Southern Ports has earned national recognition in safety leadership at the 32nd Annual National Safety Awards of Excellence, winning the best safety leadership initiative award for its field leadership program.
Hosted by the NSCA Foundation in Sydney, the WA-based port organisation was up against engineering and logistics companies such as JF Hull Holdings, Spark North East Link, and Toll Group.
Southern Ports chief executive officer Keith Wilks said that the award recognises the impact that the safety program has across its port communities.
“We put people first. Our field leadership program has been built from the ground up, and it empowers our people to constantly improve our safety culture and gives our staff the tools to be able to interact with everyone working across our sites to improve safety outcomes,” he said.
“An important part of the program is critical control verifications and leadership interactions to promote greater awareness of surroundings and risks across our workplace, which ultimately leads to safer workplaces. Importantly, we’ve made these processes easy to carry out through digital systems and field devices that can be used anywhere across our sites.”
Southern Ports was also one of five finalists in the Best Continuous Improvement of a WHS Management System category. Wilks said this was a milestone achievement.
“Being named a finalist in the continuous improvement category reinforces that our positive intentions are creating positive outcomes,” he said.
“We have repositioned safety as a number one priority, taking challenging safety results in 2019 and turning them into an opportunity to improve and create a workplace that firmly puts people first.”