Key Learnings from the Executive Safety Exchange

Executive Safety Exchange and Heads of Safety Exchange held on 10 March 2020

In early March, SafetyWorks hosted two peer to peer learning sessions at the Australian Institute of Company Directors in Sydney. The first session was with our Executive Safety Exchange (ESE) members, the ESE is a peer-to-peer, member-led network designed to provide a platform for organisational leaders (Executive & Non-Executive Directors) to share their knowledge and thoughts on leading health, safety and wellbeing in their respective industries. During the second session we were joined by Heads of Safety from various organisations and industries.

In both sessions we had Health & Wellbeing specialist Lucas Finch and Acting Head of Safety James Wallace from Sydney Water share information and learnings from their award winning mental health and wellbeing program - 'Making Wellbeing Part of How We Do Business', this program was the winner of the Australian Psychological Society’s 2019 Workplace Excellence Award for Workplace Health, Safety and Wellbeing. This session was followed by a facilitated peer to peer discussion, including a focus on managing mental health & wellbeing in the workplace during a crisis.

The last six months have seen many people and businesses experiencing significant stress due to drought, fires, floods and the emerging issue of COVID-19. Building on the conversation about Sydney Water’s award winning wellbeing program, we explored how effective our participant’s current psychological health and wellbeing programs and plans have been during this period.

There were some excellent ideas identified during the session with many participants sharing their successes and ways they have overcome identified issues.

Some of the key learnings and commentary included:

• The importance of recognising the impact and insight close family members can have on employee’s mental health and wellbeing – sending communications out to employee’s homes educating the whole family on the supports available through the workplace is great for increasing engagement and impact of your mental health and wellbeing program.
• Focusing on anchoring your mental health and wellbeing program back to the original strategy and intent – trying not to get in the habit of throwing everything at the wall and seeing what sticks.
• In building your case for change for a mental health and wellbeing program always utilise academic research and theory.
• Researching your EAP providers well. There are some that provide a more holistic and coaching approach that has been shown to increase engagement levels. Consider finding someone who is willing to white label the EAP program – this helps to make it more accessible and user friendly for employees.
• Think about establishing Wellbeing champions, which is a great way to lead a bottom up movement across your organisation. Actively select your champions based on certain criteria and if possible, provide them with tailored mental health and wellbeing coaching training – this will increase their impact and help to spread consistent messaging about the program across your organisation.
• Remembering Business is not usual at the moment, but wellbeing and caring for our people is – this focus has kept us positively moving forward.
• The group agreed, the three biggest practices to focus on while managing safety and wellbeing during a crisis are pre-planning, quality and regular communications to your people and empowering your people to be a part of the process. These practices all help to avoid overreaction and reduce anxiety about the unknown. Quality communication helps to combat misinformation being spread.

For more information on the Executive Safety Exchange visit www.executivesafetyexchange.com.au.