Why Accreditation Matters - a perspective from an idiot in the room

Working at NATA over the past 18 months has been an interesting journey for me, going from being an expert in my field to “an idiot in the room”.?

But it has been a wonderfully enlightening journey of discovery, fun and curiosity that has made me think differently and appreciate how organisations, like NATA, play an important role in our lives, even though we don’t know it.?

I wrote this article to explain what I’ve been doing over the past 18 months and to highlight the role of NATA in our society because we should all be thankful that organisations like NATA exist.??

We take it for granted, but the simple fact is that almost everything that we use in our daily lives is tested to ensure it is safe for us. Yet how do we know that this testing is done right and that we can be confident in the results???

Like many, I never really questioned whether the water we drink is safe, whether our food is fit for purpose or that that we can trust that we are actually getting a litre of petrol when we fill up at the petrol pump.?

Time is one of the most important commodities we rely on, but I never stopped to think about whether a second (yes that small notion of time) is actually a second. The implications if “a second” wasn’t correct would be profound (that's a whole story in itself).?

What about the materials and products we use to build our houses, buildings and our roads. We trust these products and services, but do you ever think whether they have been tested to do what they are meant to.?

At some stage most of us would have had a blood test. Would we ever question the results we receive and rely upon to diagnose so many things for our health and well being.?

I’ve discovered that NATA accreditation plays a vital role in the testing process of all of the things I’ve just mentioned, plus many more, by accrediting the organisations who conduct these tests to ensure they are being done competently to deliver consistent results.?

Simply put, NATA “tests the testers”. Using a peer assessment model of impartial experts NATA accreditation ensures that a culture of continuous improvement is upheld that provides us with confidence and assurance.?

Australians really should be aware of the work that NATA and accredited testing does. Yet ask the average Australian and many will never have heard of NATA. I certainly hadn't before I joined the organisation.?

So who is NATA? NATA stands for the National Association of Testing Authorities and is Australia’s national accreditation body supporting our national technical infrastructure by underpinning activities that rely on testing, measurement, inspection and related services.?

NATA is a not-for-profit member organisation and a founding member of ILAC, the International Laboratory Accreditation Cooperation, and APAC, the Asia Pacific Accreditation Cooperation.?

The Commonwealth Government designates NATA as Australia’s national compliance monitoring authority for the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Principles of Good Laboratory Practice (GLP).?

I joined NATA in July 2021 - in the middle of the COVID Pandemic - in a newly created role as NATA’s Head of Marketing & Communications to help deliver on their strategic plan to raise the organisation’s visibility.?

Before NATA my career had been built working in the complex, fast-paced and transformative media and entertainment sector, building brands, connecting consumers to content, growing audiences and driving revenue opportunities.?

I had numerous senior management roles, managing small and large teams, for Australia’s biggest and most successful entertainment and media companies including Foxtel, FOX SPORTS, Presto, Nine Network, SBS and News Corporation.?

In that media and entertainment world “accreditation” used to mean access-all-areas to sports events - the AFL, NRL, Cricket, Boxing and even the US Masters Golf, FIFA World Cup and The Commonwealth Games.?

“Accreditation” afforded me backstage access to the Logie Awards, Helpmann Awards and exclusive “money-can’t buy” tickets to red carpet movie premieres.?

Since joining NATA I now understand Accreditation to be something very different, something very important and something very meaningful in our society.

Accreditation is something that impacts and helps all of us in our daily lives, but it something that so few of us are even aware of.?

I’m incredibly thankful I get to work with some of the brightest and curious minds from the world of science and am marvelling at the work they do in their specific fields of excellence and their immense contribution to making our lives better, in small, but significant ways.?

For many years NATA has been content to keep its head down, to remain hidden, or as my CEO Jennifer Evans said to me when I joined “to not put our head above the pulpit”.??

NATA has been described as “Australia’s best kept secret” and I'm on a mission to try and change that.?

So why is visibility important now? Like many organisations NATA is now in a far more competitive environment.??

To remain relevant it’s important that people understand why having organisations like NATA working behind the scenes is good for them.?

And NATA is not alone. NATA along with the National Measurement Institute, Australia (NMI), Standards Australia and the Joint Accreditation System of Australia and New Zealand (JAS-ANZ), are Australia’s four main conformity assessment bodies.?

Together they are Australia’s Hidden Infrastructure on which our nation has been built and why we continue to prosper here and internationally.??

You need organisations like Standards Australia to know what you’re benchmarking against. They define and set the standards that we all use and rely on.?

And then the testing and measurement capabilities need to be refined with the help of the National Measurement Institute to understand how these results stack up.??

Accreditation through businesses such as NATA can then come in to ensure that those doing the testing are competent to repeat this approach at scale.?

The fact we live in a lucky country is in part because of this hidden infrastructure and the role each of these four organisations play.??

I’m relishing the opportunity to try and help tell NATA’s story and the stories of its members and raising NATA’s visibility and brand through a focused content marketing strategy.?

We are telling NATA’s story by producing content that includes visual storytelling that “Entertains to Engage”.?

We are creating hero Content, plus curating and re-purposing relevant content from others including our members, industry and the like.?

We are engaging with our audiences to try and grow our community across all our channels (via our newsletter NATA News, digital and our website, social channels and through PR and publicity).?

A key focus of our strategy has been to tell NATA’s story because good stories are authentic and creative and can create an emotional and personal connection to change the way we feel, think, act and behave.?

For NATA to have the biggest impact and be successful we need to connect our message and our stories to the broadest possible audience.?

It starts with our staff and NATA’s army of volunteer technical assessors - our “heroes who don’t wear capes” in NATA’s universe.?

Another group of superheroes are our amazing Member organisations.?

Some of our Members have been with us on our journey for more than 70 years. Our members are also "heroes who don’t wear capes".?

Then we have our numerous industry bodies and government departments (State and Federal) – our stakeholders are many and varied.?

The one thing all these groups have in common is they are all consumers and consumers are the ultimate beneficiaries and end users of accredited testing.??

So, we are aiming broad to make more people aware of the important role of accreditation and how accredited testing plays a hidden yet vital role that allows us to live our lives with confidence.?

NATA’s 75th anniversary has provided a rich opportunity to tell NATA’s story.?

I vividly recall my first conversation with my boss, Melinda Spinks NATA’s General Manager of Business Services in early September 2021, just two months after I started with NATA.?

She said to me “by the way did you know NATA turns 75 in 2022”. I said wow that’s bloody amazing, what do we have planned. She wryly smiled and said “nothing at the moment, that’s why I am telling you…”?

As a marketer these kinds of events are a gift. What an amazing opportunity for NATA put itself in the spotlight and tell its story through its history.?

A perfect visibility opportunity to engage with our Members as well as our Technical Assessors, Stakeholders, Government, Staff, media and consumers.?

So what have we achieved over the past 12 months??

Our focus has been to create and use emotional storytelling to connect NATA, its history and its role and how accreditation impacts consumers in their everyday lives.??

Coming from a video background and understanding the power of video and visual storytelling in creating an emotional connection, we wanted to use video as a way to celebrate, communicate and connect our message with our audiences.?

We started simply by tweaking our logo with tagline “NATA, delivering confidence for 75 years” - the simple aim to remind people we’ve been here for 75 years and what accreditation does - “deliver confidence” in the competency of testing.?

Next, I engaged with a former colleague Andrew Marsh, an extremely talented producer, director and amazing storyteller, to produce a proof of concept video called “Why NATA” and then off the back of this quickly commissioned a 6-part small web video series called NATAlee which was quirky but a different way to tell NATA’s story.?

NATAlee starred a young teenage girl called Natalie who becomes an advocate for all the things NATA does and is constantly reminding her family of the work we do, including changing her name to “NA-TA-Lee”.?

Our main project to mark the 75th anniversary was to commission a short film to celebrate and observe what NATA has done over the past 75 years to contribute to the best interests of Australia.?

It was an extremely ambitious project. The original concept was to simply do a short 5-minute video that featured some past and present employees.?

We ended up with an 11-minute documentary providing a powerful narrative to the important role that NATA has played over the past 75 years using interview grabs to tell the role of NATA across the years and decades.?

The project was originally called NATA 75 but we later renamed it to “Australia’s Best Kept Secret” off the back of a headline article published about us in the Sydney Morning Herald and a quote from our film.?

The interviews allowed us to capture additional promotional content as well.?

It's worth noting our first interview wasn’t recorded until December 5, 2021 but were able to launch the NATA 75 Film project on our anniversary on February 5 and 6, 2022 to coincide with the first NATA council meeting in Melbourne in 1947.?

Another key moment to shine a spotlight on NATA and accreditation was World Accreditation Day on June 9.?

To mark World Accreditation Day we produced a live webinar and in person event titled Why Accreditation Matters. What better way to put the spotlight on NATA and accreditation than to hold the webinar inside one of Sydney’s largest movie cinemas.?

We wanted Why Accreditation Matters to be a thought leadership event. Our CEO Jennifer Evans gave a keynote titled “Not All Heroes Wear Capes” which told NATA’s enduring story and why accreditation is important for us all and paid tribute to our Members and Volunteer Technical Assessors.?

And we sought out key stories from our members which spoke to the value of accreditation and how it positively impacts our daily lives.?

Stories such as …how accreditation and accredited testing is helping to eliminate Cervical Cancer, hopefully by 2038.??

How one of Australia’s biggest banks, NAB, uses Forensics accreditation inside their organisation.?

And, with our friends at Standards Australia a thought-provoking session on new standards around Smart Cities, Artificial Intelligence and Blockchain. According to Standards Australia there are some 4000 new Standards on the way and Accreditation has a role to play in ensure these standards are upheld.???

There is a great saying about video content: that is “it’s only a repeat if you have seen it”, so many more viewers have since watched our content segments and videos on You Tube and via our website and social channels and will continue to do so for years to come.?

The initiatives I have mentioned have created great, emotionally connecting hero content for NATA and have helped to start telling NATA’s story.?

As we start 2023, we are preparing to launch a new video project titled NATA Delivering Confidence.?

And we have already commenced planning activities around World Accreditation Day in June 2023 and looking at great content and stories from our members that highlight the value of accreditation directly to consumers.??

In my eyes NATA really is the invisible thread that underpins Australia’s safety and success.?

And by telling NATA’s story and showcasing how accreditation impacts our daily lives will remind all Australians the important work we all do and Why Accreditation Matters.?

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------