Anton Guinea
Entrepreneur, Speaker, bestselling author, and founder of The Guinea Group of Companies. For over 15 years, Anton has helped leaders move their teams to become psychologically safe, physically safe and overall better versions of themselves.
GUILTY for failing to discharge safety & health obligations.
That was what a court heard recently, 6 years after the terribly unfortunate death of a husband, and father, of a young family. Yes, 6 years later, and a $30k plus fine, and the Leader of the work team is through the court system .. though will probably never get over the fact that someone was killed on his watch ..
A sad state of affairs. But not uncommon.
Workplace fatalities in Australia
So far during 2019, 30 people have been killed in Australian workplaces … a tragedy, every single one of those deaths …
My why
This is why some of my leadership work is in the safety space. My first business was as a safety speaker – I shared my story, in an attempt to prevent something similar from happening to others. I am still telling it to this day … just less often … my focus these days is on helping safety leaders change hearts and minds, not so much doing it myself!
Recently, I ran sessions for a small business, where over 50 of their staff came through Safety Leadership Sessions, where we looked at safety leader attributes:
- They must be credible (believable)
- They must have care factor (for their team)
- They must be collaborative (inclusive)
One leader in that business thanked me profusely, as they were unaware of what real safety leadership looks like! Now they are! It saves lives, and jail time!
Are Leaders really held liable …
Here is an excerpt from the article, and the story, that I refer to above:
BENCH: So, Mr X you’ve entered a plea of guilty today for failing to have discharged a safety and health obligation, and that the contravention of that obligation caused the death of Jordan Taurima. The maximum pecuniary penalty I can impose is $110,000. At the time of the offence you were employed as the Operations Manager of a company called Invetech and you were responsible for the safety of and the safety procedures at the Mount Isa Mine which employed the company you worked for. The company you worked for, Incitec Pivot Limited, had obligations imposed on it under the legislation. You, as the manager, had the responsibility under those provisions also. At the time, there was in place a safety and health management system to deal with circumstances involving the use of cranes, and also the presence of contractors at the site.
On this particular occasion, your – the company failed to ensure that that safety and health management system was in place.
The system that was in place was that a task hazard analysis would be prepared, and on this occasion was, by one of your fellow employees.
Each of the contractors was then permitted to work at the site, and it was understood that they would do so in accordance with their obligations under that particular analysis.
That, obviously, did not occur on this particular occasion. There was no one there from your company to supervise the work being done by the contractors. There was no oversight to ensure that those particular procedures, as indicated in the task hazard analysis, were actually being implemented or enforced.
The link to the full article is: https://www.amsj.com.au/how-do-you-plead-guilty-for-failing-to-discharge-safety-health-obligation/
My question:
How safe is your team?
If you are not concerned, please reach out for assistance!
And please click the image below if you’d like to chat about what leadership means to you.
If you would like to learn more about Anton or The Guinea Group, please click here to book into Anton’s calendar, to:
UPGRADE your Mindset
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UPLIFT your Teams