icare’s Protect Together (P2) is a voluntary injury prevention program which partners NSW businesses and their insurance brokers to help them build a sustainable safety workplace culture.
The program runs for 12- to 24 months and involves a work safety gap analysis to identify any potential vulnerabilities in the workplace. Central Coast company, TrendPac, offers one example of the benefits that icare’s program delivers.
“TrendPac has been working diligently on its action plan for some time now and we’re really starting to see some positive results,” said icare’s injury prevention manager Jennifer Cameron (pictured). “One of the things we mentioned… was a 30% reduction in claims, which is absolutely amazing - when you think about the number of people who would have left work without having an injury as a result of these efforts, I think that’s a fantastic outcome.”
“That gap analysis involves looking at all the policies and procedures that relate to safety, but it also means those safety experts from Gallagher being onsite and observing how work gets done, observing the physical environment, looking at the physical interactions between people and developing a detailed report with key recommendations on what should be done from a systems perspective to improve safety in the workplace,” Cameron continued.
“TrendPac also did its own culture survey… so managing the likelihood that a hazard might cause harm. We then sat down and put together a really comprehensive action plan with… all of those stakeholders getting together on a regular basis to talk about progress and to review.”
For Cameron, the partnership between the organisation and broker is the “critical part” of P2 because the program ensures the employerisn’t just left to figure things out foritself. It instead supports and facilitates the process.
“By having that discipline of an action plan and getting together on a regular basis, we make sure things are moving in the right direction and, if they’re not, we’re all there to problem solve and work out why that is and resolve it,” she said.
P2 is about more than just training and education – it also assesses hazard identification processes, information flow and the behaviours of people within the business and tries to influence positive change in those structures.
“Some of the things that have been done at TrendPac have included looking at the physical environment – so looking at the inspections of plant and equipment to make sure that they’re as safe as they possibly can be,” Cameron explained. “One of the things that we talk about on safety is a hierarchy of control and the thing that sits at the top is trying to eliminate a hazard or something that can cause harm.”
While Cameron concedes it’s “hard to draw exact correlations,” she also references the 30% decrease in claims compared to last year.
“[The decrease] comes from a number of different things that have been happening all at once,” she said. “Everything from engaging the senior leadership team and getting them to be visible and to be talking about safety.
“It’s influencing the culture to make people think about safety more, to have it front of mind that they know the leadership team care about it and that it’s OK to report a hazard and talk about what needs to be done to make the workplace safer.”
