Category four – Most significant improvement to work health and safety performance
Townsville City Council’s (TCC) leadership team identified that council was not tracking appropriate performance indicators on health and safety and the system used was onerous and paper based. As incident reporting was paper based, the process was lengthy and employees were reluctant to report incidents. TCC did not have an accurate indication of injuries or incident rates and were therefore not aware of what processes needed to be changed to help reduce these.
TCC needed staff to be engaged to change the safety culture. Leadership started talking about safety daily, sharing safety information and introducing a new Incident Management System, Contractor Management System and Learning Management Systems. A new Chief Executive Office of Council strongly supports safety and introduced new values of ‘SERVE’ Safety, Excellence, Respect, Value and Enjoyment. Safety is part of their everyday conversation to give employees something to work by.
TCC’s focus on safety has been growing over the last 18 months and safety needs to be valued by everyone and included in everything they deliver. Staff engagement in safety has improved, hazard and incident reporting has increased and safety risks have been declining. Open communication and the introduction of an online incident management system has been paramount in TCC’s approach towards safety.
Since implementing these improvements, TCC has seen a significant reduction in lost time injuries, and the severity of injuries has also greatly reduced.
