Starting to scratch a professional itch

Do you ever feel like you have an itch you can't scratch?

A problem you know needs solving, but no idea how to go about it?

 (This is a 5 minute read. I hope you find it helpful/interesting/insightful. If you get to the end, let me know with a thumbs up, or a comment). 

For me, I spend my time and energy focussed on how to make drastic improvements in health and safety.  What that looks like in practice is nothing like a normal job, or consultancy. 

Allow me to explain.  

Learning from the Past

I'm a health and safety professional by education, and it has been the focus of most of my professional working life. I've worked in consulting and in-house roles in a range of industries and companies.

Over time two things emerged which led me to where I am now. 

First, I realised how much unlearning I needed to do about my 'education' in health and safety. So much of it was disconnected from reality, was over the top or was irrelevant. At the same time, I realised that there were so many things that made me, and others successful, that no one ever gets taught in health and safety. 

Second, I realised that I liked taking risks, trying new things, experimenting, challenging the status quo. That need, combined with some wonderfully supportive leaders, meant I earned a very long rope in my previous roles. But having a fulltime job, with a boss and a structure and an organisation with all its own politics and stuff going on, still felt constraining. 

 So, if I believed there was a need to tinker with how health and safety was done, and needed the freedom to do it, it meant walking away from a traditional job and creating my own, in the form of a business. 

 My mission has always centred on health and safety, through the lens of innovation and experimentation. That leads me to a range of bespoke engagements where I help guide, facilitate, strategise, and coach individuals and businesses through alternative ways of achieving health and safety outcomes. 

 It also led me to question how I might scale the impact of my work supporting the growth of other health and safety professionals, something I had relished in my previous jobs. A podcast seemed like a great experiment to start with and Safety on Tap was born. The connection and coalescing of a global community of likeminded but diverse health and safety professionals interested and invested in their own growth, then led me to the next thing: Safety on Tap Connected. This is another experiment in a drastically different approach to professional growth (you can read more about it here). 

So I was helping individuals and companies directly, and indirectly by supporting the growth and development of health and safety professionals at scale, across the globe. 

 But two, related things, were still itching me. 

SME's and Primary Industries - In need of a different kind of health and safety support

 he first, and broader itch, was small and medium business. There is a vital need for improved health and safety performance, support, and dialogue in the small end of town, who make up some 90-ish% of businesses in most countries, and at least in Australia employ 50% of the workforce! I had a crack at some experiments in that space, and failed to make enough impact in a way that was commercially viable. No biggie, I learned a lot and figured it's just not the right time/approach for me, for now. 

Closely related to this, which is the crux of this new announcement, is a specific focus on the diversity of sectors who grow our food and fibre, collectively known as primary industries (or primary production, or rural industries, or agriculture, or aquaculture…..see, I told you it was diverse!). 

I have a deep and personal connection with primary production, the quality and importance of our food and its provenance, with numerous extended family members in the sector supplying beautiful oysters, crab/cray, grains, oilseeds, sheep, beef, and wine grapes. 

The thing is, the people who grow our food and fibre are 8 times more likely to die at work, than any other worker in any other industry. And the stats on injury and illness are in a similarly poor direction. 

And I had no idea how I could do anything to help. 

Why is primary production - farming and fishing - so unique?

You see, primary industries are unlike any other sector of the economy. Vastly diverse, geographically spread, subject to so much external risk (like weather & commodity markets) and mostly family businesses intertwined with family members, workers, friends, kids, neighbours, and community members. 

Nothing that I knew about health and safety was likely to be transferrable, because the context was so different. There are plenty of people and plenty of effort directed at this challenge, which didn’t seem to move the needle on the dial. I had more questions than answers before I could even contemplate what good health and safety might look like across an entire collection of sectors like this. 

The itch couldn’t be scratched. I was bothered. 

Heading in the right direction (Asking, not telling)

It seemed logical that we needed to learn before we could do, so I turned to research. A passionately committed friend and collaborator Alex Thomas and I framed up an action research proposal to explore what effective leadership & change already looked like in agriculture, and how that might be leveraged or developed in aid of health and safety. That led us to some wonderfully supportive stakeholders from government (Senator Anne Ruston), industry (Rob Kerrin, Paul Daniel), and Regulators (Phil Boyle, Martyn Campbell). 

But potential funding for this project had been frozen. At the same time, the Primary Industries Health and Safety Partnership, which managed research, development and extension (RD&E) funding and projects on behalf of some primary industry sectors, was undertaking a review of their approach. 

Under the leadership and determination of Patrick Murphy, John Harvey & Jennifer Medway, a new approach was needed. They saw the opportunity to offer an alternative approach to how industry was engaged in and investing in RD&E for health and safety. They saw the need to ask better questions, to offer better value to the industry with the intent of closing the gap between what we already know 'works' to improve the safety of work, and the reality on the ground. 

A new opportunity - The Rural Safety and Health Alliance

As a result of a competitive public tender process, Fidesa/Safety on Tap under my leadership were awarded the three year contract to make this new vision for health and safety in primary industries a reality. 

As the Executive Officer of the newly created Rural Safety and Health Alliance, under Chair Patrick Murphy and with the support of 9 seed-funding Rural Research and Development Corporations, the change has begun.

We are experimenting with a new approach to sector wide change, through the vehicle of research, development and extension. We have a massive challenge to tackle, and a massive opportunity to make a positive difference. 

I'm excited to have the opportunity to lead this new collaborative venture for long-term, sustainable, transformational change. 

And no, my professional itch isn't scratched yet. But it's getting closer. 

Where to from here?

If you are interested in keeping up to date with this new mission, send an email to [email protected] and we'll go on the journey together. 

And this doesn’t affect any of the other parts of my mission, my reason for being. The Safety on Tap Podcast, Safety on Tap Connected growth accelerator, and my bespoke services will continue with gusto. If you want to talk about a new approach to your health and safety, or are interested in professional development that accelerates your growth, send me an email, I'd love to hear from you: [email protected]

(By the by, the way I'm talking about my clarity of focus has come from deep and ongoing reflection and discovery of my ikigai, or reason for being. This is a very simple and powerful concept I use in coaching to help clarify life focus and development gaps/goals. If you want to learn more about this you should listen to the podcast episode I did on this here).