Every year about 250 Australians die from work-related injuries and over 2000 Australians die from a work-related illness. These tragedies are all preventable. We can do much better.
Creating a healthy and safe workplace at Southern Cross Protection is our first priority. Our people are out and about in our communities and customer sites in all sorts of weather, at all hours of the day and exposed to, at times, some not very pleasant people!
At Southern Cross Protection we have a constant focus on safety. To us, safety is more than just Safe Work Month, it is Safe Work 365 days (and nights) a year.
This focus means safety toolbox talks every week, covering the topics that are critical to our safety such as fatigue, safe driving practices and conflict management. It means incentivising and rewarding safe work behaviours and it means having difficult conversations about unsafe behaviours with each other. It means making business decisions that consider the safety implications of those decisions.
Safety also needs constant learning and change so our safety training program is ongoing and no, it isn’t just ‘refresher’ training, it includes the latest evidence based knowledge and practice applied to our hazards for all our people.
Because we have an isolated workforce, often working on their own, we use technology to help us to check on the location and welfare of our officers and to involve our people in the safety issues that concern them so we can obtain their input into the development of the best solutions.
So, are Southern Cross Protection celebrating Safe Work Month in October? Absolutely.
But we are also celebrating Safe Work 365 days (and nights) too so we send our people home, not in the same condition that they arrived at work but in a better condition than they came to work!
Join us in raising awareness of the importance of workplace safety in Australia. Safe Work Australia is supporting National Safe Work Month by developing resources for businesses, hosting the workplace participation reward program and sharing stories and statistics about work health and safety.
