SafeTree: Fiona Ewing's last blog
Wednesday 1 Jun 2022
(SafeTree) This week after seven great years this is Fiona’s Ewing’s last
Safetree blog. What an experience it’s been overseeing Safetree/FISC’s
growth from a recommendation in the 2014 Independent Forestry Safety Review to
an established organisation with a focused work programme agreed by key
stakeholders.
The achievement I’m most proud of over those seven years is
the role Safetree/FISC have played in helping the forestry industry develop a
more sophisticated and effective approach towards health and safety.
There’s been a growing understanding that the best way to improve safety is not
by adding more rules and compliance. It’s by focusing on things that set crews
up for success – like improving worker wellbeing, adopting more collaborative
ways of working, and managers working to better understand what really happens
on site (not just what they think happens).
Safetree’s Toroawhi have
played an important role in spreading that understanding. When they visit sites,
they kick-off by talking about their own wellbeing and work experiences, which
creates trust and gets people talking about their own situations. As a result,
all sorts of things can come to the surface – often things crew bosses and
managers had no idea about. Outing these issues is important because if you
don’t know about them you can’t deal with them.
It's also been good to
see people become more accepting of the fact that what happens at home can
affect us at work. Bosses might not be able to help someone with these personal
problems, but they do need to be aware of them because if someone’s distracted,
stressed or upset it impacts their ability to work safely.
I’ve visited a
couple of crews where I’ve seen first-hand the positive changes that occur when
the boss drops the ‘take a concrete pill and harden up’ attitude and realises
that their people are their biggest asset and are worth looking after. That’s
why Safetree’s Leadership and Understanding Risk workshops have taken a
different approach from traditional safety workshops and have focused on people,
and how their input is vital in creating safer workplaces.
I really
believe that more ‘safety work’ is not what we need in forestry. We need to
focus on creating ‘better work’ – where all parts of the forest value chain
collaborate and where those paying the bills live up to their moral and legal
obligations to make sure that the workers who help them make money aren’t harmed
in the process.
I’d like to thank all the people who have supported me
over the last seven years – particularly those who’ve been willing to evolve the
way they think and act around health and safety. I leave the organisation well
placed to continue the work we’ve started and to continue to support forestry
stakeholders to work together to create change.
Source: SafeTree
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