Author Archives: Monique

Health and safety should always be a top priority in any workplace. At their core, every business wants their people to not only feel safe but behave safely when they come to work.

The safety of your employees is critical to the continued operation of your business. So, why are so many executives hesitant to implement a safety solution? The cost.

It’s an expensive investment that a budget-conscious management team might be keen to avoid. Many feel it’s safe to assume people can use their common sense, with safety measures better left unenforced. But there’s work health and safety legislation for a reason.

Beyond being a legal requirement, having appropriate work health and safety measures comes down to one thing: your people. Without them, your business doesn’t exist. Cost reducing measures at the expense of the safety of people should not be a risk your business is willing to take.

You can’t put a price on the life of your workers.

While the upfront cost of implementing safe practices in the workplace might cause hesitation, the benefits far outweigh the costs.

The Cost of Not Investing in Safety

So what happens if your business decides not to invest in workplace health and safety practices?

With your safety professionals overrun with paperwork, they often miss important face-to-face time with workers. Not able to be part of daily events like toolbox talks and pre-start meetings, there’s missed opportunity to drive safer outcomes.

Relegating safety verification to an arduous manual process can lead to a lack of consistency and missing crucial information, like expiring certifications. With the potential for untrained workers to be on your sites and projects, there’s an increased risk of workplace injuries which is costly.

According to Safe Work Australia, the cost of work-related injury and disease to the Australian economy is $61.8 billion. Businesses often lose more money due to work-related injury than they would have spent implementing a comprehensive safety solution.

There’s the direct costs to your business, such as workers compensation, and fines and penalties for not meeting safety legislation. There are also indirect costs, including the loss of productivity, current and future earnings, the loss of potential output, knowledge, and skill.

Then there is the loss of time when a worker sustains an injury in the workplace. Safe Work Australia estimates an average of five weeks’ time lost as a result of a serious injury claim.

The Benefits of Investing in Safety

When you implement a workforce management solution, like the Pegasus platform, you transform safety from cost to an investment.

One of the first things your business will notice is a reduction in administrative work. With your workers able to upload their qualifications, insurances, and documents into the Pegasus platform, it frees your safety people from the burden of paperwork. Our client Patrick Terminals have seen the benefit of this.

“This allows our HSE Managers, and Facilities and Procurement Managers to spend more time with our contractors, to be part of toolbox talks and pre-start meetings in order to drive safer outcomes,” said Ben Meikle, National HSE Manager – Systems and Projects at Patrick Terminals.

The collection and verification of documents such as insurances, licences, trade qualifications, and training certificates is time consuming, costly, and adds to the workload of your already busy safety and administrative staff.

After collecting these documents for you, Pegasus offers our expertise in verifying them against industry standards. This provides an independent and consistent approach to maintaining compliance. We even proactively engage your contractors before their information expires and they fall into non-compliance.

The result? Your safety and site resources are focused on more productive tasks while Pegasus engages and supports your contractors through onboarding and ongoing compliance.

The detailed data collected in your Pegasus solution provides your business with insight into areas of potential risk. Through creating role requirements, you can be certain your workforce is operating with high skill and reduced risk. These worker profiles are linked to Site Access, where only workers who meet your requirements are granted access to your sites and projects.

With your workforce trained and safety measures enforced, the true ROI is knowing you’ve done everything you can to ensure the safety of your workforce. And you can’t put a price on that.

Are you ready to transform safety from cost into an investment? Book a demo today.

The Oil and Gas industry is one of the most high-risk in the world.

With Australia’s oil and gas workforce doubling over the last decade – and growth continuing – legislation is evolving to meet new advances. Those changes are reflected in the safety and compliance challenges facing the industry.

With safety and permit to work requirements a major priority, how can you be sure your risk is being management and everyone working for you is qualified and safe?

Hear from the Experts

This week we spoke with Pegasus Sales Manager Simon Mortimore to find out how working with Pegasus benefits the oil and gas industry.

The beginning of March saw the conclusion of the two-year Royal Commission into Aged Care Quality and Safety, which handed down 148 recommendations. While it commenced in 2018, the result has been more than 10 years in the making. It was one of the first major decisions made by Scott Morrison after he was elected Prime Minister.

According to ABC News in September 2018, “Mr Morrison said he had been particularly shocked by a “disturbing” trend of non-compliance and failures in the aged care sector, highlighted in briefings he had received over the three weeks since he became Prime Minister”.

Managing Worker Competency Remains a Challenge

From within the recommendations, one thing is clear. Managing the competency of workers is among the greatest challenges of the Healthcare Industry. With the safety of patients and residents in their hands, the risk that non-compliant healthcare workers pose cannot be underestimated.

“I’m glad that at a government level, we’re finally recognising the problems which exist across all health sectors within Australia,” said Jo Dixon, Pegasus Chief of Sales. “We’re proud to be providing the disability skills passport in the disability sector and seeing the expansion into Aged Care.”

Responding to Recommendations

What’s now important in light of these findings, is that the industry and businesses respond and comply with the recommendations appropriately.

At Pegasus, we understand the industry has previously had inadequate funding, and that the workforce has been largely understaffed, undertrained and underpaid.

While there are many exemplary providers, what was apparent in the findings was the sub-standard care given by many service providers in the Aged Care sector.

“Everyone has their own story of how difficult the healthcare industry can be. Having visibility over the skillsets of workers will provide families all over Australia with reassurance that their loved ones are being cared for,” said Jo.

The Opportunity

An opportunity lies in technology providers to use data and systems to ensure higher standards of safety, higher standards of compliance, higher standards of competency measurement, e-learning utilisation and using technology to ensure on-site safety for staff and patients.

The Pegasus Healthcare Industry Solution has been developed with industry partners to provide transparency and confidence about the competency of workers in your facilities and working on your behalf.

Insight is Key

In our solution, we collect, monitor and check competence. Through simplifying processes, we help to eliminate the risk of untrained workers having access to facilities, patients or residents.

We know collecting data, qualifications and documents is not enough.

Our Verification Engine validates documents to ensure the Aged Care workforce is truly safe and competent. Providers can ensure every worker meets their standards, every day.

To learn more about the Pegasus Healthcare Solution, which will replace legacy systems, streamline processes, and empower a mobilised workforce, please contact Jo Dixon on jdixon@pegasus.net.au

Over the past decade, the manufacturing industry has been identified as a Work Health and Safety priority due to the high-risk nature of work undertaken. This is in an attempt to reduce fatalities due to large numbers or work-related injuries and illnesses.

In February, SafeWork NSW made an announcement of engaging leaders from the industry to establish a culture of safety.

With more than 7% of Australia’s workforce employed in manufacturing, it’s no wonder the workplace regulator wants to improve safety across the industry.

SafeWork inspectors will undertake compliance activities, including random inspections, across manufacturing businesses in metropolitan Sydney and regional New South Wales throughout 2021.

“The manufacturing industry is identified as a national priority to reduce the number and rates of fatalities and serious claims in the Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2012-2022.”

A Long Road to Improvement

There have been substantial improvements across the industry in the past decade, but there still remains a high number of fatalities and serious claims.

Food product manufacturing sub-industry accounted for the highest proportion of serious claims between 2012-13 and 2015-16, followed by fabricated metal product manufacturing and machinery and equipment manufacturing.

As well as adhering to work safety legislation, manufacturers also need to follow product safety standards and requirements.

The Risks of Ignoring Safety

Primarily, the greatest risk of ignoring safety is the potential for death or injury to occur. The flow on effect is costly. Manufacturers found to be at fault or in breach of safety standards are subject to fines and penalties. When workers are injured on the job, handling workers compensation and treatment costs come into play. Then there’s the time to find and train replacements while your workers are out of action.

The importance of adhering to safety and managing your risk is paramount.

How Pegasus Can Help

This is where Pegasus comes in. As workforce management experts, we can help to manage and maintain the competency and compliance of those working for you. Through this, we can help your organisation to maintain a safe working environment where risk is managed.

An easy way to manage safety within the manufacturing industry is by ensuring your worker’s training is up to date. Pegasus Induction and Learning Management can be tailored to your specific requirements. Our in-depth industry knowledge of legislative obligations across the country allow us to guide you in what is right for your workforce.

We have a selection of ready-to-go courses which can be purchased by you at a one-off cost and tailored to your organisation. Some course you can choose from include Manual Handling, numerous Chain of Responsibility course, and Workplace Safety.

To invest in safety for your organisation, talk to us today.

The latest report from WA’s Department of Mines, Industry Regulation and Safety shows that mining remains a high-risk industry for workers.

According to ABC News, New figures show West Australian mine workers are being seriously injured on the job at a rate of more than one a day – a damning statistic after companies were warned about fatigue management during the early days of the coronavirus pandemic.

There were two fatal mining accidents in 2019-20 in Western Australia, and the number of workers sustaining injury remains too high. With the state’s Towards 2020 strategy closed, it’s three key goals remain: world-leading regulation, smarter systems, and a well-informed industry.

A High-Risk Industry

Australia’s mining industry is crucial to the Australian economy. In 2019-20 it was responsible for delivering a 10.4 per cent share of the economy, making it the largest economic contributor to our GDP. At the end of 2020, it was estimated over 130,000 people were employed in the Australian mining industry, all doing roles with varying degrees of difficulty/danger.

There have been significant improvements to health and safety in the mining industry in Australia over the past decade as legislative framework across the country has been implemented to keep workers safe. However, it remains high-risk.  According to SafeWork Australia, the mining industry still has the third highest fatality rate of any industry with an average of 9 workers dying each year.

An Obligation to Safety

Safe mining operations are protected by a world-leading regulatory and policy framework. For organisations focusing on health and safety, the benefits include meeting legal requirements, minimising the cost to the business associated with workplace injuries, and maximising productivity.

Every mine site has a responsibility to ensure their workforce are operating safely. Here’s how Pegasus can help you.

Pegasus Ensuring the Safety of Your Mine Site

Pegasus partners with some of the world’s largest mines to qualify and manage safety on their sites where only the most comprehensive safety system will do. We have extensive knowledge of the unique challenges facing the highly regulated mining industry which we leverage to help you better manage the competency and safety of your workforce.

From our origins in the Hunter Valley, Pegasus understands the unique needs of the Australian mining industry, from legislative requirements to the high-risk nature of the work undertaken. Our workforce management solution is the perfect partner for safety in mining.

How it works

Create risk profiles for your contracting companies with Company Pre-Qualification and have the appropriate insurances and licences collected. Each contracting company will have their information verified against your standards to make sure those working for you are playing on the same field.

Worker Competency Management maintains the safety, training, and ongoing compliance of your workforce.

Induction and Learning Management ensures your workers receive localised training to your specific site standards.

With legislation changes and expiring licences, Pegasus sends auto-reminders whenever anything is expiring, or if you update the requirements for site access.

Fatigue management is an important aspect of maintaining safety on mine sites. You want people working in a high-risk environment to be well rested and alert. With Pegasus Site Access, you can block access to site for workers who haven’t had the appropriate amount of hours between shifts.

Start the conversation with one of our mining experts today about ensuring safety on your mine site.