for!
I returned to my own table to find yet another deeply invested group, entrenched in their discourse. Many a story was exchanged—of lessons learned and better strategies for varied but specific scenarios. Safe to say, health and safety leaders had connected and ignited conversations!
One final guest for Craig was ecoPortal CEO Manuel, who opened the floor to any burning questions in an “Ask me anything” session before Craig officially closed the formalities for the day and we soiree’d into networking drinks and canapés.
Now while I am sure you’re all dying to know what was asked of Manuel, you’ll just have to stay tuned for those nuggets!
Parting thoughts
After roving around the room during breaks and chatting to guests about their experiences on the day, their favourite moments and key take-aways, many had mirrored comments to share.
I’m an advocate of the rule of 3, so here’s the trifecta analysis of responses:
1. Community is important.
There was a genuine appreciation for being able to connect with like-minded individuals facing similar challenges.
2. The cost of safety.
While there is a tough economic climate at the moment, prompting some businesses to rethink their safety spend, it’s clear that the cost of NOT having a good system in place is even higher. More on Health and Safety in Tough Times.
3. Engagement, Engagement, Engagement!
If there is one take-away from this conference that's embedded in us all, it's this. I think Francois put it best, when speaking on senior leadership traits during the panel discussion, by saying that engagement is only good when you listen, learn, and use it.
For those that joined us for ePIC 2024, here’s to harnessing all the knowledge that was on offer. And if you missed us this year, make sure you join the journey to ePIC 2025… details coming soon.
For now, let's continue to create better safety cultures, together!
