The safety of our people is our number one priority. Our refreshed values have safety at the forefront and we are committed to creating workplaces where everyone feels safe and well in the course of their day, and where we support and care for each other.

As our network expands and transforms we need to ensure that safety is at the centre of our everyday operational decision-making, as well as our longer- term decisions about future investment.

That is one of the reasons for our investment in parcel-sorting automation. We are determined to reduce manual handling by our workforce, as the volume of parcels in our facilities grows. It is also why we have extended our Employee Assistance Program to our broader workforce and their family members, with the introduction of the Workforce Assistance Program, to make sure they feel supported at all times. And it is why we have improved our safety reporting and incident management, to manage safety exposures and deal with incidents thoroughly and effectively.

Safety performance

Unfortunately, incidents do happen in our workplaces and we make sure we report and investigate them thoroughly to support our people and reduce future exposure to injury.

In 2018/19, we moved away from reporting all occupational injury frequency rates (AOIFR) to report on Total Recordable Injuries (TRIs) and Frequency Rate (TRIFR). There were 3,291 TRIs and 58.4 million work hours in 2018/19. This resulted in a TRIFR of 56.4 in 2018/19.

There were no employee fatalities in 2018/19. However, tragically, there were two fatalities associated with our business this year. A sub-contractor’s employee died in a vehicle accident; and a member of the public passed away due to complications after a fall in a facility. These tragic incidents reinforce our commitment to making the safety and wellbeing of our people, and the public, our biggest priority.

We continue to implement our Enterprise Safety Strategy with a focus on building and supporting core safety management and reporting capabilities.

The work we are doing to reduce Serious Injury and Fatalities (SIF) helps to identify exposure risks in our business and equips our leaders to take responsibility for developing methods of controlling workplace safety hazards.

Improving our incident management

In 2018, we launched OneSafe, our incident reporting and management system. The online application enables us to better identify and manage our exposures, and prevent incidents and injuries at work.

The application captures all information, including photos, relating to an incident in a central place so that incident investigation can start promptly and exposure to risk is reduced.

It also provides a more comprehensive picture of safety events and activities across our business, and allow us to review these events in real time, via a range of reports, meaning we can see reported events as they occur and tell others about potential hazards in similar situations.

The application will be extended to the entire employee workforce in 2019/20 and will be available as an application on our NextGen scanners, so our people can capture and manage safety-related incidents at all times.

A new Alcohol and Other Drugs Policy

In May 2019, we introduced an updated Alcohol and Other Drugs (AOD) Policy for all employees and contractors. Through the new policy, we want to ensure drugs and alcohol do not compromise the safety of our people, the quality of the service we offer to our customers, or the public’s trust in our brand.

Under the new AOD Policy, we will randomly test employees and contractors to ensure they are not affected by AOD. We can also test employees and contractors where there is reasonable suspicion that they may be impaired by AOD, or post-incident and on return to work following a positive AOD test result.

Online training has been provided to all employees and contractors so that they are aware of their responsibilities and the testing process.

Focus on wellbeing

We care about the mental health and wellbeing of our workforce and we strive to have a workplace where people feel positive and supported. This creates a more productive and engaged workforce where people feel valued and satisfied with their work.

Our wellbeing programs and our focus on talking about and educating people about mental health is at the foundation of this. We offer independent, free and confidential counselling and coaching
to employees, our extended workforce including contractors, licensees, sub-contractors, and their families.

We continue to raise awareness for the availability of these support programs as we seek to reduce the stigma around reaching out for support. We have seen continued growth in the use of the broader services suggesting a change in how these programs are viewed, from a reactive counselling service to a proactive service.

We also provided mental health training for our leaders, hosted lunchtime information sessions on mental health issues, and supported activities across our workplaces for R U OK? Day.

Our focus on mental health for our 2017 Safety Time received recognition with the awarding of the Allan Fels Mental Health Award at the 2018 Australian HR Institute Awards. This focus, back in 2017, was instrumental in helping change the way we think and speak about mental health at Australia Post.

To help our people set and reach their wellbeing goals, we launched the Healthy Me app this year, providing employees with access to wellbeing tools and tips. The app is gamified, so participants can win points and earn badges for taking part in activities, and it has a wellbeing check tool that assesses wellbeing on the basis of a range of mind, body, social, work and money measures.

Preventing injury

Our aim is to prevent injuries in our workplaces through the implementation of process improvements, by replacing equipment and vehicles and through education and training.

We have started to replace our fleet of over 6,000 postie motorbikes with safer options including electric bikes and three-wheeled electric vehicles. Our replacement to date of over 800 motorbikes has resulted in a 10 per cent reduction in serious motorcycle crash injuries compared with the previous year.

The increase in parcels in our network increases the potential for body stress for our workforce. To reduce these injury risks, we have invested in parcel sorting automation, being installed across nine sites by the end of 2019. With four sites complete, we are already seeing a reduction in body stressing injuries and when all nine sites are complete, the automation will remove up to 520,000 manual handling touch points each day.

Education about the risk of injury from dogs, either loose in the streets or on private properties, is important in reducing this risk to our posties. We have also trialled ultrasonic devices to discourage dogs and we work closely with local councils to address repeated dog behaviour problems.

Our Move 4 Life manual lifting program was extended to all retail outlets to increase awareness of the risks of lifting and the benefits of moving correctly. We encourage our workforce to stretch before they commence work and have released a series of instructional posters and videos, tailored to the different roles in our business.

Security at our facilities contributes to the safety of our people, so we have invested more than $30 million in security screening and security cameras at several sites this year.