Back in 2011 we realised we had a huge cultural problem.
Our LTI’s were very high as a percentage of the workforce, our absentee rates were
very high, we recognised that we worked in a remote location, not a lot for staff to
do in their lunch hours, difficult for people to make the decision to come to work.
That was costing the business money, time and poor engagement with the staff.
We found that the biggest focus was on safety at the Port and there was no focus on health.
The focus just had to change.
The leadership team came and spoke to our health and safety forums and they asked the
question, what else we can do for health and wellbeing within the business.
We decided consciously to increase the promotion of the annual health assessments.
Encourage the staff to participate, get them to learn more about themselves and how they
can improve their outcomes.
So we identified certain people in business that we could target as champions within the
health life style programme that weren’t prime athletics but they were having a go
they were really interested in their health and wellbeing.
People definitely motivate people.
The healthy lifestyle prime was a nice shinny box and people wanted to jump on board and
they wanted to be involved, they could see the changes in people and they wanted to have
a piece of that.
What that did was focus more on health and wellbeing as much as safety.
We found by focusing on health and wellbeing it’s a better preventative measure for safety
incidents.
I’ve done the health assessment every year and it sort of monitors I guess how your health
is with blood tests and weighing in and everything.
Being a man too we don’t normally go to the Doctor until there is something wrong.
That’s when I guess I decided I had to make some sort of changes and I have lost I think
in twelve months now about thirty five kilos, still got more to go but I’m certainly enjoying
it more now.
So through our health assessments we have being able to identify the high risk, so things
like too much smoking, too much drinking not enough exercise.
So we have been able to prioritise what we need to do within the company to bring those
high percentages down.
Our healthy life style program focused on other activities that would improve the outcome
for the staff.
So we built a gym, we introduced activities like, healthy cooking programs, guest’s
speakers to talk about healthy lifestyle options and engaged the staff more to learn more about
themselves and how they can improve.
Short term we look at our annual health assessments and we are able to identify our high risk
areas and be able to evaluate those and decide what we need to focus on of the coming year.
Some of the long term indicators we look at are our LTI rates, our percentage in claims.
We take that back to our health and safety committees which then feeds that back into
the business.
In 2010 the Post of Brisbane would acuminated forty five claims to the value of $86’000
in compensation.
Since introducing the program in the last financial year they produced nineteen claims
and less than $36’000.
We believe that health and wellbeing will contribute to the success of the business.
I think the Port focuses a lot on health and safety, they try and instil a good culture
of both so it’s not something health related then it’s something safe related there is
a continual sort of momentum around it.
The program itself sort of gave me the wakeup call and I have certainly found it very helpful
for me.
People have got on board, you know they are getting out there, their exercising, their
eating health their talking to each other about it, they love it.
It takes time, like I watched it since 2011 and you think nothing is going to happen then
all of a sudden POW everyone is talking about it, it’s just a great achievement and a
great achievement for the Port of Brisbane to be able to have done this.