Promoting and implementing a stronger workplace safety culture

I started out doing accounts, bookkeeping and admin support, but the business I was in asked me to start doing some safety documentation work in-house. I wrote our internal safety management system and was reviewing documentation for clients and it was decided that, OK, I’d better go out and get a qualification if I was going to keep going in this direction. We started taking on more and more client work until we had to hire someone else to do the admin side.

Safety was never something that I saw myself going into, but the opportunity presented itself, I did it, and I enjoyed it. Having been doing it for so long, I also enjoy being more able to pick and choose the projects that I take on personally – auditing, doing investigations and interacting with clients. That's what I do best. I also like the management side of things, looking after the team and mentoring the others as well. That's just been fantastic.

The safety and QHSE aspects of businesses are essential. Businesses need to understand how to have a good safety culture and people should be able to speak up about issues without fear of repercussion.

I find that it's really important to be out there, talking to clients, helping them understand how they’ll meet their duty of care under the legislation. You know, we've all got family at home; it’s about making sure that everyone comes home at the end of the day, exactly as they went to work in the morning.

I got to go to Thailand to assist one of our onshore wind farm clients. I helped them retain their environmental management system certification on two of their sites and then gain certification for the remaining six sites. I helped train their workers and implement the whole system into the company. It was a great experience – both being in Bangkok and going out to rural Thailand, meeting the people and learning about the culture, and helping people understand why they were doing [this activity]. It was also my first really big contract where I went and did something like that on my own; I'd always previously been part of teams and now I was travelling alone to a foreign country with a slightly different culture.

Another highlight is having two graduates in my team at the moment and mentoring them. I love watching them grow and being able to impart knowledge from my last 15 years! Helping these women achieve their career goals is fantastic and they still teach me new things as well.

Never turning down training or opportunities to learn new things. That's probably one of the big key things I tell everyone: whenever you can, get out and learn something new. I'm doing another course in two weeks’ time, this time on managing psychological hazards in the workplace.

I suppose as women, we take on more because we are still mums and wives and so on when we come home. I’m definitely still working on this, and it can be hard in consulting, but you need to find the right balance and not try to do it all at once. I heard a good piece of advice from Murray Burling, [Managing Director – Energy, Australia Asia Pacific] the other day. He said, “A career is a marathon, not a sprint!”

Not really. I kind of grew up in the industry, but the Energy sector is still very male-dominated. I did an audit on an oil rig just before COVID: apart from myself as a consultant and one other technical person, there were no other technical women on-board the rig.

Even in this day and age, there are still not as many women in the Energy sector. Why is that? Who knows? Is it that they're not starting them early enough in school? I think high school’s probably too late to be telling girls they can do things. I’ve got two daughters and girls already fall into those gender stereotypes [about the careers they want] at a very, very young age. I think science should probably be more of a focus even in primary schools. We should tell kids about all the different jobs and things they can do with no stereotyping whatsoever. If you can do a role physically, emotionally and technically, then go for it.

I do agree that we need more women in managerial roles, especially in the Energy sector. More in less “traditional-sounding” roles as well – the technical roles.

The Energy sector definitely does have some barriers up, although it is improving and conversations like this one are a great place to start improving awareness.

My personal approach is around supporting the women around me. I help them to achieve their goals, applaud them and really celebrate them. I do it through mentoring and teaching – my big thing – but I have seen it happen in industry that some women start working their way up and they say to others, “OK, I fought my way up. Now, you fight your way up.” My opinion is that we should be helping each other to get up there. Someone said to me, “It's about sending the elevator back down and helping others get up to the top.”

I'm all for complete equality in the workplace. I love the fact that I’m seeing more women moving into the Energy sector and also into QHSE across all industries.