Shred-X IPaM film

Shred-X destroy data by description so that's data of any format so that paper digital media anything like that, any form of data we will destroy.

The responsibility for safety comes from all levels. If you start with a company you understand right from the start that you have that responsibility so everyone needs to take ownership. At the end of the day its to come to work and be safe and to go home safe.

Employers need to safety very seriously because if anyone has an injury it was your place, it was your business and you were responsible and you don't want that hurt in your sleep, you want all of your people to be safe and be able to work safely.

Within our industry we do have quite a few risks talking about like first aid injuries, sore backs and everything so the big risk out there is your manual handling.

We got a shredding machine upstairs and that's mainly the hazards for us.

IPaM or the Injury Prevention and Management program, it's a joint initiative between WorkCover Queensland and Workplace Health and Safety Queensland and its working with businesses who provide them with some assistance. It is all done in an advisory capacity, working with businesses to help them to identify areas where they can improve. IPaM approached Shred-X, it was about 4 years ago now because they had been identified and invited into the program saying look we think there may be some opportunities for improvement with the way you have your current safety management systems and also your injury management systems. It was just a general invitation to sit down and have a talk and let's go through and have a look and see if there is anything at all we can help you with.

What we, what we realize that if we didn't get professional compliance and professional help we would always be chasing our tails we would always be looking at what went wrong. With IPaM we started looking at things like LEAN, we even looked at anything else we could do to have outside people tells us, well what do you see here, how can we improve safety and you know our record has been clean up to now which has been great.

The IPaM program's built around a case management model it's just not a one off interaction, there's a life cycle to working with the IPaM program there is a lot of activity in those first 3 months or so when we are gathering information and planning and putting together sort of the strategy and the improvement plan we are going work on over the next 12 months. Once that improvement plan has been delivered to an employer we enter the next stage of the case management life cycle which is constant reviews and check ins to see how we can facilitate the employer to make their own improvements to the workplace, try and build sustainable systems not systems that are focused about us coming in to help them, but things that will still last and be enduring for when we back out and finally exit them from the program.

Happier workforce definitely with our wellness programs that we started up so there is other benefits that do come out of holding a strong safety culture. To me the staff are happier coming in every morning and they know that we have a framework and I think through this program that's where the main benefit been, that we do look after our staff to reduce those injuries.

Oh absolutely, I would recommend the program, the program delivers first of all safety and as mentioned before if you have got safer workers that feel engaged their going to give you more, so your productivity will be consistent.

The communication thing is something that I think that we benefit from as well because we are constantly looking at and reviewing our training standards and our ability to communicate with non-English speaking people.

Possibly one of Shred-X's reasons for going with the involvement is that they are very keen to get accreditation not just for safety but in a lot of other areas as well to make themselves a more professional organization and to give them a good position within market when tendering for other sorts of business as well so it complimented a lot of the other improvements that Shred-X were making at the time and safety as mentioned before was just one aspect that's integrated into the whole of the business.

I think if you look at 3 or 4 years we have been on this path with IPaM the initial cost has more than got the return on investment that you would take on any project. If you stick to it for a while, the financial and other benefits come shining through.

Staff are a lot happier coming in the morning.

So for a small business, large business that's seeking advice, yeh open the door and go and look for it, we certainly have.