CASE STUDIES

Reducing risk in the workplace

Our safety performance has been a major focus of our sustainability efforts in the 2005 financial year. In 2003, our internal OH&S performance caused us concern. With employees operating various functions and spread over 280 worksites Australia-wide, and as the country's largest underwriter of workers' compensation insurance, it is particularly important for our safety culture to be best practice.

Regularly reviewed by the OH&S Steering Committee, our safety strategy is based around leadership, communication, use of technology and decentralisation of the management of risk.

Specific health and safety targets are also incorporated into our senior management's incentive schemes. This priority of workplace safety is highlighted in our CEO assuming the role of Chief Safety Officer.

The besafe programme: The besafe employee communication programme introduced the SEE, THINK, DO concept to our people. Its aim is for employees to take action to identify and resolve OH&S issues themselves.

The besafe programme is complemented by a range of other OH&S initiatives: we developed an online training programme for all our people, implemented an electronic accident and incident reporting process, and introduced the Internal Risk Radar, an online OH&S self-assessment process, into all our worksites.

Our OH&S push also featured a first aid training initiative, driver training programme and employee health and wellbeing initiatives - all of which have had a major impact on our OH&S performance:

We have achieved a 57% reduction in our total incurred workers' compensation costs, a 22% reduction in Lost Time Injury Frequency Rates and a significant improvement in our incident to claims ratio in the last financial year

St John Ambulance Australia First Aid Alliance: A key part of our alliance with St John Ambulance Australia has been the introduction of a first aid training initiative available to all our people nationally. Since forming the alliance in 2003, 1,858 employees have completed a four-hour emergency first aid course - skills that they will take to the community as well as their workplace.

Risk Radar: Risk Radar is an online self-assessment of safety and environmental performance designed to help improve identification, assessment and control of workplace hazards. Originally developed to assist our smash repairer network, the award-winning tool's potential for a wider application has since been recognised.

The Risk Radar is hosted on our intranet - and adopts an interactive, step-by-step approach specifically customised to meet the needs of employers. It allows worksites to assess their own performance against key safety and environmental criteria and gives our management team the information they need to strive for best practice. Risk Radar generates a specific short-term action plan based on the user's responses. This is then implemented and reviewed regularly.

Sharing lessons learned with customers

Through our workers' compensation business, we are sharing our experiences in improving OH&S with our commercial customers to help them prevent workplace injuries and get injured workers back to work earlier.