Darwalla Group is the largest Queensland owned poultry producer, growing more than 25 million chickens per year. Darwalla Group directly employs around 150 people, engages several contractors and supports the employment of many more at their processing plants.
Darwalla’s practices moved from farming to manufacturing and as processes started to become automated with better technology, staff were becoming disengaged and there was a negative shift in the safety culture.
Darwalla’s senior leadership team introduced a safety culture committee to focus on a strategy to work towards a sustainable safety culture. After consulting with managers and employees through surveys, staff interviews, observations, brainstorming and focus groups, the team developed a new safety system ‘Beyond best practice’.
The commitment to a positive safety culture, where staff were part of the solution, saw the roll out of initiatives that improve safety knowledge, skills and behaviours across the business, including:
- quality, health safety and environmental best practice group
- job safety analysis
- safety and operational role specific training
- contractor safety program
- site visual boards.
Some of the main improvements, achievements and benefits attributed to the new Darwalla work health and safety model are:
- achieving the best performance results in the history of the company
- an 11 per cent improvement in the staff safety satisfaction survey
- safety training completion on time at 99 per cent
- a 22 per cent reduction in number of lost time injuries.
