Debra Maiden, Safety Strategy Manager for Victoria Police, is responsible for developing ‘Protecting our People’, a three-year safety strategy at Victoria Police, so successful it's led to a 30% reduction in injury and a 34% reduction in days lost – and that’s just in the strategy’s first two years. Protecting our People has made significant in-roads to improve poor performance in injury prevention, return to work and workers’ compensation.

Here’s how the strategy began:

• Stretch targets were built into the accountability structure of the organisation.
• The top 200 in the organisation were briefed and coached, and one-on-one safety coaching was provided. Through this, particular issues were established, as well as how they could be solved and – a key component – how to demonstrate safety leadership. 
• OHS procedures and policies were reviewed and a formal, comprehensive audit program was established. 

The strategy is based on:

• Targeted Interventions. One of these was a stress intervention – because, said Ms Maiden, “In this form of work there are a lot of stressful situations and consequent illness resulting from that”.  The approach involved Victoria Police partnering with BeyondBlue to provide a program to all middle managers – “because they needed to recognise some of the signs related to depression and anxiety and stress, and they weren’t quite sure what they could do,” she said. “We weren’t training them to be counsellors but there are a lot of comprehensive services available so it was what and how they could refer on, and how they could support the employee.”
• Training. “People need the knowledge, the know-how to prevent injuries. We did a lot of work on improving our incidence reporting and investigation, and on improving our return to work – and involving managers more in that process; training them, up-skilling our internal people, working better with our agents to get better return to work outcomes.”
• Working collaboratively with one focus. “We work closely with what is quite a large body of support people who work within Victoria Police across the organisation. We are working more collaboratively to make sure we’re all on the same page, focused in the same direction. A lot of work was done to achieve that.”

The following hurdles had to be overcome: 

• Overcoming distrust. Overcoming this barrier relied upon communication between the manager, the RTW coordinator and the injured employee. “Sometimes there was a lot of hesitancy about having those conversations – people were distrustful about the motives around return to work and it’s about really trying to sell the fact that it benefits everyone,” said Ms Maiden.
• Encouraging managers to do what’s best for all concerned. “Guiding the managers to be more flexible in finding suitable duties, encouraging them to simply have a chat and see how their injured employee is going and involving our injury management consultants  to help them better facilitate that process,” she said. 
• Increasing involvement. That is, getting managers, supervisors and employees involved in the case reviews, so that a plan can be formed up front and the end goal can be discussed, so that all parties can see the necessary plan of action.

Ms Maiden would still like to see these changes occur: 

• Promote the right motivation. “What we’re needing to do is encourage people to think that this isn’t done because it’s legally required, it’s not done because it’s purely to save money – it’s actually done from the right intent; it’s about people and treating them well. Everyone benefits if you take it from that stance.” 
• Eliminate bureaucracy and legal focus. “A lot of my work is trying to wade through and remove some of those barriers which I call the ‘bureaucratic focus on entitlement’ side of health and safety to get to the essence of what and why we’re working in this area.  People will benefit, there will be less conflict in the workplace, the ill will get better quicker and they can see results from it. 
• Show you want to work together. “Employees can get suspicious if they can’t see the right motives – anyone would. If you think your manager or your colleague actually cares about you and what you’re doing and that we’re working together in return to work or to prevent injuries, then you’ll go ahead in leaps and bounds.”

Background on the strategy

What the strategy is:

• A response to recognition of poor performance. “The organisation both internally and externally was being recognised as a poor performer in health and safety. WorkSafe was noting a particular concern about high numbers of WorkCover claims and high premiums.”
• A supported plan of action. A system issue was identified and overall goals were determined. Five goals were determined and had strong backing by the corporate committee of Victoria Police – the top 20 in the organisation committed and signed off formally that they would commit over the next three years to achieving significant stretch targets.
• An acknowledgement of the need to look at things differently. “The organisation at a senior level was very open to the strategy,” said Ms Maiden. “There existed a frustration that previous efforts had not produced the desired outcomes.  So, the strategy was supported and adopted.”

What the strategy ISN’T: 

• It’s not a policy. “The word ‘policy’ suggests it’s a procedure or statement without action,” Ms Maiden said. Rather, “It is a strategy with a plan of action driven from the top.”
• It’s not theoretical, or highly analytical. Instead, the strategy observes a journey, the things Victoria Police and other organisations had tried, and built on the learnings and developed a plan of intervention. Also, objective comparison could be drawn between Victoria Police and other government sectors and high risk industries. “Results [from that comparison],” said Ms Maiden, “weren’t good.”

Change has to start at the top. Ms Maiden advised that “For any group or organisation ch5>embarking on this sort of significant change process, they must have a well planned change management approach as well as a health and safety management approach, otherwise only incremental improvement is possible,” she said. “And it has to be led from the top, not from the middle, otherwise the efforts will be thwarted. Those are the two key aspects that have made this approach successful."