Maria Hooker Safe Work leader talks transcript
Learn more about the Leading safer manufacturing workplaces campaign
September 2020
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[00:00:10] Carol Duncan: Welcome to our final episode of SafeWork Manufacturing Leader Talks. I'm your host, Carol Duncan. Today I'm chatting to Maria Hooker about her role as national work health and safety manager at Allied Pinnacle. Allied Pinnacle has been manufacturing flour, ingredients, and delicious bakery products for over 100 years.
[00:00:29] Maria Hooker: Okay. My role is the national workplace health, safety & environment manager for Allied Pinnacle. My role in the business is to ensure that all of our sites are in compliance to workplace health and safety and to assist all of the sites to ensure that our safety management system is in compliance at all times.
[00:00:48] Carol: What has actually been the path of career progression that you've taken? I understand you've been with Allied Pinnacle for quite some time. There must have been quite a journey for you.
[00:00:57] Maria: It was. I originally started at the Tamworth mill that we'd had, we still have, and starting in an accounting role. Through progression at that site, I progressed from becoming the assistant to the accountant to working in the quality food safety sector and moving on to workplace health and safety.
[00:01:20] Carol: Relocated to Sydney?
[00:01:22] Maria: Yes, to take on the national safety role.
[00:01:24] Carol: What was it that interested you in taking on safety?
[00:01:28] Maria: A couple of things. I love the legality side. Also, on a personal perspective, my husband had a major back injury, and I wanted to ensure that this didn't happen to any other workers in the business that I was currently working in.
[00:01:42] Carol: That's a really interesting point because it is often those personal events in our lives that become a catalyst for us to move into new areas, to take on new interests, or to become advocates in certain areas.
[00:01:53] Maria: Yes, definitely.
[00:01:54] Carol: Can you give us an overview of the actual consultation process of Allied Pinnacle?
[00:02:00] Maria: There's a couple of ways we do consultation at Allied Pinnacle. Our sites have health safety committees where we get people together to talk about safety concerns and to try and make improvements. We have safety representatives at some of our sites, especially our bigger sites where we have bakeries. That we have those people to represent each shift and particular workers to talk about safety concerns where they can then directly go to the site managers and their supervisors to speak on behalf of the workers. We have had great outcomes where we have regular toolbox and team meetings and management meetings that occur at the sites.
We also have other consultation processes whenever there's any hazards identified at the sites or any new processes or changes to processes where we feel that relevant people need to be consulted to make sure that safe controls are put in place.
[00:02:55] Carol: Does giving workers the opportunity to participate in safety decisions make for better safety culture, or should all decisions be coming from the top?
[00:03:04] Maria: No. We find that if we make all the decisions from the top and if that the workers don't have any involvement, that's when we have incidents occur because you've got to look at it from the perspective of the person that's actually operating any plant and equipment or following any procedures. If we don't involve them in part of the consultation process, we're not going to get it right. We found that in the past.
[00:03:30] Carol: Which raises some interesting questions as well. Can you give us just a brief overview of some of the variety of hazards that exist in your industry?
[00:03:41] Maria: Yes. Of course, we have warehouses, we have flour mills, and we have bakeries. We use high-risk machinery, which is forklifts, we have trucks, so traffic management is very high. We have to work at heights in particular areas when we've got to inspect any silos, so the climbing ladders and platforms. We have a lot of moving parts such as conveyors, mixers, bucket elevators, all types of equipment. We would class it also as a high-risk business.
[00:04:13] Carol: What does consultation actually give to that process when it comes to perhaps informing the training for them, or does training come pretty much pre-packaged from a provider?
[00:04:24] Maria: We have specific requirements on regular cleaning on our plant and equipment when we produce certain types of products. When you're required to do cleaning, you have to pull the plant and equipment apart, you have to isolate it to be able to get to certain parts to clean it. Sometimes the plant and equipment when it turns out from overseas doesn't allow you to do that safely. Having that consultation process and getting the workers to provide feedback on what the task that they're required to perform and how practical it is to do that is very important.
Otherwise, we end up people trying to take shortcuts, trying to bypass safe work practices, accessing moving parts, which are insufficiently guarded or to make their job a lot easier and then we end up with having injuries and incidents occurring.
[00:05:11] Carol: How does the consultation take place? I can only imagine that a good consultation means that sometimes you're actually getting good advice and information back from your workforce?
[00:05:22] Maria: Yes, we do. When we identify any hazards, we try and make sure we get the key stakeholders, and that would be probably the maintenance team, the workers that are actually going to be operating the machinery or that plant or equipment every day, including the safety reps, and if necessary, the safety committee. Anyone else we think is relevant. Because we're a food industry, we have a quality team that puts stringent requirements on cleaning processes. We make sure we involve them as well so no one department is overriding on the other.
[00:05:54] Carol: How does it feel when an employee comes to you with an idea or a recommendation that you suspect you can actually implement or should be implemented.
[00:06:06] Maria: Yes, it's exciting. We don't usually get many that want to say something because they're worried that if they do say something, they could lose their job, for example, because we work with a lot of labor home workers, but no suggestion is a silly suggestion. Sometimes it's not feasible to put certain things in place because it might be very expensive, we have to raise capital expenditure, but there always can be a short-time solution that could be implemented. The best people to tell us those solutions are the people that are actually operating the plant and equipment.
[00:06:38] Carol: The best people to tell you that sort of information are the people who are working the plant and equipment, but you've also mentioned that quite often they don't feel at liberty to because they are fearful. How do you try to overcome that?
[00:06:52] Maria: We do regular training and awareness on that and highlighting everybody's responsibilities. If we talk about trying to have a good safety culture, if we don't have it starting from the top and getting that message through that we need to all be working safe, we all have a responsibility. If you report something that's unsafe, we need to act on it and do something about it.
[00:07:17] Carol: There is undoubtedly a legal requirement to work health and safety?
[00:07:22] Carol: Definitely is. It starts from the top. As a business, we have a duty of care right through to our offices to our senior managers, anybody that has a responsibility or can make any decisions on behalf of the business, there's implications, but workers have a responsibility as well. That includes any contractors that we have on our sites. We need to ensure that every person on our site is aware of their responsibilities and accountabilities and we're making sure every person is consulted on what their safety requirements are.
[00:07:54] Carol: How do you then work on a culture that improves that fear of people talking to you?
[00:08:02] Maria: Allied Pinnacle has six pillars in our business, and the number one pillar is safety. It states that safety first always, that is emphasized in every consultation meeting that we have. Every meeting that we have in our businesses, doesn't matter if it's a toolbox meeting or it's one of the board of directors meetings or senior managers meeting, safety is always the first agenda item. We always put that upfront and making sure that that's taken into consideration.
To change the culture and have a cozy safety culture in the business, it has to start from the top. That comes directly from our CEO and that message comes out quite clearly. There's weekly meetings that we have with our senior management team to talk about any safety concerns that we have and then that information is then filtered down through to the site meetings and then down through the toolbox meetings that are held at the sites.
[00:08:54] Carol: A significant part of your role, Maria, would also be ensuring that that culture goes upwards as well to management and that you have the buy-in that is necessary to implement plans, strategies, and to work on safety culture. What have you done in that area over the last 10 or 20 years to ensure that that relationship and culture builds and gets stronger and is respected in both directions?
[00:09:20] Maria: It's making sure that people are aware of what people's responsibilities and accountabilities are, where the exposures are to people and the business. Part of my role and my team's role is to look out to workers' compensation as well.
[00:09:37] Carol: You also work as a mentor, is that right?
[00:09:39] Maria: I have mentored quite a few small businesses. The positive thing out of that is that I always learn something as well. One of the things that you do learn from the mentor-mentee program is that-- The mentees are usually very small businesses. I work for a very big business, which you would expect could have good safety systems in place, but these small businesses don't always have a lot of money and aren't sure on the right way to do things to protect their business and to protect their workers.
You have to work with those businesses to make sure that there's a common-sense approach. It doesn't mean that you have to spend a lot of money. If it's a matter of training and changing the culture of your business, training your workers, making sure people are aware of what their responsibilities, their accountabilities, and making sure that the consultation process occurs at all times where the workers do not feel scared to be able to talk to their bosses or their managers to say, "I have a safety concern, can we work on this to fix it?" That's the approach that I highlight to any of my small businesses.
One of the things I do is when I go into a small business is, the first thing is I ask them is, what are the injuries that are occurring in your business? The only way you can find that is to look at your workers' complains and you'll get a trend, and that's where you should start focusing. Then you'll identify if it's manual tasks. What can we do to try and reduce those injuries from occurring? It may be training and education. You can't always put mechanical aids in place, so it may be rotating people or getting into work a little bit safer, taking a little bit more time to do particular tasks as well, and just having that bit of time and knowledge to be able to perform the task safely.
[00:11:18] Carol: Maria acknowledges that her passion for safety at work came from an injury to a loved one. Coming up, she explains why it's essential to create a safety culture across the entirety of an organization and the importance of strong support from the top. We'll have more from Maria after this message from SafeWork New South Wales.
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[00:11:43] Carol: Employers, and management plan an important role in workplace health and safety. Workers in the manufacturing industry, look to their leaders for safety guidance. Research shows that after training, workers in manufacturing prefer to receive safety messages in the workplace through signs, posters, fact sheets, and toolbox talks. To support leaders in manufacturing, SafeWork New South Wales has forklift and machine safety education materials that can be downloaded or printed and shared with workers. Visit safework.nsw.gov.au/manufacturing today. Be the leader your workers need. Safety starts with you
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[00:12:29] Carol: The enthusiasm in your voice when you talk about that role is very telling I think, Maria. This is obviously something that you mentioned. This pivot in your career essentially came out of an accident to a loved one. You've taken it very personally and very seriously, obviously, but to listen to your enthusiasm about helping others getting on board and keeping people safe is really wonderful.
[00:12:54] Maria: Oh, thank you. If I could save one life by just helping someone do something minor, which could prevent a major incident occurring, that's the question and that's what I'll continue to do.
[00:13:07] Carol: Are there areas or times in which you get pushback, whether that is from senior management or from a workforce?
[00:13:15] Maria: There has been pushed back sometimes when we've felt that there is a major safety concern, where we feel money needs to be spent. When it comes to that, when you're trying to get capital expenditure raised to be spent on to address something, and it keeps getting knocked back, it gets very frustrating. Then we've got to come up with other solutions. We look at what short term solutions we can put in place that ends up becoming long term solutions. It's just going to be a continual process of making sure everybody's consulted and regularly trained and that management is continually made aware of what their duty of care is.
[00:13:56] Carol: How important is it when management also represents the work that you are trying to do and when they are leading from their position in support of you? What difference does that make?
[00:14:08] Maria: Oh, massive difference. Probably just to highlight. It's occurring and-- Of course, we're a national company. As of the first of July, Victoria has introduced manslaughter charges. Recently, the one that occurred in Queensland about two weeks ago where the first manslaughter charges occurred with a business. When I sent that information out through to the senior managers, I don't usually get calls or emails straight back, but the response within 10 minutes of sending that email from all of the general managers was, "My goodness, what else do you need from me to ensure that we're in compliance and we're meeting what we're required to do?" That was a positive response.
Whereas usually they'll receive emails about safety concerns and things like that and there'll always be a thank you, but this one was a very quick reaction. I think it really hit home what the consequences are.
[00:15:03] Carol: How does that information then play into informing or advising those smaller companies who perhaps don't even consider that something like that could be possible in their world?
[00:15:13] Maria: A lot of people come back to, "But it'll never happen to us because we don't work in the mines or we don't work in high-risk industries." It only takes one person to have fall of heights or one person to trip and fall and fracture their back or end up being disabled or dying that something will happen. This is what we need to encourage people to realize that they aren't isolated. That it could happen to them or it could happen to one of their family members.
The message we need to highlight is that even though we've got a population of 25.5 million, our statistics show that on an average, even though it's 25.5 million people, one of those 18 people could be your brother, sister, mother, or father. Are you going to allow that risk to occur? You need to remember that you need to work safe all the time and go home the same way that you came to work because there's someone waiting for you there that's very important.
[00:16:16] Carol: What does safety leadership look like at Allied Pinnacle?
[00:16:20] Maria: It means that every person will take the initiative, whether they're a senior manager, they're a worker, a supervisor, or even a contractor coming in on our site. If they see something unsafe, that they take the initiative to get it addressed and follow it through.
[00:16:35] Carol: Have Allied Pinnacle's leaders always been on board with a strong safety culture? What changes have you seen in your time?
[00:16:42] Maria: Sometimes you'll get managers that are so flat out without a task and safety doesn't seem to be-- I feel sometimes safety is not a priority to them. With the change in our business since Allied Pinnacle's come on board and making safety the number one pillar, and it's in the forefront all of the time and you've got it, it's thrown at you all the time by the CEO that it's the number one priority, I think that has helped the changes in the business.
[00:17:09] Carol: What were any barriers or challenges that you have faced during this time to get the organization to where you feel it is now?
[00:17:16] Maria: I think because we're a food industry and because we have to do regular food safety and quality checks, there's sometimes that feels that and we get customer demands. Sometimes in our business, it feels that that's the number one priority, not safety. Quality is actually our second pillar. [chuckles] We make sure we get the right balance between that. We've just got to make sure that people realize, okay, we need to satisfy the customers' requirements, we need to produce a product for the customer, but we need to do it safely at all times. That's making sure workplace health and safety comes as a number one pillar at all times.
[00:17:54] Carol: Over the evolution of a strong safety culture at Allied Pinnacle, what do you think have been seen by your senior leadership as the outcomes?
[00:18:05] Maria: To help change and make Allied Pinnacle a more positive safety culture, we have to have, and we identified we needed to have management commitment. It had to come from the top. If you don't get it coming down from the top and then coming back up to the management, it wouldn't work. You could have all the workers on board but have non-management on board, your culture is not going to work. You got to have all the pieces of the puzzle to be able to make your safety culture work.
[00:18:34] Carol: What did the managers actually value about that now?
[00:18:37] Maria: Less injuries occurring [chuckles] and workers' comp premiums have reduced. Seeing that we are classed as the number one business in Australia that has a good safety record.
[00:18:50] Carol: That's something to be very proud of at every level from employee to the CEO, surely.
[00:18:57] Maria: Definitely is. In New South Wales and Touchwood, we have never ever been prosecuted in the whole time I've been in this role.
[00:19:04] Carol: How do you all leaders at Allied Pinnacle actually demonstrate their commitment to the safety culture?
[00:19:11] Maria: One of the things whenever the site managers or the senior managers go to visit any of the sites, they are required to go for a walk around the site and talk with the workers and highlight any safety concerns that they have and bring them back to the site manager and say, "What can we all do as a business to try and rectify this problem or prevent any further safety concerns?"
[00:19:32] Carol: What business benefits, Maria, can manufacturers realize when they have a strong safety culture? You've talked about the obvious one, less injuries, but what else?
[00:19:43] Maria: A happy workforce. You will have workers that want to work in your business. They'll be proud to work in your business because they'll say, "This business is one of the safest businesses that I know of. I've worked in other businesses where they don't care. I'll be proud to work for this business."
[00:20:01] Carol: Given your experience, both within that organization and as a mentor, and there's got to be a wealth of experience there, what tips or advice would you have for other leaders?
[00:20:12] Maria: Is making sure that you have a commitment by senior managers. One of the things identified through the mentor-mentee program is when the businesses were registered to participate in that business, they picked the person that they felt, which was going to be able to do the most work for the mentor program. That wasn't always the senior manager. Whatever you're trying to help that business implement, there was no commitment by the management. You must get it from the top. If you don't get the management commitment, you're not going to get the support that you need to get your system in place. Have a good incident reporting system and hazard reporting system. You need to make sure that that system requires investigations and assessments done within a good timely manner and the actions are implemented when they're required to be done. One of the things I've been-- In some of the mentees that I've been with that they have a reporting system that they report all incidents and their hazards, but then they don't do anything about it. There's no use reporting something if you're not going to carry out and fix the problem. The thing is, it's good that you're reporting it, but you must fix it, otherwise, the issues are going to continue to stay there.
[00:21:20] Carol: Is there an example that you can share with us about how the worker consultation has actually resulted in a clear benefit to Allied Pinnacle?
[00:21:28] Maria: One example I could give you is, because we're a fairly big business and we have a parent company that's in Japan and around the world, there was an incident occurred in one of those sites in America where a person was injured due to not isolating a plant and equipment and was exposed to moving parts. We developed safety alerts, which we issue out to all the sites to make sure that they put up on the notice boards and have a regular toolbox meeting and discuss the content of that and making sure if they identify anything that sounds safe to bring it to the attention to their manager or supervisor and to ensure that they're following safe work practices.
From one safety alert we just recently sent out about this incident that occurred in America, a worker made a decision to check his work area, and he identified one particular area which was made a really high risk, which had insufficient guarding which exposed the worker to moving parts. Many people have been in that area, worked in that area, and never mentioned anything and this particular worker brought it up and he said, "Look, I just want to let you know, I've identified something, can we do something about it?"
They raised the hazard report, they followed it through the site manager, it was escalated to myself and to my manager, and it was fixed immediately. From that particular process, they identified that they could now start to report things, and then new actions would be taken. There was a positive from that one consultation process, which probably would never have brought this issue up in the past unless we had that process that occurred and brought up that safety alone.
[00:23:03] Carol: Maria, how do you now relate to that story and use that story, because I bet that you do when you are talking to your own workers or to senior management or indeed to the other organizations that you are a mentor to.
[00:23:17] Maria: We do regular training throughout the year, and in our toolboxes, we try and come up with some examples. One of the things is we will show them some photos of some hazards and say, "What can you see here?" Then we'll show them some photos on their sites and say, "What can you see here? Is this occurring in your area? You can do something about this and we encourage you." We've provided these little cards that they can fill in, which says, if you've identified a particular hazard in this area, you don't even have to put your name on it.
If you worry if there's going to be any repercussions back on you from your supervisor and say, "Don't report stuff, because we don't want to have anything highlighted in our area," just fill it in, but you don't have to put your name in. It's then taken up to the maintenance team or given to your safety representatives, and then it's brought up to the site managers to address.
[00:24:05] Carol: Maria, if someone was to say to you privately that they had observed something but they were afraid to report it, how would you deal with that at every level?
[00:24:15] Maria: I would get all the information that I can from the worker and advise them that their name will be kept confidential. I can then talk to the safety rep if there's one on the site to say, "Look, I just want to talk to you about something that's been identified to me." I don't have to disclose who the person is, but I'll say, "What can we do to try and rectify this thing?" We can then go and talk to the site manager, or if I can fix the problem straight away, I'll do that.
We have that occur quite regularly because we work with a labor-hire company. Because the labor-hire company has an account manager at each site, I then refer to the account manager and say, "Look, can you now bring this issue up with the site manager to say that you've identified it so there's no repercussion on the worker at all?" We just have to keep reminding them that they have an obligation to protect themselves and others, and it is a legal requirement to do that.
We also highlight to them that you can't be sacked for reporting something that sounds safe as long as you can justify the reasoning why you don't want to do something unsafe or there is an unsafe working environment for you, or if you just don't want to do the job because you just don't like cleaning, that's not acceptable. If you can justify that they require you to clean something and they're requiring you to use a chemical which is burning your hands, you've got a good justification there. That's what we need. That's what the message we keep saying to them.
Part of the consultation process is, when we do regular toolbox meetings, any safety concerns that you have, here's an opportunity to highlight them. If you don't want to bring it up in the public in this main meeting here, you could come and talk to myself or your safety rep at any other time. Having the safety reps is very, very important, because sometimes the meetings may only occur once a week, or maybe once a month, or every three months at a site. The safety rep is a person that could be in between the worker and the management and can go up to management any time of the day, any time of the week, and report the incident straight away.
[00:26:15] Carol: Maria, you also mentioned earlier, an average of 18 deaths a year?
[00:26:20] Maria: From SafeWork Australia, yes, that's the average statistics or that's right back from 2016. That's quite a few.
[00:26:27] Carol: That's 18 people, that’s 18 families and their loved ones, I'd imagine, well, I know, that not going home from work would be the worst possible outcome of not having a strong safety culture. What are the other risks of not having a good, solid, collaborative safety culture in place?
[00:26:47] Maria: Unfortunately, for the business, either a prosecution or a fine, or you're going to have a closure of the business. Unfortunately, with new manslaughter laws now coming in in Victoria which is currently in Queensland, that is just not good for any small business at all, especially if you are a small business. With a big business, you'd expect, like Allied Pinnacle, that we would have a safe system in place. For a small business, you would expect them to have it in place, but the consequences is a lot higher for them.
[00:27:21] Carol: Maria, what are you most proud of through this part of your career?
[00:27:25] Maria: Proud that, as I highlighted before, that we've never been prosecuted. I'm proud that I have a very good relationship with the regulators. We've had somebody that's had a safety concern, and that's another way that somebody can report any concerns that they have to the regulators, and being able to rectify the problem immediately by just providing all of the information that they require to show that we do have safe systems at work at our sites.
[00:27:53] Carol: Our thanks to Maria for joining us on SafeWork Leader Talks to share her valuable insights. Maria's experience shows that consultation is essential in building a strong safety culture. When you give workers the opportunity to participate and share information, you can become more aware of hazards in the workplace as well as finding and communicating practical solutions to them. Consultations with workers can take many forms. From regular meetings to setting up a health and safety committee. Working with a mentor like Maria is a great way to learn how to establish good consultation practices.
I'm Carol Duncan, and this has been a SafeWork leadership talk. To learn more about leading a strong workplace safety culture or to listen to the other episodes in this series, visit safework.nsw.gov.au/leadership.
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