Joanne Taranto is the national OHS manager for Regis aged care, a national private provider of residential aged care across five states, with around 4,500 staff. Joanne trained as an Occupational Therapist and worked for an occupational rehab provider in Sydney, as well as also working clinically in mental health and acute rehab.

Pick the right employer to work for

Joanne has some advice for those at the beginning of their careers - or looking to make a change. “A big part of being in an OHS or RTW role is that you’re not always going to be able to change an employer or manager, or a company as such,” she says. This doesn’t mean there’s nothing to improve upon, however. “My attitude is to focus on what you can control,” Joanne says.

“If it were me, I wouldn’t go to employers if I knew that they didn’t have the priority [for RTW] in the first place. So, the biggest tip probably is to pick a company or business that actually does see the benefit in the first place, so you don’t have an uphill battle.

“That’s not always as easy as it sounds, but I think if you’ve already got a company that sees the value, they may not necessarily know how to do it or what best practice looks like, but they understand what it’s for. You don’t have to fight the fight.”

Hit the ground running

It’s important to make the right case to the right people, explains Joanne.

“Generally, corporate entities are going to see the value, because they understand risk and they understand that money talks. They get it - most of them, anyway. If you’re in a corporate entity that understands risk, they should understand the investments required in OHS and injury management. Then your role is just about spelling it out as best you can, in the simplest terms.”

Joanne advises that putting together a convincing business case means being short and sharp. “I’ve learned the value of a good one-pager,” she says. “In fact, the less information sometimes, the better. Flesh it down to the key points.”

Give them an executive summary so they don’t have to read the rest of the one-page:

• What’s the status quo and the risk?
• What are you proposing?
• What is investment and the benefit?
• What is your recommendation?

“For example: if you want to invest in a health and wellbeing program, explain the current situation. Obviously, you need to have a fair amount of understanding. So, it might be:

• ‘Did you know that 30 per cent of our staff are overweight and it can lead to X, Y, Z;
• ‘What we’re proposing is this program.
  • It will benefit X, Y, Z,
  • return on investment of X,
  • potential cost-saving of X,’ and,
• ‘Recommendation is that you try a pilot program for this long.”

Pilot programs

“I often find if you’ve got a large or even smaller company, just try a sample by running a pilot for a month or three months, or a year,” says Joanne. “By running a pilot first, you’re making the risk of the investment for the business quite small. And then if that works, it’s a lot easier; it’s almost like a foot in the door. You’ve got a chance to say, ‘this has worked really well, here are our results, and now let’s try it for the bigger part of the business.”

Timing

“It’s also about picking the time of year to do it,” advises Joanne. “A good time to pitch these types of things is before you go into budget - so you’ve got budget to do it with. If you know that you’re going to want to try this, the first half of the year is also a great time to start planning these kinds of things.”

“I utilise the risk management funding that we get from our insurers in Victoria, NSW and WA. That’s for large employers; its’ about one per cent of premium. It’s free [and] a really nice way to implement a program; to reduce - in theory - your exposure to greater injuries. So, it could be a health and wellbeing program. We use it for various injury management programs.

“It’s more to do with a program that could actually be a training program addressing your highest risk in the business. For us, it might be a manual handling training program or something like that.

“You can use your risk management funding for a pilot program, and then if you can prove that there’s value in it for the business, then it’s a lot easier again. You can just basically run a free pilot as far as they’re [upper management] are concerned.
“So, they can then see what you might be proposing on a bigger scale, and asking for budget for that.”

How to win funding and influence people

“The important thing to know is that your circle of influence doesn’t have to be big to have an impact,” says Joanne. “All you really need is to influence some key people within your scope. You’re not going to be able to change or influence everyone.

“Obviously, the higher up, the better; but certainly your manager and your team. And, if you have access to a senior manager or exec or board, that’s great - if you don’t directly then you’ve just got to work with what you can. But don’t waste your time trying to change the world if they’re not within your circle of influence, just focus on the people that you can.”