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TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker
This is an ihs.com.au production
Brendan Torazzi
Welcome to Episode 46 of the Australian Health and Safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of a show and today I'm joined with David Clark, who is the CEO of the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. I've got it out, David, how are you going?
Unknown Speaker
Get a Brendan how things.
Brendan Torazzi
Great. Thank you now, how long have you been running? You've had you've had a bit of a rebrand of late. How long have you been running the Institute for?
Unknown Speaker
Yes, I was. I'm staggered myself. Sometimes when I look and realize it's been a little while now. Nearly seven years? Well, six and a half years really. I came in September 2014. So it's September this year? It will be seven years. And it's certainly certainly changed a lot in that period of time.
Brendan Torazzi
And what was your background before that we had you been involved with associations before or tried to, to, to this position?
Unknown Speaker
Well, I've never known what I wanted to do when I grew up. And so I've, I've kind of been a bit of a journeyman. I originally trained as a potter and traveled and did a lot of different work and eventually came and joined the Commonwealth employment service, I'd originally changed to Potter and then sort of transferred that to teaching that art teaching. But and then I did that briefly then worked in, worked in the Commonwealth employment service, got very, very interested in issues for younger people and long term unemployed people and people from non English speaking backgrounds, and the challenges that they faced in, in getting access to work. Okay, and then I moved from there into what was a youth guarantee program, run by the state government of Victoria, working with people in the St Kilda, South Melbourne area, long term unemployed kids trying to get them into work, a lot of drug issues, a lot of homelessness and other abuse issues. Then I've set up an employment program at a disability organization and eventually ran that disability organization that supported people with a disability into employment and education and training and started doing advocacy work also around changing the laws associated with institutionalization. So that was a very, very sort of busy time and a period when the Commonwealth was really translating from being a service provider to a service purchaser. So there was a tremendous amount of money flowing out of the Commonwealth into not for profit and other organizations to become providers of services. And so the organization grew very rapidly. Then I looked after the peak body in Victoria for community based mental health services, a period of time, yeah, which got me into that peak area. And after that, I looked after the Australian New Zealand body for park management organizations looking after environmental and land management. And from there, I've went on to run the Australian Institute, while Bob was in this Safety Institute of Australia. And in between that I've done a lot of work with boards and consulting work around business development, and especially around not for profits and fixing problems in not for profit organizations.
Brendan Torazzi
So what what was the, I guess, the inspiration to change from Sia, which was pretty well known over to the Australian Institute of Health and Safety. What what led that change? Well,
Unknown Speaker
two or three things. One is that when I came to the institute six and a half years ago, just the organization's more than 70 years old, and it's been through other iterations originally started as the Safety Engineering Society in 1948. And in the 70s, change to the Safety Institute of Australia, there were a couple of things going on for the institute six and a half years ago. One was that the organization was struggling, I wasn't doing very well. I think, I think they'd been a few mistakes made. And the organization was struggling for credibility had lost a bit of reputation. And there was a desire to immediately rebrand from some people with the view that, you know, the brand had suffered some damage. But my feeling was that the first thing you need to do is you have to walk the walk before he talked. And so we didn't rebrand the other, but there was a rebranding, there was potential to rebrand if we could kind of rebuild the way people perceive to the organization. Now, that doesn't necessarily mean you change your name, but certainly, potentially rebranding. The other big issue. And the more important issue overlaid over that is that, really, we're 20 years late in acknowledging the safety, sorry, the health in health and safety, right. And, of course, most people are very, very aware of the emerged, stronger emergence in recent years of the role that health and safety professionals need to play in the health space, where historically there's been a science based focus on engineering process, safety and safety has as as hazards and the science and practice of safety. But there are also a lot of health related issues in there as well. And not just automatically related to health damage that can be caused by things like you know, Deus disease and things like that, but also the emergence of a greater understanding of people's psychological health. Yeah, and the importance of treating, treating people's trading or managing the risks associated with the psychological health of workforces. So we have the rise of health generally. And then within that the rise of mental health, psychological health, within that framework, and we talked to the members about it, we talked to a lot of people in the marketplace about it, and there was a very, very strong view that the organization should actually change its name and include the term health in its name. So we combined that with, we combined that with the fact that we needed a bit of a rebrand. And by that stage, we deserved a bit of a rebrand. Yeah, I think. Yep.
Brendan Torazzi
So who actually owns the institute? Is it a member owned, organized? That's
Unknown Speaker
right. So it's a company limited by guarantee to company so it's registered with ASIC and follows the rules of ASIC in corporate Australia, with companies limited by guarantee that, I suppose the simplest definition of all is that the shareholders are effectively the members of which we have many 1000. And the members own the company, but they're not financial beneficiaries of the company. profits are distributed via to the membership, they must be through dividends or anything of that nature, they must be reinvested in the purpose of the company. And the purpose of the company is to improve health and safety in Australia, and to improve the practice of people who work in the field of health and safety. So to risk injury, accidents, illness and death.
Brendan Torazzi
So to that degree, it's a not for profit,
Unknown Speaker
I take it. That's right. That's a that's a definition of a not for profit. And so we've certainly that, and we're owned by the profession itself. So the Institute is a living example of the health and safety profession. Managing its own affairs, if you like.
Brendan Torazzi
So what for people that aren't members. What I mean, what are some of the benefits of like, how does it actually work? Like say you're in? Victoria, you're you're a member of the Institute. You have, I don't know, regular meetups, what, how does obviously take the last 12 months out of the equation, but what's, how does it actually work in practice that your membership? Or is it? The first thing I say?
Unknown Speaker
So the first thing I'd say about it is that membership is just a form of engagement. So when we look at the function of the organization, I think, again, we're going to talk to you about changes that have taken place, I think six and a half years ago, we were very much an organization that was focused on providing Member Services. And if you remember, you remember, if you weren't, we didn't talk to you at all. That has dramatically changed. So rather than have members at the apex, if you like, we we see members are important stakeholder group, but our services to the Australian community to improve health and safety in companies and to the profession itself overall. And the support and engagement we offer is to the whole profession. Now we love it when people join as members. It's a great form of engagement. It's a great way to give people discounted access to products and services, and I'll talk about them in a moment. But it's just a really good way to do things from an organizational management perspective that generates, you know, clarity in my revenue base and things like that. But the truth is that just because a person is not a member, doesn't mean they're not part of the profession. And if we're interested in supporting and promoting the development of the profession, we need to respect and value people, regardless of whether they're a member of the Institute, and we do. So, whereas, you know, six and a half years ago, we had just over four 4000 members. And, you know, we we ran, you know, 35 events and had 4000 registrations of those events and 95% of them were members, today, we have the same number of members more or less we put the membership is younger today than it was, there were more women in the membership than there were but you know, it's, it's, it's only grown a little bit in aggregate. But we have 15,000 people a year, who now engage in our events and activities in some way or engage with the Institute. So people come and registered our air events were around 150 events a year instead of 30 events a year, and they're all about networking, professional development, people getting the opportunity to engage and to learn and to be part of their profession, or contributed to our advocacy and policy work that we do, providing an opinion and a voice for the profession when it comes to national and state policies and practices in health and safety. So we do if a person wants to become a member, they can pay us a membership fee, that membership fee is $200 a year.
Brendan Torazzi
Not going to break the bank as
Unknown Speaker
well, it's not we pretty much provide. I mean, you know, it's literally multiples of that in terms of value. Yeah, to people. I mean, the the discount for participation in their national conference alone is $200. So that's pretty much it, we have a magazine, we have access to worldwide database of research and journals around health and safety. We give people free access to we provide a range of news and information services, we pray, we have a mentorship program. We have CPD planning tools, we we really we've got some special networks. Emerging Leaders are a young group of health and safety professionals, women in safety and health who look at some of the challenges of working in a field which basically has, you know, a gender balance to two to one male to female, and supports women to have supportive and effective careers in health and safety. There's a whole bunch of different things that we do. And we in addition to all the things that I mentioned, we also see ourselves as a steward for the profession. So in our stewardship, we have stewardship of the Australian IHS body of knowledge, which is the best example of its kind in the world today. It's the receptacle of health and safety knowledge that's used by universities around Australia, as core source material for the bachelor degrees and postgraduate degrees in health and safety that exist. we accredit higher education in Australia through the Australian ITNs Education Accreditation Board. So we're interested in continually improving the quality of the education and the training that people get. Now, some people in the profession don't care about that, because they just want to know well, what's the what's in it for me with my $200? What do I get? I'm pretty comfortable about what people get for that. Yeah. You know, we we now run a free webinar series for our members around career development, which is increasingly important. And, of course, we run a set of national certification program for the health and safety profession, and we're looking to grow there. So there's a tremendous amount of things that we do. Membership gets you connected, gets you the opportunity to be involved in things like mentorship, or leadership in the profession itself. Participation in the range of networks and activities, we run. Participation in the formal training and development that we run and access to all the information services that are described.
Brendan Torazzi
Can you speak to me a little bit about CPD points like that is mandatory or the Institute of pushing to become like, I know like there's like, say, builders, and yeah, dentists and a lot of other professions, they have CPD points that are mandatory every 12 months to make sure that your parent Yeah, is there something like that exists for health and safety like on a mandatory basis or what
Unknown Speaker
it does now so a few years ago, were the institute used to have something called membership grading. It had Chartered Professional Hello members, fellows and chartered fellows, things have changed. We made a decision to follow the international standard for certifications. And we separated member gradings to certify from certifications. And we set up Australia's first proper certification program based on a document called the Global OHS professional capability framework, which is the first document of its kind ever produced, which is a global document produced by inspire the international safety and health professional organizations group, or the Institute and like minded organizations around the world that defines the different levels of health and safety work and the knowledge and skill requirements at each level. Now, if you're going to have an effective profession, you need to be able to describe the role and what the knowledge and skill requirements are. Another hallmark of a good profession is effective education. And we manage that through OCM, through the Education Accreditation Board, another hallmark of an effective profession is a strong knowledge base and a clear evidence based knowledge base. So it's evidence based. And that's the IHS body of knowledge. The another aspect of mature profession is what we call capability assurance. And many professions have it it's where you become certified. And you're certified by a national body and that that national body and your profession warrants that you are capable, you are capable, not only do you have some education that suitable, but you also have work experience that suitable and you've been through an appropriate process to assess your capability to show that you are able to apply the conceptual ideas that you've learned in education, with the practical knowledge and understanding of going through work experience to show growth in capability. Now that certification. Now, any certification program with its salt also says once you're certified, you need to sustain your capability and continue to grow. One of our real challenges in health and safety is somebody who might have done the cert for and a climber or, you know, even a graduate diploma 15 years ago, just goes to work and still goes to work. And they've stopped doing ongoing training and learning. We have a real challenge there. I think as a as a profession, I think we're an adolescent profession in that in a number of ways. And one of one of the ways that we're adolescent is I think there are a lot of people who work in the field who actually are strongly conscious of the importance and value of continuing to learn and to grow in their knowledge. And it's a real challenge. So one of the things that happens when you become certified is that we expect that you undertake annual continuing professional development, or what we call CPD continuing professional development. Now, if you're going to do that, the question is how much and what type? Well, we create, as many other professions do a point system points framework for that, that combines a mixture of job related learning, and off the job related learning, formal learning and structured learning. And also contribution to others is valued as well.
Brendan Torazzi
So you mean things like the mentorship and that's right. So you can not only
Unknown Speaker
gain CPD points being mentored, but you can gain CPD points being a mentor. Yep. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. So this is really about trying to become a mature profession.
Brendan Torazzi
So when you say the certified though, it's the it's the individuals that are certified by the Institute. They're expected to do CPD, so it's not the whole tribe,
Unknown Speaker
so so we don't have it as a requirement of membership. Yeah. What we do is we have a requirement that we have seen the CPD points framework where you need to earn an average of 100 points a year over any given three year period. Yeah. And so and and we asked you annually to attest to the fact that you are undertaking that CPD, and we also bought that now that's been in place now. We're still in the first year of coming up. June, we've been in the first year of it. So we haven't even conducted our first audits yet. But we've introduced that framework, because that's our pathway to a more mature certification program and a more mature profession, and we'll certainly be promoting those CPD points if you're a member of the Institute. You can access the CPD planning tool and which involves developing an annual CPD plan but also you're allowed you have can have an it'll be fully online by June. This year, you'll be able to monitor your ongoing continuing professional development where your file system online shows you how many points you you're earning with your CPD, and you get to write about it and reflect on it and continue to plan for your own CPD. So it's a membership tool. And again, it's not as a membership tool, it's not a requirement. But it's a it's it's a benefit that's offered to support people to think about their learning to plan for their learning and to undertake learning and reflect on that learning.
Brendan Torazzi
And I'll take your 100 150 events that you put on, they all would attract some kind of points,
Unknown Speaker
they all do attract some kind of points. We don't just put on our own events, and we don't just deploy points to our own events, we, if somebody undertakes, and it's not just events that you get CPD points for as well. Yep. So if for example, you're you're learning something new on the job. And undertaking particular kind of training in something on the job, you might reference that as part of your CPD points, recording. What we most want to see is your written reflections and review of what you have learned. Okay, so the achievement of the points relates to your writing about it. Yeah. Which makes it real, you don't just say, Yeah, I did this on the job, or here, I read a chapter of the body of knowledge. We're interested in what your reflection is on that chapter. You know, if you're writing, reading about electrical hazards, we're interested in your reflection on what worked about that chapter for you. What struck you what what you didn't like what we're interested in, you view your viewpoint, if we don't reflect on the things that we do? You don't learn enough from them?
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. Yeah. So there's this CPD plan? I take it, you can write your reflections in that Correct, correct. Yeah. That's fantastic. And then David, I know there's a real push now to start sort of, you've mentioned certification of courses in education. Tell us what you're doing in that. Because I think that's something that hasn't existed in Australia before. And it's,
Unknown Speaker
and I don't think we got it right when we introduced it either. I came to the institute, like I said, six and a half years ago now. And one thing that had happened was the Institute had been talking about this new certification program for three years, and still hadn't implemented it. But there was some controversial elements to it. And so we'd lost hundreds of members over the controversial aspects of it.
Brendan Torazzi
Oh, wow. Okay, well, we
Unknown Speaker
hadn't introduced the program. Now, the main issues and concerns for people let me talk, for example, about the practitioner level. So we introduced a standard. So just it just if you've, if you've just done your education, you can't get certified. You've got to do work experience, and then you've got to demonstrate capability on the job. Yep. If you've got no education, and you're working in a health and safety role, you're not going to get certified. Because you don't know what you don't know. And you don't know you don't know it. Yeah. Certification in every single profession, in the world, is designed around the combination of three, three components, entry points based on minimum education and minimum experience. And then an assessment process allows you in some way to demonstrate competency knowledge or capability, expressed your demonstrated knowledge through examination, competency through online and through on the job assessment and capability through other forms of assessments. So we do the capability assessment. Now, with practitioners, what we knew was that we wanted to raise the bar for the kind of education that people do to work at practitioner level in the field of health and safety. And we felt right about that we felt correct to do that. And so we set the minimum standard as a diploma, which is just a certification five, it's not it's a vet course, cert five, it's not a tertiary course or anything. It's not a high. It's not it's not a massive thing. And we said, look, this is a standard that needs to be set. Now, that upset an awful lot of people. Why? Because we have literally 1000s of people still today working in the field of health and safety at practitioner level and successfully I should say, who got a cert four, which is the Workplace Health and Safety, which is a qf level below you They have never asked by anybody to get a diploma. Yep, employer was happy to employ them with a cert for never offered to set said you should go off and do a diploma and extend your skills. And people are working part of the 1000s happily in the field of health and safety. So we can want all we like to see our mess people be better educated. But the way that was interpreted by a lot of the marketplace was are you don't care, you don't think I'm good enough? How dare you? You know, I'm a successful worker, you know, at this level, and you won't certify me?
Brendan Torazzi
Maybe it maybe it could have been leveled the cert four level and then a diploma level and then I don't know. So
Unknown Speaker
I think it was a mistake. I think we made a mistake. I oversaw that mistake. So it's if anybody any single person's responsibility is absolutely mind. I was new in the role when I made that decision. And certainly that was there was strong advocacy for us to take that decision. And I think we we made a mistake there because we alienated people we didn't intend to. Yeah, yep. But you know, if you're trying to sell the idea of certification program to a profession and to industry. And it's not being mandated by law or regulation, you've got to give people, you know, reasons to join in and a sense that this was worthwhile. And we didn't do that initially. So one of the things we're actually undertaking right now, in that subsequent period of time, the we've lost a lot of confidence in the vet system, we're really concerned about people being issued whole diplomas, RP, RP held, we're really concerned about the fact that if somebody did a cert for 15 years ago, they probably know a hell of a lot more than somebody who does a deployment today. Differential quality of deployments, we're really concerned about that. But I think there's a breakdown in the system. There's no independent assessment. We struggle now to have confidence that anybody who graduates from cert for a diploma necessarily knows anything. Yeah. So we are going to examine people like the American system, so we're going to have a Practitioner exam, and you'll be able to do it if you've got a cert four, or you've got a diploma. Yes, going across that bridge.
Brendan Torazzi
But does that also does that also, I guess, tie in to the idea of the institute's sort of not certifying but endorsing certain providers of diplomas and cert for?
Unknown Speaker
Well, yeah, we'll talk about the endorsement in a moment. It's not, it doesn't. But just to just to finish up what you're saying about certification, the I was using the practitioner issue, as an example, what we've done, what we'll be doing there is recognizing that there are many people out there in the field, I've got a cert for, yep. I've been working in the role for many, many years, we're going to just assess their knowledge. And if their knowledge is suitable across that knowledge bar, we need them to have a certain amount of experience at that level. And then we go we still expect them to complete their portfolio reports and check their referees and do all the do the capability assessment, but we're going to make make the certification program accessible to them. Why don't we do that, because we have the same sort of system for IHS professional. We're in a process now of redesigning some of the ways that people can move between the levels of certification based on ongoing professional development. So it's still a program that's evolving. And at the moment, we've got about one and a half 1000 People certified, and they're what I'd call the early adopters to the program. By the way, the British, the Canadians in the Americans have been doing this for 40 years. We just started
Brendan Torazzi
paper on the April there. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
And I think it's a really, really important. I mean, some people say, why would you bother doing it? Who cares? I've got this and I've got that I don't need a certification to prove my worth. Well, that's fine. I understand that that attitude and that point of view, but if we want to look at this issue systemically, and we want greater commitment to ongoing learning, and we want greater confidence for employers that they're taking people who who are, you know, Cape suitably capable, like any profession, you know, we should be certifying people to work in certain levels and let's be really clear, health and safety people. Not subjectively, but at times objectively relating to the work and they do and the things they say and the way they go about what they do can impact the lives and well being of other people are 100% 100 You would think that we put a little bit of effort into ensuring that rather what regardless of what an individual thinks they know that you I think we systemically could put a little bit of effort into ensuring that we can build some confidence that they do know what they need to know. So that's what certification is really all about. Another thing that we're doing, of course, is we're endorsing certain kinds of training and we endorse third parties training. The moment we're not even going through a process of endorsing the Australian courses under the Australian Qualifications Framework IQ of courses. There is a national body for the endorsement of that we don't necessarily want to be laying whole other layers of endorsement over the top of that, I do have major concerns about about some of the issues around the quality of the training slivered very differentially, and we may go into that later. But for the in the meantime, what we're doing is we're saying, if you've done a uni course, or your TAFE course, or you know, your vet course, if you're like, not necessarily types of provider, whether it's a cert for a diploma or Advanced Diploma or Bachelor of OHS, or a master's in IHS or whatever know, whatever education you've done, we want you to be doing some ongoing learning. And we're focused very, very hard right now on developing a very strong framework of training and professional development for people, shorter courses, everything from webinars and networking and mentoring programs, and all the things that contribute to people's professional development. And but certainly, you know, knowledge based training as well, online face to face via the web, the whole thing. And we've, we don't think we should be the only provider of all of that we acknowledge and recognize many providers out there in the marketplace. So we invite those providers to submit their material to have us endorse their training. And if we do endorse that training, it's a minimum standard we're looking for. If as long as we're confident that a reasonable person can achieve the learning outcomes that are proposed for the training, delivered by suitably qualified trainer with suitable materials, then we will endorse that training. And then we will monitor the responses of people who do the training to ensure that it is a reasonable standard. So it's not a five star system. It's just a minimum standard system. And there are some training course proposals I've received that we have not endorsed. We're simply just trying to
Brendan Torazzi
assess I just trying to lead the way and give the bit of focus, really,
Unknown Speaker
we're trying to lean on the quality of training in the system without doing it heavily. We're not trying to be jackbooted about it, we just want to see a continuous improvement, quality and focus of training for the health and safety profession.
Brendan Torazzi
Now that's brilliant. Well, look, David that all this work you're doing it sounds big, like there's there's a lot of things that you're you're attacking. If people want to find out more about the Institute and look at membership, what's your website?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, I h s.org.au. So, Australian Institute of Health and Safety. So escape, just go into Google and type a IHS. Brilliant. You'll find out everything you need to if you're working in health and safety and you hear this, come and join what we're doing and be part of our leadership community.
Brendan Torazzi
That's brilliant. Okay, David, thank you so much for your time today.
Unknown Speaker
No problem, Brendan. Thank you.
Unknown Speaker
You've been listening to an ohs.com.au production.
Brendan Torazzi
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