Episode 4: Safety Leadership

Lauren Brignall:
At Ashurst, we acknowledge First Nations people as the traditional custodians of the land on which we work in Australia and we pay our respects to their elders, past and present. We extend that respect to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people listening today. Hello, my name is Lauren Brignall, and I'm a director with Ashurst Risk Advisory. This episode is part of a special mini-series where we explore work health and safety trends in Australia. Today, we explain what safety leadership is and why it's so vital for organizations.

Lauren Brignall:
We discuss how to build a safety culture in the workplace and how to prepare for, and respond to a crisis. We also unpick the complex issue of psychological risk. Joining me to tackle these issues are my guests, Lea Constantine and Scott Taylor. Lea is division head of the strategic advisory division of Ashurst and specializes in employment and work health and safety laws.

Lauren Brignall:
Scott has an extensive background working in safety in industry, from the armed forces to major construction companies, utilities, and large-scale property management. Firstly, welcome, Scott and Lea. Thank you for joining me today to talk about a topic I know we are all passionate about, safety leadership and its critical role in creating a positive safety culture and ultimately a safe workplace.

Lauren Brignall:
Apart from being good business and indeed a necessary part of business, safety leadership can look like a lot of different things to different people. Scott, let's start by thinking about, what is safety leadership in practice and why is it important?

Scott Taylor:
Thank you, and hello Lauren. It's a pleasure to be here on the podcast. I think safety leadership for me clearly starts at the top. Doesn't matter where you are in the organization, whether it's at the board or an executive leader level, but I think strong executive leadership and strong leadership is really about being visible and a demonstrated commitment to the values of the organization, and really genuinely caring about people.

Scott Taylor:
This can be translated in a number of ways. First of all, it's having clear meaningful policies and principles and goals and plans and setting a high standard, but also supporting the organization with an appropriate management structural system and really, really being focused on operational outcomes. This is practically demonstrated by the leaders' attention to detail, focusing on the heart and the soft system such as culture and making sure that they're present and focused on the performance of safety, just as much as any other key performance indicator for business excellence.

Scott Taylor:
I think safety leadership is really leading by example, genuinely caring about people. Living by example includes making yourself available and participating in operational safety activities and generally showing care for people throughout the process.

Lauren Brignall:
Yeah, I agree, Scott. I think that genuineness is so important and when we're thinking about what people need to be doing, it's really thinking about people as not just a workforce, but they're a real asset to our organizations. Lea, I'd love to hear from you. We've heard about practical reasons safety leadership is important, but from a legal perspective, why do boards and senior executives really need to lean into their due diligence obligations?

Lea Constantine:
Thanks, Lauren, and also great to be here with you and with Scott today. Look, it's really important that they do, from a legal perspective, lean into these issues. The reason for that, just to strip it all back to its absolute fundamentals, is that there is a legal obligation in work health and safety laws across the country for boards, for officers, directors and officers, to undertake effective due diligence to ensure that the organizations that they are an officer of complies with the organization's obligations.

Lea Constantine:
That's the reason why they need to do it from a legal perspective. But the comments that Scott made, absolutely also relevant here. You can't just do that. Doing legal compliance in a ticker box kind of way is not really fabulous due diligence, if I can call it that. There's a lot that goes with it. But the obligations themselves are absolutely framed up by our legal system. That it is an obligation, it's personal.

Lea Constantine:
It's a personal obligation. It's a proactive obligation that rests with officers. That's why, from a legal point of view, it's absolutely critical that boards, directors and officers lean into this issue and actually understand what their legal obligations are and then do the hard stuff, which is actually thinking about and implementing the steps so that they can comply with those due diligence obligations. That's the legal reason.

Lauren Brignall:
Thanks, Lea. Moving through that as a practical example, I thought we might be able to talk about moments of crisis, which can be a time when safety leadership is really put to the test when serious incidents happen or serious issues come to light in organizations. How do you see leaders getting ahead of these matters before they happen and if necessary, after they emerge?

Lea Constantine:
Well, unfortunately, Lauren, I've been in that situation where I've been involved in many moments of crisis with organizations. It's really interesting to see how it is that leaders behave in those scenarios. Often I have clients say to me, "Look, we've obviously never been through anything like this before. We really like working with, Lea, but this is a terrible time for us to be meeting and for us to be working together."

Lea Constantine:
Those moments in time are the ones that test organizations and certainly test leaders in organizations the most. It's really important, I think, from a number of perspectives that instead of waiting for the crisis to happen, there is actually some thought given to how a board or senior leadership team or leadership group might behave in the circumstances where it faces a crisis. I am a fan of actually thinking about these things and scenario planning in advance of the crisis.

Lea Constantine:
I think that is probably the best thing that safety leaders can do. There is the ability to get ahead of these issues and not just wait for the crisis to fall upon you, but actually to think about how it is that a crisis, whatever it might be, whether it's a fatality at work, a serious risk event, an allegation of harassment, which is now also part and parcel of our work health and safety landscape, how it is that organizations will behave, what the respective roles of leaders will be, who gets brought in, how decisions are made, who will be responsible for managing the multiple things that are thrown at you when a crisis occurs.

Lea Constantine:
Insurers, the media, trade unions, your workforce, families, families of deceased employees, for example. All of these things play out. Usually, they play out in 24 hours and 48 hours. The things that are done in that very early moments straight after a crisis really do set the tone of then what happens in the months and sometimes the years that follow afterwards. In my mind, good scenario planning is a really effective way of getting ahead of the crisis before it happens. That's something that I highly recommend that leaders think about doing and doing in a very comprehensive way.

Lauren Brignall:
Thanks, Lea. Scott, I'd be interested in your thoughts on that as well and if you've got some practical examples of when you've seen leaders having to jump into action in moments of crisis and perhaps what you think good looks like when that does happen.

Scott Taylor:
Yes. Thank you, Lauren, and I completely agree with Lea. I think rehearsal's really important, but two points to answer the question. I think the first one, something Lea said earlier on, is that under workplace health and safety obligations for directors and officers is personal. I think that's a key word there. I think any safety health, environmental incident is personal for people involved and the empathy and focus on people that leaders can provide really goes to culture and safety culture where you're talking about reporting or a just cultural, learning culture.

Scott Taylor:
How the leadership team responds in that first 24/48 hours will really enforce the organizational culture. If you have a really progressive culture aspirationally to be, depending on interdependent or ability, whatever the maturity cultural metrics you're using, how the executive respond and the leadership responds to people in caring for others and thinking about the board of stakeholders involved and looking after people as a first priority fundamentally will send symbols and ripples and throughout the whole organization really reinforce how the organization responds immediately after.

Scott Taylor:
The other thing is picking up on something that Lea said is around rehearsal. I think human nature is that when you have a crisis, an incident or an emergency management response, it's very easy for the senior leadership team or the executive or the board to want to jump in and do. One of the things about preparedness for a crisis and practicing for it, is one of the greatest advantages of being a director or an officer is your wide perspective and ability to step back from what's happening and take that broader perspective.

Scott Taylor:
Through your practice and rehearsal, you can set up proper incident teams to focus on the immediate actions, but you can also start to talk about recovery and looking forward to restoring the business to normal. Directors and officers can do that concurrently by stepping away and having a proper business continuity and disaster emergency management plan, and also having rehearsals where line management get in and focus on the remediation and response and the boarder team can focus on looking after all the stakeholders.

Scott Taylor:
That could be simply as communicating to the staff who are not directly involved but letting them know that everyone's okay. Also, taking care of the families or the people who are affected by any incident. My practical experience includes being chief risk officer for Queensland Rail when we had the Cairns train derailment, and we also had the bomb threat and scares in Brisbane CBD.

Scott Taylor:
The executive and director's board's ability to maintain composure, a sense of calm, a focus on people, a care, following the process, not making the assumptions and letting investigations proceed, really reinforced an open collaborative culture for the organization. That was really important for the board and the executive to take a broad perspective and look after people and all those stakeholders involved, including letting staff know and family of the people affected.

Scott Taylor:
I think their immediate response and focus dispassionately and without assumption, without prejudice on the care for everybody created a safety net for everyone to focus on what was important and rally around those people directly impacted and also look after the carers. It's almost responsibility of the directors and officers to care for the carers of the people affected as well. How the executive respond in the immediate 24/48 hours really sets the cultural symbols and framework for the response, but also the recovery.

Scott Taylor:
I think that cannot be underestimated and how important maintaining composure and focusing on people and the board of stakeholders and caring for others is in that immediate period. I completely agree with earlier comments from Lea, and I've seen that play out practically on the ground all the way through to a large organization of 15,000 people.

Lauren Brignall:
Thanks, Scott. I think that's also a really interesting segue into another discussion point I wanted to have with you around psychological safety, which for our eager listeners, you will have heard quite a bit about this in some of our previous podcasts, including on cognitive endurance and psychological safety in particular. Scott, how do you think leaders should be considering psychological safety as part of their work health safety duties?

Lauren Brignall:
We've just heard from you about what they're doing in those moments of crisis, but thinking more broadly about how psychological safety is certainly a hot topic in a lot of places, what do you see leaders doing?

Scott Taylor:
I think it's important for leaders to recognize that at the end of the day, the thing that often differentiates between good organizations and excellent organizations is business excellence is culture. Today a lot of language has been around diversity and inclusion. The second part of that is inclusion, which is really important.

Scott Taylor:
We're encouraged to create multidisciplinary teams all the way from the board to the front line. I think psychological safety is really only achieved when everyone in the organization all the way from the top to the bottom and back up feels comfortable and safe to talk about their vulnerabilities.

Scott Taylor:
Everyone goes through vulnerabilities, whether they're through an event or an incident or a life experience, but when people are feeling comfortable in a diverse and inclusive culture, say I've got an issue, or I want to question that or I'm walking past someone doing the wrong thing and I don't think that's right, or someone's not complying with drug and alcohol and I've got to feel safe to report it, that's when you've nailed it.

Scott Taylor:
But that really comes from the leadership of the organization at the top. That's the board setting the recruitment of the CEO, the performance of the executive, where they're focused on, the KPIs, the ReM framework, but it really comes to diversity and inclusion. I think organizations that can create psychological safety at a frontline perspective where everyone can look after people... And practically people looking after your mates is one of the things that you'll see in some of the operational things.

Scott Taylor:
But when every individual in the organization feels included and part of the process and feels safe, that's when you've got it secure. Only then can you really hear the excellence in safety culture, I believe.

Lea Constantine:
Lauren, if I could just add something to what Scott has just said, there is something in this for officers to do. I think there's an educative piece at the very outset, because I think for a long time, leaders have been focused very much on physical work health and safety. We all know about that. That's what we've been talking about for the last 30, 40, 50 years. That is what the work health and safety laws have been primarily directed towards.

Lea Constantine:
The last 10 years probably in that timeframe, we have seen a shift and I think through COVID and now coming, hopefully, out of COVID, we've seen an absolute and utter shift and focus on the nonphysical aspects of work health and safety, the health bit of the work health and safety, the middle word of that combination, I think has been probably downplayed a little bit and we're now seeing a very significant shift.

Lea Constantine:
I think what officers and leaders and organizations need to get their heads around is that our regulators are looking at psychological, psychosocial risk, in a way, in the same way that they have traditionally done for physical risk. I don't know that that's really well understood across industry. It's absolutely critical that all the things that we think about for physical safety, we now put into the nonphysical aspects.

Lea Constantine:
Those other aspects of safety, including psychological safety that Scott has just talked about. That I think needs to be where we start. From there on, then there's a lot of things to think about in terms of just how we go about upping the ante and improving the way that organizations focus on these nonphysical risks, how it is that we do risk assessments in that area, how it is that you comply with the work health and safety laws in the nonphysical sense.

Lea Constantine:
I think that that's what we will see coming to all of us in a very quick way, how it is that regulators respond to these issues, how it is that organizations respond and what it is that leaders do. I think being empathetic, that Scott has said, is absolutely critical, but there's more to it than that. There's a whole lot of things that we all need to be doing.

Lea Constantine:
I think many organizations will really need to shift their focus and think about the ways in which psychological safety in the workplace, being vulnerable, doing all the things that Scott just said, which I agree with, all of those things, how do we bring them into the mainstream? How are those things not just for HR? These are not things just for the human resources department, they're things for everyone and they absolutely start at the top.

Lea Constantine:
And it's a culture that the top sets, will very much impact on our success or otherwise in this area of nonphysical safety. I just wanted to add those comments too, because the legal aspects here are absolutely fundamental also.

Scott Taylor:
I think that's an excellent point. I think a practical way to think about taking that holistic systems thinking to managing safety performance as part of your broader business performance management framework is the James Reason's Swiss cheese model. Many years ago, human factors was a new area where we were talking about things like fatigue and mindset, particularly in the operational areas like airlines and railways.

Scott Taylor:
But if you think about the different aspects to the Swiss cheese model, you got physical controls, administrative controls, human factors, psychological safety is a big part of that. You saw that revealed in the early days when airlines used to have a hierarchical situation where people in the airlines weren't allowed to speak up or didn't feel they had the authority to speak up. That is psychological safety here. Now, that's changed fundamentally where everyone in the team should have a voice, but it goes beyond that.

Scott Taylor:
It goes beyond people having the courage to speak up, but also having the protection that they know that they go to work, they're going to be looked after. More importantly, the most progressive organizations use that Swiss cheese model to say, "Look, what we can actually do is improve your health and safety. If you come to work, we'll run programs to improve your resilience, your ability to respond to an incident and recover. But actually we'll think about human performance in a way that is part of the fundamental fabric of the way that we do work around here."

Scott Taylor:
That's where you're seeing some of the leaders in this space have low incidents of mental health issues and employee engagement and staff satisfaction, is because they see that they're creating a safe environment for everyone to perform their best and bring the best to work. That's I think one of the better improvements in the workplace health and safety regime in the last 10 to 15 years.

Lauren Brignall:
Thanks, Scott. That's really insightful. It's definitely something we're seeing reflected in a lot of our clients. I would absolutely recommend anyone listening to have a look at our podcast on cognitive endurance for leaders as well, because I think it's really important that when you're looking at your different worker groups, it's making sure that you've got controls in place for the right groups at the right time.

Lauren Brignall:
Leaders are absolutely under, probably more stress than we've ever seen them before. The current economic situation, as well as the global situation, I think is something to really keep in mind. Making sure that you've got the right controls for the right people will help set you set your organization up for success and help with that cascade of controls through the organization and setting the right culture.

Lauren Brignall:
All of that said, and we have already touched on it, but I thought it would actually be really useful to our listeners to think about the practical things that need to be in place. Lea, I'd love to hear from you about what you think leaders and their safety teams, and frankly, everyone who is a leader in an organization should be doing, to demonstrate their due diligence or how they're exercising their personal work health safety duties.

Lea Constantine:
Thanks, Lauren. Well, they should be doing lots of things. Let's start there. First and foremost, the thing that frames all of this up is actually to have a proper understanding of what due diligence obligations actually mean. Get yourself educated. That's the first thing, and that's just not leaders, that's everyone, so across the organization. Actually understand what your legal obligations are and what the framework looks like. That's only the very starting point.

Lea Constantine:
Then in terms of the due diligence elements, and many will be familiar, that there is a definition of what due diligence means, it's non-exhaustive. In the work health and safety laws there are six things that officers need to be thinking about doing. It's really important to grab each of those and think, "Okay. Well, here's element number one, what is it that I need to do to make sure that I am familiar with my work health and safety duties?

Lea Constantine:
Element number two, what is it that I need to do to make sure that I understand the hazards and risks in my business?" Just little things like asking officers, what are those hazards and risks? Do you actually understand what they are? Can you articulate what they are? This is not a memory test, but it's actually having the ability to think about hazards and risks, understand how it is that organizations actually control those things.

Lea Constantine:
Then for officers and others in the organization to ask themselves, "How is it that I can contribute to the best implementation of that control? Or if I see something that I don't think sounds right, feels right, then what is it that I do to escalate my concerns?" One thing that's really important about demonstrating due diligence is that due diligence is, yes, it's a proactive obligation and a personal obligation, but I don't think it's something that any particular individual can just do alone.

Lea Constantine:
If I went around with my due diligence elements and tried to exercise due diligence by myself in an organization, that's not going to be successful because I actually need information from others. I need information about what is going on from a safety point of view within the organization. I then need to be able to have discussions with people, so the information flows need to go up and down an organization. As a leader, I need to then set the tone.

Lea Constantine:
I need to be clear about what my expectations are and I need to check in with people as to what is happening. I know that that sounds quite simplistic. You can make that information flows much more complicated than what I've just done, but to me, that is one of the most important things. It is a whole organization approach that needs to be taken. Each person playing their role to comply with law, to implement the work health and safety framework and to actually undertake due diligence.

Lea Constantine:
A lot of it is actually about asking questions, being curious, making inquiries, and doing that in a way that you bring a critical mind and a questioning mindset to information that you're given. Ask why? Why is it that we're seeing a trend in this area? What are we doing about that? What does that look like? How can I, as a leader, contribute to stopping an adverse trend in the business? Do I need to go and have discussions with people? Do I need to issue a communication?

Lea Constantine:
How is it that I can learn from my fellow officers who might also sit perhaps on other boards? What's going on in this industry? What's going on in this market? These are all really insightful questions that officers can ask, and they can bring that information back to the organization and exchange information with people within the organization. It's those kinds of things.

Lea Constantine:
I think if I were to distill it down to one thing to do, it's really bringing this inquiring, curious mind to the information that officers are given. I think that's one of the most important things that leaders should be doing.

Lauren Brignall:
That's excellent, Lea, that it's actually really helpful to have that insight into the most critical thing from your side. I also like the idea of these leadership groups working on this issue together and having a level of accountability, not only to each other, but to the organization and the workers to be quite visible in their demonstration of due diligence. Scott, do you have any thoughts on that and any other practical ideas that you have on how leaders can demonstrate their due diligence practically?

Scott Taylor:
Yeah, I do. Thank you, Lauren. I think the first one would be when you think about organization, you think about people, process and tools, and I think one of the things that's underrated is setting the right mindset as a leader. One thing that's worked really well for myself and other organizations I work for is if you think about safety excellence as an outcome of business excellence, then you reframe safety as almost a lag indicator of how well the business is performing.

Scott Taylor:
That brings safety performance to the number one priority of the business. You say, "Look, if we're not performing well for safety, we're clearly not performing well as a business. How are we going to achieve operational excellence and business excellence if safety's not there?" In doing that, you bring the conversation forward to making it a conversation. I think I agree completely with Lea that it's a team game, organizational and safety performance. You've got to have active engagement and conversations.

Scott Taylor:
One of the simple practical things you can do as a leader walking around, is have a conversation with people and say, "Well, what does good look like? Conversely, what's the worst thing that can happen?" If the only thing you do is have a weekly conversation around safety and go, "Well, what's the worst thing that can happen in this circumstance? Let's talk that through?" And you have a practical... That's where the inquiring mind that Lea was talking about comes into.

Scott Taylor:
You, go, "Well, practically, if that happened, what would you do then? How would we respond? Do we have adequate resources? We got five people off with COVID and it's the flu season. What would that mean?" The conversation is the important thing, because, one, it shows you care. Two, you're doing your D&O obligations. You're looking at the risk and the culture and so forth, but you're reinforcing the right mindset with the people on the ground and saying, "Safety's core business. We've got to focus on safety. To achieve safety excellence, it's an outcome of business excellence."

Scott Taylor:
I think mindset's number one and having that conversation about what does good look like, and what's the worst thing that can happen is number two.

Lea Constantine:
Lauren, you've been a great host today, but I'm also really interested to hear from you what you've seen that organizations are doing and what leaders need to be doing from a practical perspective. What are your observations on that question?

Lauren Brignall:
Look, I think when you're thinking about what you need to do as a leader, it really does need to be more than just your once-off due diligence session a year learning about what the six elements of due diligence are and then walking away with that knowledge. There really needs to be the action that sits behind that. Some planning around what you're going to do, how you're going to measure whether you've achieved what you wanted to do, whether that's personally, or as a leadership group.

Lauren Brignall:
Holding each other to account and actually making sure that safety is on your agenda. It's not a once-off, it's not something that's only discussed in a certain place. It actually becomes part of your core business. When those elements are coming together and the safety leadership group actually understands what they need to do, you can see that trickle down in very real ways. People at lower levels of management will actually step up and be open about where they are in terms of safety, what resources they need to make certain outcomes happen.

Lauren Brignall:
It really brings to life safety in a practical way for not only managers, but then workers as well. You can feel it. It's palpable when a leader actually cares about safety in a real way, not just a six elements of due diligence, tick them off and off we go. If I could give any practical tips, not just to leaders, but also the safety teams that sit behind the HR teams who have, as you've said, Lea, historically looked after HR, from a psychological perspective, it's really coming together as a whole group and making sure that leaders have support.

Lauren Brignall:
They have support from day one when they walk in the door. They understand that safety is a core part of the culture of the organization. Then they know how to act on that in practice, because if someone walks in and you tell them only that safety's important, but not what that looks like from your organization's perspective, you might find that the culture isn't actually going to be instilled in a practical way when there are a lot of inputs coming in and a lot of competing priorities.

Lauren Brignall:
For me, it's definitely about bringing it to life, being really clear on what you want to do and achieve, and then measuring that in a way that makes you accountable, not only to yourself, but the rest of your leadership group.

Lauren Brignall:
Thank you again to Lea and Scott for joining me today to talk about this important topic, your insights into how safety leadership and genuinely caring about our workers can be translated from legal requirements into a reality of truly making workplaces safer. It's just been incredibly insightful and I'm sure our listeners will have picked up on some opportunities to consider how they are managing their personal duties and potentially what more needs to be done to make their workplace as safe as reasonably practicable.

Scott Taylor:
Thank you, Lauren. Thank you, Lea. It's been a great conversation and an excellent reminder not to become complacent and how important having a chronic unease around workplace health and safety is for all leaders and all people of the organization. Thank you for your time.

Lea Constantine:
Thanks very much, Lauren. Thank you, Scott. I've really enjoyed being part of this conversation today. I think we've covered some really interesting ground and it's great to learn from each other and to hear about what organizations are doing. I really, really appreciate the opportunity.

Lauren Brignall:
Thank you for listening. This episode is the last in our work health and safety trends mini-series. To find out more about our podcast or listen to our previous podcasts, head over to ashurst.com/podcasts. To ensure you don't miss any future content, subscribe to this podcast via Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform. While you're there, check out our other episodes and feel free to leave a rating or a review. Thanks again for listening and goodbye for now.