Safety Focused Compliance
MY CART
My journey began on our family farm. I was 12 years old when my Mum said to me, “I don’t know how to drive this new tractor.” It was my dad who should do this. Overwhelmed with the self-doubt that 12-year-olds share, I believed I was not good enough. I feared being judged by my father. Overcoming my fears, I taught my Mum to operate the new tractor safely.
Less than a few days later, my small actions saved my father’s life. Hearing what had happened from my Mum and knowing without my actions, Mum would have watched dad suffer a treacherous death. The shock I felt was overwhelming, imagining if I didn’t face my self-doubt? This feeling drives me today.
From this incident early in my life, I realised by being true to yourself, you can make a big difference in keeping people safe. By simply providing usable information to prevent trauma. My parents’ accident was not preventable, it happened, but a fatal outcome was prevented, by my selfless 12-year-old actions.
Later in life, I was in my comfort zone starting a machinery hire company, setting up formal procedures for safe operator training. Managing a large team, operating across several regions. For me, it was a lifestyle-friendly business. Allowing me the freedom to travel the world. Meeting my soul mate, having a young son, and post-graduate studies, all while managing my own company. I thought my life was being fulfilled.
Complacency turned my world upside down, struck by a freak accident, instant agony, terrified, holding my head in my hands. Falling to the ground, wanting to see, with an eye that no longer exists. I am alone, blind, grief-stricken, the agony indescribable. Screaming for help, everything around me imploding. My terror is taking over. Is this what it is like to die? Semi-consciousness saturated in fear.
Momentary relief, a stranger holds my head, tells me I’m ok.
I’m in the hospital, the morphine unravelling layers of agony. Outside I’m drugged, inside I am flooded with tortured consciousness of my situation. Thinking of my wife & 2-year-old son, asking where’s dad, they don’t even know where I am, tears and blood flowing down my cheeks, this is the hell that always happens to other people! Why me?
The reality, I only survived because the force of the impact struck bone before tearing through my eye, stopped only by luck from ending my life. Sleeping is impossible, saturated in anxiety for my family, and panic of my self-doubt taking over. In that moment, I felt emotionally wrecked with flashing thoughts of giving up on life.
I can’t find relief from this torture haunting me, knowing weeks before, the dangers that caused my injury was preventable. I had identified easy solutions but failed to act. Complacency conditioned by industry telling me it wasn’t required. I was now living with this reality; life will never be easy like it was again.
That was the toughest part, knowing my failings had caused my preventable injuries, my family’s suffering, all caused by complacency. If I had have acted to remove dangers, I would have had a handful of stitches and been out of the hospital that night. Instead, I experienced over 30 hours of operations in an attempt to save my sight, then years of recovery adjusting to the new reality.
After time passed, employed as a manager with a large portfolio of commercial properties. Being appreciated for helping people help themselves across Australia was greatly rewarding. My on-site safety focus easily provided compliance to regulations. Safety makes management that easy.
However, one project required following corporate policy. The approving managers focused only on regulation, why it did not need to happen, rather than how it could be done.
With a new manager coming on board, though not fully supportive, finally a limited budget breakthrough.
But in the same way as my trauma, this came too late for a young woman who lost her leg unnecessarily. It was a preventable injury. For me, this felt like failure. The shock I felt was overwhelming, thinking back to my 12-year-old self and what I had achieved. The fear this young woman will experience for the rest of her life was unnecessary. The reality, like me, she only survived by luck.
Even though after this incident, I had been able to implement preventative strategies at many venues across my extensive property portfolio, to prevent what was for me, an obvious shortfall in safety management, still became unbearable.
Shortly after, when reporting to the new department manager, that my portfolio maintained 100% statutory compliance. Which was achieved by improving safety across my extensive portfolio. I realised gaining compliance was never going to be fulfilling for me, saving people from unnecessary trauma WAS. I had made a big difference in my role over the years, but I was not getting the satisfaction I needed. I wanted to help people like you, help more people, and that could not be achieved in this job. So, I resigned.
I realised that by taking ownership of who I am and standing by my values, telling my story can help others. Starting a movement, a Safety Community System of thinking and actions, gives me purpose. Our life story is our business.
Share our Safety Community way of thinking, Integrative Safety Systems (iSS) at iEM | iMaintain Ezy Manage! This enables your actions to provide your venues with the safest possible places for you and your community’s ongoing enjoyment.
Safety Focused Compliance