Rethinking Safety Culture with Tamara Jonson | Scratchie Safety Podcast | Episode 3

What does it take to transform stale notions of safety compliance? Tamara Jonson has fresh insights. Beginning in the coal mines with her maverick psychologist father, Tamara saw firsthand how to connect with grief-stricken workers after accidents.

Now a senior safety leader with Richard Crookes Constructions, Tamara spearheads initiatives focused on trust, speaking up, and rewarding safe behaviors. She shares how construction is evolving, from reactive punishments to proactive care.

Tune in to hear Tamara’s bold vision for safety, where empowered leaders own planning and communication. Could incentives and empathy make worksites not just safer, but uplifting? Tamara shows how positive reinforcement is changing the game.

Ready to take the next step? Visit https://www.scratchie.com/book-a-demo to see how Scratchie can help you recognise and reward safe behaviour on your projects. The future of construction safety starts here.

Transcript

James Kell: Hello, everyone. This is James from Scratchie and we have today with us Tamara Johnson. We've known each other for quite a long time. And Tamara has worked with Gary, who's not here but may be joining us because he's had to drive down to Melbourne. So Tamara do you just want to tell us your story, a bit of your background? We met through your father who's - that's a whole podcast in itself. The guy's super colorful. But yeah, I'd love to hear a bit about you. 

Tamara Jonson: Thanks, James. Lovely to be here. So, my story. So I think I've shared this with you in the past; I started out when I was at school, I'd travel with Dad down to the coal mines. So he did a lot of fatality investigations. And he ran one of the very first ever cultural change programs in Australia, which I think even, you know, you were sort of [involved in]

J: It was ahead of its time. 

T: …it very much was and it was quite dynamic and it was really interesting because it was based on radical behaviorism, you'd probably say, which is probably different from where we've gone in the last ten years. But…

J: what's radical behaviorism? 

T: Okay, so radical behaviorism is where you are really there to try and change behavior by decisively dealing with every behavior that you see. So there's a stimulus, and then there's a reaction. Then there's a behavioral reaction to address that. And it's interesting because back then that was incredibly radical - ahead of its time - and it was there to try and deal usually post a really serious incident or a fatality. And it was one of the first ever programs that looked at changing attitude, behavior and culture, you know, and and using it, which is interesting. It's almost like the foundation of Scratchie. 

J: Totally. It is interesting. Is that what your father did his PhD on?

T: he did his PhD on retinal pigmentosis, which is a type of eye disease. Sounds like bizarre twists and turns getting him to explain how he got from there to to dealing with fatality investigations and cultural change, it’s a wild journey, right? You'll enjoy it 

J: full of colorful words.

T: It is, knowing KJ. 

J: Yeah. 

T: It was a really, really interesting sort of place where he started. And then I'd come in on school holidays and weekends to do this with him. And it was just an incredible sort of introduction into into the world of safety because to be sitting essentially in site sheds with a bunch of guys that have just lost a cherished workmate. 

J: Yeah. 

T: And in a mining town that's usually a cousin, or a brother in law, a son, you know, very, very close knit communities going in and then hearing the way that he would just take control. Because often I've found this myself over the years, people, even the strongest leaders can really sort of lose the ability to take control. 

J: They’re still human, right?

T: They’re still human. So he'd go in, he'd take control of the situation, he'd talk to the guys, he'd grieve with them. So we'd sit in those sheds, we'd grieve with them and then start that process of kind of, you know, healing and dealing with what's occurred and then looking at what we needed to do to address the root cause analysis of what had happened and then, you know, create a whole program around the attitudes and behaviors that had essentially led to that incident. And I think what's what's really cool about it is and I know the premise of what you and Gary have created with Scratchie is all around positive reinforcement, you know, and he was definitely ahead of his time because he was all about positive reinforcement versus just, punishment or we'd call it, extinguishing behaviours in radical behaviorism. And so that was sort of the premise. So that was a really huge part of my upbringing. And it really shaped who I was and, you know, my beliefs and I think created a real I was really passionate about just people and caring for people and preserving life. I think from a pretty young age. I think that's what I knew I wanted to do. So when I left school, went to uni, studied psychology and did a BA and then got into tunneling. So start with Ray Miranda, character. Started on Lane Cove Tunnel and yeah, had some exciting, some pretty wild experiences there. So my, my site was the one that had the collapse, the Lane Cove tunnel collapse, 

J: yes. 

T: And then shortly after moved to the Epping to Chatswood Rail Tunnel and tunneling for a few years, which was really interesting and still quite, quite new for women. You know, 20 something years ago, women were not usually in those sorts of civil, heavy environments managing risk. And that was really interesting. And then from there really became fascinated with how you could use leadership, behavioral change, positive reinforcement and, you know, some of those radical behaviorist principles, but in a new and dynamic way to positively affect leadership and cultural change on construction sites. 

J: Yep. 

T: And so, you know, I had this idea in my mind of the kind of way that I wanted to lead safety and where I saw it going. But interestingly, I'd go to these job interviews and they'd say to me, ‘Well, we're not really looking for a young female that's got all these ideas about leadership and behaviour, we really just want, you know, a middle aged man.’ And it was okay to say that in those days, by the way, ‘you know, you're probably not what we think we need. We really want a policeman. We don't think you're going to be very intimidating out on site.’ 

J: Right. 

T: Just kind of which is kind of interesting. And I look back on that now and I think, wow. Yeah. Said that to someone like 

J: Well the tables are turned in many ways. 

T: Yeah. So that was interesting. And at the time I sort of just said, you know, I'd be very defiant and I'd say, ‘right, well, one day you'll be calling me to say, “can you come and work for us?”’ 

J: Right. 

T: You know, so yeah, "Miss Attitude" at the time and and they'd be like, ‘Yeah, okay, we'll call you. No worries.’ So that, you know, getting those opportunities was really hard, but I think it was good because it made me work that much harder. And when I got a couple of opportunities, so moved into Baulderstone and, you know, connected with this wonderful site manager who took me under his wing and just taught me so much and taught me about the value of just becoming really close to the workforce and building relationships and allowed me to do some of the stuff I was passionate about, like the cultural change piece, you know, as well as my day job. 

J: Yeah. 

T: So doing, you know, still being expected to do that kind of policeman type role, but trying to make it my own and trying to create that change that I wanted to see and, you know, really, really interested in creating from scratch this whole different approach to, you know, there has to be more to life than just being a policeman and just stopping people working and just telling them ‘no’. 

J: Yeah, 

T: there has to be more. Maybe I can take some of the stuff I learned from Dad and, you know, work it into the conversations and be more about building capability, about planning, about conversations, about communication, you know, and positive reinforcement. So really trying to evolve that piece around positive reinforcement, you know, in practice, 

J: right? Yeah. 

T: And one of the things that I think is really, really cool, dad had this this thing where he'd say people are driven by different things. Some people are driven by money, some people are driven by relationships, some people are driven by status. But he really believed there was a really strong shift, you know, where you could go up to a worker and if you just sort of said, ‘thank you, thanks, thanks for doing that well’, to a steel fixer: ‘Wow mate, thanks so much. And I can I can tell that you're looking after your workmates. I saw what you just did for him. That was really lovely. I really appreciate that. I just saw you do that.’ 

J: Yeah, 

T: that was really, really powerful. So seeing the shift that that could make, you know, and also I think, being a female on construction sites has this unique ability in a way to kind of bring people together. Like, you know, there's this joke about women and how we love to to communicate. 

J: Yeah, 

T: but I think that was really powerful. So, you know, I really enjoyed that. And I saw- 

J: what was the joke sorry? 

T: You know, how many words does a man say in a day? And it's like 500. 

J: Yeah. 

T: How many words does a woman say in a day? It's like 5,000, right? 

J: Yeah. 

T: And I think even though that stereotype we do, women just have this natural ability to bring people together and communicate and bring people on a journey in a way that's really, really special. And I think it's something that heavy industry and construction and mining, you know, they're finally seeing the benefit probably in the last ten years of how powerful, you know, that that sort of different, diverse perspective can bring. So 

J: it's true that it used to be a case of – just to see if I'm right in understanding your point – is that in previous times it was a case of ‘we need a guy in this job because we have a mental model of what this job requires, and it's a very masculine mental model.’ And so therefore you couldn't do that well and almost encouraging you to ape the male way of thinking. Whereas what you're saying and what I've noticed actually in my time in the industry as well was, bringing the feminine qualities – I don't know, it might not be trendy to talk like… whatever. Bringing those feminine qualities to to the table in an essentially masculine environment is amazingly powerful. And you don't have to be aping anything or anyone. You just be yourself. And is one of my favorite stories is probably our best project manager. When I was CEO of Kell & Rigby and she was running the Paspaley Pearls job, Jano Yousseph and she would, Jano would cook muffins on a Monday morning and give them to the guys. She was the PM. She cooked muffins on a Monday morning, hand them out on the table to the guys and they were all like, ‘Well, thanks, Jano’. And they'd be eating a mouthful of muffin. And Jano'd then say, ‘Right, Tony, you're going to be in in this northeast corner. Here's what I need you to be doing. How you going, Joe? With your....’ And she was managing. She was just being herself. It was just amazing to see, you know? So, yeah, just that back up your story, really. 

T: I love it. James, that's so powerful. And you're right. And I think that's and, you know, that's a really interesting and powerful dynamic that I think females are learning too. Like there was this thing, I think, 20 years ago when I started out, and certainly I thought that the way that you had to behave was that you had to be one of the boys, you know, and you had to be tough and you had to present this image and you had to kind of almost dampen the fact that you were you were female in the way that you behaved and the way you spoke. But I think now women are realising that it's actually more powerful just to kind of be yourself. So and you don't need to be someone else. I love that example. And that's the thing like this, this natural nurturing approach. I've certainly seen and now I think there's a real push at the moment, too. And part of what safety means to me right now is the ability to be vulnerable and to tell people that you do care about them. And that's one of the reasons that, you know, you want to chat to them about something or you want to approach something differently. Bringing people in a room. Sometimes we'll pull a subcontractor up right now and they'll sort of say to us that they'll come into the room thinking, wow, we're about to get, you know, a bollocking and, you know, we're about to get screamed at and told where we're rubbish, you know, and bringing them into the room and just saying, ‘Guys, look, look, something's happened that we're deeply concerned about. We had a near-miss. How did we get onto this? How do we work together to work out what's going on? And what are you feeling like? What's happening for you?’

J: Yep. 

T: And bringing that out. And we had a recent example of where we had a civil subcontractor doing some excavation work prior to building, and they've had a spate of near misses. And it got to the point where we were deeply concerned. We'd intervened a couple of times. In the end we just brought the bosses in and we said in the supervisors and we said, ‘Guys, look what, tell us what's really going on, you know?’ And a bunch of stuff came out. There was some relationship issues with people on the job, there was some personal issues, there was some mental health stuff going on. And then there was just some technical things around people, plant and just the way we'd planned the job, which we probably could have done better. And it was fascinating because you just saw as we started to really tease this out and as the guys realised they weren't there to be attacked. 

J: Right. 

T: Because we were trying to come up with a plan to support each other. The body language, you know, and just like by just the shoulders relaxed. And it was a really lovely kind of different experience. 

J: Yes. And so of that, with that whole near miss thing, what I just heard was that – well, what I heard and what you said may be two different things all the time, right?

J: But what I heard was there's sort of like two parts to the problem. One was the technical part and the other one was the kind of emotive, attitudinal kind of ‘what I'm feeling’ kind of part. How much do you see that dichotomy? Or at least, do you think we've focused enough on both parts of that in safety, or do you think that we've sort of overdone one part and not enough in the other? Or do you even see there as being a dichotomy? 

T: That's a great that's a really great way to put I love the word dichotomy because I think in a lot of ways in the past James and this is probably what you you remember experiencing, you know, in construction is that ‘people are a problem to be solved’, you know, or they're ‘an issue to be corrected’ or they're you know, people that just need a, you know, you know, talking to or throw a few Fs into them. As you know, you'd cite industry speak, you know, and 

J: …if only they could get out of the way, then would be fine, right? 

T: Right James. And it's interesting because we're going on this cultural journey, we've got this incredible business coach called Jessica Layden and one thing she's teaching us is that you can't just like what's going on on the top, you know, it's like an iceberg. Any person is like an iceberg. You see the behavior at the top, but then there's all this stuff going on down the bottom because we're all human, right? And if you look at what's going on in your life and you make a small trip up or a mistake, okay, the stakes are higher on a job, but when you actually peel back the layers, generally what we're finding and what I'm personally learning, which has been a huge shift in the last few years, is there's all this stuff going on in people's lives and there's usually so many things that are being triggered or factors as to why something's going on. And all they really need is to is to be, you know, understood, heard. To figure that out. 

J: Yeah. 

T: And you've got to obviously build trust to actually, you know, get them to bring that stuff to the surface, but creating that safe environment and hearing that. So and you're right, so there's, there's technical issues and there's things that we can fix technically, you know, on a site and then there's usually later leadership and cultural reasons as to why things happen as a chain of events. But in the moment people are making decisions because they've got all this other stuff going on. So I think peeling that back and, you know, taking that really holistic approach has been a really big, really big shift. 

J: Yeah, right. And actually, I had-  …so you're in the leadership team with Richard Crookes in Safety; and Gary and I sat in a meeting. I think it's a monthly dial-in. 

T: Yeah. 

J: Yeah. So it was, is like I've had 12 years outside of the industry and looking at what goes on in those monthly dial-ins was amazing. It was like, I don't know how many hundreds of people were calling in, but for the listeners, the near misses were openly discussed. There was no finger pointing, it was like, discussing issues that any building company has any sort of day of the week, there are kind of incidents like this and they'd highlight a few. And they'd say, ‘What can we learn from this?’ It was just so good. And it's come such a long way since I left the industry in 12 years. And so full credit to you and I think when Garry was in the role, he said, ‘Yeah, look, I did a bit, but it's gone further thanks to Tamara’, really. So credit to you, you know, well done.  I haven't seen that before and it was really good. It's really good to be so honest and so open because that's the only way everyone can learn. Right. 

T: Thanks, James. That's really, really lovely feedback. And it's nice sometimes to see, you know, fresh set of eyes perspective on what that must, must look like. And that dial-in, I think that was born from, you know, like you said, there's always still this stigma in the industry and there's this tension, I would say, this ongoing constant tension between this perception that incidents are bad. And if you're having incidents, you're bad and you're doing something wrong versus we know that things happen in the industry. And it's really interesting because there's this global thought leadership now about tipping incident reporting on its head. And rather than looking at projects and businesses that are having incidents and reporting and have a transparent reporting culture and viewing them as bad or again, a problem to be fixed, and instead looking at them and saying ‘there's actually a lot of evidence’ and we've been able to add to that evidence in the last couple of years ‘that if you have an open, transparent reporting culture and you're reporting a lot of near-misses, you're less likely to have a fatality or a permanent disablement. An actual incident’. 

J: Yeah, 

T: which is an incredibly powerful shift. 

J: Yeah. Yeah. And actually, it takes a lot of courage for businesses to actually, you know, to test that theory 

J: totally. 

T: And and that's something that I'd I'd sort of I guess I'd shared with a couple of businesses I'd worked in. But there was a bit of a reticence to, to do that level of transparent reporting. There was a fear about the perception of the business, and this was the first business that kind of said, okay, Tamara we'll we'll give it a try. You've convinced us it's worth trying. And it had a significant impact on our actual incident levels and just hurting less people, which is our ultimate goal. But what I love about is and what I didn't expect was just the openness, you know, then to speak up about incidents and getting the project managers and the site managers to get up and talk about it. 

J: Yep. 

T: At first I think they thought, ‘oh, are we being punished?’ 

J: Or ‘...I'm going to look bad in front of my peers’. 

T: Yeah. And don't get me wrong, there's still a little fear of that. And, you know, we go out of our way now, so someone will report through. We call them HPIs which is a high potential incident, which could be anything from, you know, someone standing on a leading edge without a handrail to something dropping, beside an individual at an exclusion zone. And now they just come through thick and fast. We're seeing them continuously. And the first thing me or my team do when we see that is just say “thank you. Like, well, thanks so much. Yeah, that's awesome”. You know, particularly if no one's been injured or impacted. And then the next piece is working out what happened. Getting down to the site, supporting them, asking how they're going. “How are you feeling then?” Then in a non-emotional way, trying to work through it, which is not always easy. Like we're all human, but we're all trying to work through, you know, what actually occurred without attributing blame. 

J: Yes. 

T: Looking at us internally, like rather than blaming individuals, which, you know, …you would know that was kind of normal ten 12 years ago. That was the thing, right? 

J: …and it was never going to work, right? 

T: Yeah, yeah. Blame. Blame the worker. 

J: Yeah. 

T: And why do we blame the worker? It was so easy, right? Oh, it was just easy, you know, individual behavior. 

J: Yeah, that's right. 

T: Just get him off the job. 

J: right. 

T: And then the problem’s kind of solved by looking introspectively at what we as a business did to set that individual up to fail. 

J: Yeah. And, and I guess it's one of those things – and this is a layman talking so you can school me on this – is it seems as though you can there's two extremes to that. One is to say it's all the workers fault. That's kind of how it was in many instances. And yet the other one’s to go to the other extreme to say it's all the the managers’ and the system’s fault and the worker has nothing to do with it. And the truth be told, it's likely a balance, isn't it? 

T: Yeah, absolutely it is. And that's like just always a delicate, you know, dance between what actually happened.  That's how that’s kind of grown. But what I'm really excited about now is it does feel like people genuinely enjoy sharing the information. And I would love to think there's less fear, you know, around reporting. I don't think we've fully gotten rid of that stigma. I think there's always going to be a journey there. But, you know, I think it's definitely become a much more enjoyable experience, 

J: Nice. Now, I might pause this for a second. We've been going 20 minutes

James Kell: Alrighty. Let's take a different tack. And there were a couple of things that I was really wanting to talk to you about, and firstly your story and background and everything, which is fascinating and your views and everything else. The other one was Richard Crookes' use of Scratchie. So we can park that for a second because that's really interesting, at least to me. Because Richard Crookes was the first construction company to use it. But my sister's in San Francisco and she's in marketing, and I said to her that I was going to start a podcast and she was like, “Oh, cool, what's it about?” And I said, “Oh, it's with Scratchie, with Garry with Scratchie. So it's about safety.” And she was like, – she's always been pretty sarcastic. My sister, – she was like, “Oh my God, James, that sounds sooo exciting.” And so I was like, “Fair enough, that's fair. Fair play.” Now, what do you think? And yet I think the subject matter is actually really interesting. So I'd love to hear your thoughts on what a podcast in the safety space should be to be actually interesting to people. 

T: Firstly, I have to say I love that. I love that story James because it's so real. And I think if we were to, you know, pretend like safety is the sexiest topic on Earth for most people, it would probably fail. 

J: Yeah. 

T: And I'm a safety geek. You know, like I said. This is my passion. It's not just a job for me, but I think, you know, interestingly for me, and it's something I've thrown around. And I think this all started, you know, learning and hearing from Rob Long. Like, he has a way of challenging everything you've ever thought. And learning about the power and importance of language from him made me challenge even the idea of, you know, should it even be called safety, and is defining that role and that whole concept taking away from actually what we're really talking about or the value of what it could be. And it's interesting because — and Gary and I talk about this a lot — I feel like the old way of doing things was to call it safety and almost defining this whole group of people in their role and then almost trying to separate it out from your operational people's day job by saying, “oh, that's that's like the safety officer's job”. Which, as we know, doesn't work in practice. And then there's this other part about, well, you know, what actually is safety. And if you look at what you're doing with Scratchie and kind of where I would like to see my role and where I'd love to see safety go in the next ten years, it's all around leadership behavior, culture, coaching, care. They these are the kind of the things and it's interesting because we we even challenged ourselves in my team. We've been throwing around the idea: do we throw out the language of safety manager, safety officer, general manager, safety, and do we call ourselves like, you know, communication, planning and risk coaches, you know, 

J: got it 

T: and just do it just completely. 

J: So the output is a safe environment. It's because you've done all the other things. Right. I get it. I get it. So that's an interesting way to look at it, 

T: because language is really powerful, isn't it? And it's interesting because I'll never forget, we thought, I think it was about two and a half years ago, we thought, wow, we've got to really shake things up and do something really different. You know, in our business in Richard Crookes. And we want to redefine safety in our organisation and in the industry. And one of the things that we did was, rather than having a bunch of just regular safety standards, we created our primary safety standard, which was like our road map to how we do business. And we called it the planning and communication standard. And it's interesting that we've found now everything that we do in construction: planning, communication, the output of planning communication is a great safety culture, right? So, you know, even just looking at that, that completely shifted and changed how all of our operational people, our leaders and managers, and even our board now look at safety. What it's all about. And it's interesting because I had this project manager I'll never forget; we did this huge relaunch. We launched that standard. It was all around practical ways we could implement it. So like a daily planning meeting or a high risk workshop where you got the subbie in the room before you started work or talking about the methodology in the shed prior to starting what really practical, simple things tools that we knew worked. About connecting people . And this concept that great safety was the output of great planning and comms. And I had this project manager call me. It was probably three months into when we made this the way we did business. And he called me, he said, “Tamara I've got a bone to pick with you. We really need to talk. We need to talk.” And I said, “Yeah, sure, talk, talk to me what's going on?” And he said to me, “Do you want to look at my diary right now?” He goes, “I'm going to show you my diary. Okay?” Yeah. Okay. And he opened his his planner, and it was literally all the planning meetings and, you know, the structure of the operational meetings. And to be honest, it was like 101 of what you would do to build a project. You know, but it's funny, he sort of said to me, “look how much time I'm spending on safety. Can you can you see my diary?” Yeah. Wow. Yeah, I can see. I can see, you know, how you'd potentially be concerned? I said, “So let me ask you this. Are you really spending time on safety? Is your diary full of safety, or is that just what a leader does to be able to execute a project in this day and age, like we're talking about communicating with your team, we're talking about sitting down with the subcontractor and planning out day by day how you're going to do the job”. 

J: Yeah, 

T: “...we're talking about communicating with the workers. Are you sure that this is, you know, right?”

J: Right. 

T: And it was fascinating because he kind of just looked at me and sort of said, “okay, I never really thought of it like that, you know?” And it was just again, it hit me. It's all about language and perception and maybe decoupling this idea that safety, you know, is is like just this standalone pillar that someone's put on a pedestal. 

J: Yes. 

T: And just saying it really should just be be worked into what we do every day instead of some precious standalone thing, you know. 

J: Yeah, right. So then moving to your experience from a couple of years ago, piloting 

 encouraging safe work and that sort of thing using Scratchie as the tool, but I guess there's other ways to do it. So just talking generally about encouraging safety as opposed to, you know, one of the ways that that I see it is sort of like the red light camera approach the industry seems to have been like a red light camera to the worker. “I'm going to ignore you until you do something wrong. Then I'm going to jump all over you.” “So for the one time in ten, you do something wrong. You've got my full attention. But for the nine times in ten you do the right thing, I'm just going to ignore you.” And so with our encouraging positive behaviors we've flipped that on its head and say, “for the nine times in ten you do the right thing, pick any one or two of them and we'll recognise you for it.” I'd love to hear your views on that because yeah, I'll open it up at that. 

T: That's such an interesting topic. And it's funny because when you were saying that, I was thinking this is something that again, I feel like, you know, Dad was really ahead of his time and he was one of the first people that kind of used to say to me, “what you got to do is catch people doing the right thing and reward that many more times than you tell them they're doing the wrong thing.” And he was all about if you build that relationship and you've said, “well, mate, well done. Thank you so much for looking after your work, mate. No one else saw that, but I saw what you just did.” 

J: Yeah, 

T: …then that one time that you've got to go. “Hey, hey, listen, buddy, you know how you are going today, you know, and wow, you know, I noticed that, you know, you're not using this piece of equipment, you know, that you could do and it could be protecting you. Like, let's talk about why and let's…” you're much more likely to get a positive response. 

J: Yeah. 

T: And what I think is interesting is and and why Scratchie you know I really I think it's got that …towards the positive reinforcement piece is you’re rewarding people and it there's some sort of tangible output there. Literally. It's giving people a tool to go out and physically look for and reward good behaviour. Yeah. And things that people do right. And it actually doesn't come naturally to us does it, James, to do that. 

J: Not in the old paradigm. No, the old paradigm is all about compliance, isn't it? And so there's really not a lot of space for positive encouragement in a compliance regime.

T: Exactly. In the best of times. And then you imagine in construction. Yeah, let's be honest, I think it's probably even more deep rooted behavior. That screaming and yelling and shouting at people and telling them that they've done something wrong is the way that you you make change. So it is such a shift to build trust, right? 

J: Yeah. Okay. Interesting. 

T: So one of the things that I think is interesting, there's a whole body of work being undertaken right now in the industry around conversations and having those positive conversations and even teaching people how to have positive, engaging conversations that spark interest. And that thanking people becoming more natural, even teaching leaders like, there's a piece of work going on in our business right now, which is a huge cultural shift around teaching leaders how to have positive conversations. We call them blue with edge conversations. So, you know, from the LSI perspective, blue being where you’re affiliative, caring, you know, walls are down. 

J: LSI? 

T: Yeah, yeah. Like, oh, my gosh, LifeStyles Inventory. I'm sorry, gotta love the acronyms. So it's just this whole leadership approach. 

J: Okay. 

T: Where leaders measure their capability in the way that they, you know, recognise and communicate and lead. 

J: Yes, 

T: …it's a really interesting approach, but it actually, you know, getting people to analyse when they see something either that's correct, or that's not. Do they avoid that? So I walk past a worker doing something on site. I've got sort of a couple of options. I can pretend I don't see it. And there's plenty of people that do that. So we would call that kind of green or avoidant behavior. It's easier. It's quicker. I don't really want to deal with 

J: there's no confrontation. 

T: You know what? I've told him 50 times? He's not listening to me. I just don't, you know, either don't want that. Or I just can't deal with it right now. Or, you know, going up and having a genuine, caring conversation with them about how “hey may listen, you know, how you going and look, I noticed, you know, you were doing this and just talk to me about why and look, because I care about you. You know, I want to sort of talk to you about a probably better way we can find together. Let's come up with a better way.” Or there's the, you know, screaming and yelling. “I've effen told you this many times. Put your bloody earplugs in, you know.” And there are so many ways to kind of approach. And that's on a very micro level. Yeah, you know, forgetting about all the other layers of leadership. But, but it's interesting. I just feel like, you know, we're evolving, like not only us as a business but as an industry. And I look at what your you're trying to do you and Gaz and, you know Scratchie and just sort of trying to at the at the site base level, you know, provide another tool for people. 

J: Exactly. Exactly. I mean, it's interesting. Even that little example you gave, it reminds me, putting the avoidance piece to one side because you don't achieve anything with that. So there's really two approaches. One is the the hard approach to yell and scream, which has its place. And the other one is the encouragement approach. So it's love and fear. I think Machiavelli wrote about it. It's like they're the two tools, aren't they, really? And they're both. They both have their place. It's not like one is right and one is wrong. It's very yin and yang, isn't it? It's like and so our approach with with Scratchie and I think anyone who's led people, which is almost everyone really in different contexts: you need both. And yet what the industry had was all compliance, all punishments like where's the other one? It's like we're not against compliance is like we just need to balance it out a bit. And I think that's it would be interesting to hear how it's going in fact generally at Richard Crookes with this approach. 

T: Yeah, and you're so right. It is so true. And even if I look back even five or ten years, the shifts in the industry or the shift in thinking has been so incredible. And I look at where we're going and because I don't think we're the only we're certainly not the only business that's trying to take a different approach and realising that the old way, just purely the stick doesn't work. And it's interesting because even and I don't think the psychology is changed in I don't know, the 60 or 70 years since Pavlov and Skinner and these, you know, radical behaviorists that started this whole approach about how do you change behavior. They always said, you know, they'd start out with rats in a lab or in a Skinner box and they'd like… And you could do this in those days, electrocute the rat when they did, you know, perform the behaviour. They didn't want a reward or they wanted to extinguish behaviour. And then they'd reward the behaviours that they wanted repeated. And, you know, not that I'm saying humans are rats, but interestingly, I think behavior they even knew back then. But there's got to be that dual approach. And it's interesting because I've seen probably both sides of the first 15 years of my career, mainly the stick and mainly, you know, the aggressive. And look, I was I was part of that, too. I absolutely had to relearn everything and made plenty of mistakes, trying to take this out. And then take this other approach of, well, you've got to decisively deal with unsafe or poor behavior. And then this is general. But you've also got to reward positive behavior and try and get the balance right. And it may be you've got a reward three times to every time you've got to decisively deal with something that's not quite right. 

J: Yeah. Yeah, right. And I guess we would have different examples in the industry. I remember one guy actually, he worked, with Kell & Rigby in the leadership team and then he was with Richard Crookes in Canberra, Michael Ensor, and he was really – God I learned so much from him, – but I don't believe he ever raised his voice and…  I can't remember an example of him raising his voice, so he would do everything through just really solid, decent management and leadership of people. So an example. When he was a site manager, I think I was just finishing high school, so I was watching him and he would call a subbie two weeks before he'd call the subbie a week before. He'd call the subbie two days before. He’d call the subbie the night before, just to make sure they'd come and they knew what they were doing and that sort of thing. So there was no screaming and yelling because he'd had them lined up so well, and that was just his approach to leadership. So he could do it very positively just because he was well organised, you know, as opposed to this reactionary screaming and yelling. And, you know, when they don't turn up because they forgot, because they're human or whatever. So yeah, that's interesting. 

T: I really love that because that's such an early example of just great planning, communication in action 

J: totally 

T: not having to to raise your voice. It's interesting you say that because it sounds like Michael definitely hadn't changed from when when you worked with him, because having worked with him for a few years, at RCC, he was the same personality. Never heard him raise his voice. And it's interesting because a lady tonight, Teresa Avila, she's very, very senior in transport for New South Wales, is a director and she was one of my mentors over the years and that was back in the day when I was part of that culture of whoever screamed the loudest got heard. 

J: Yeah, yeah. 

T: And I'll never forget I was on a job, I think it was the Mardi Dam project. And I was with this, this senior site manager, site superintendent we called them on the civil jobs and I think there was some dispute over traffic control and I was just deeply concerned about some work that was going on, on that job. And I was the safety coordinator on that project and Teresa was the project manager. And anyway, we were in the middle of the yard, in the middle of all the workers, and we were there just having this screaming match about, you know, and I look back on it now and I'm just so embarrassed, you know? And I just think, wow. And it was just about what we should be doing. And, you know, that was just how you communicated. And so that was pretty natural for us. But she walked out of her office and she looked at both of us in her very calm way. And this is one of the things I love about her and her leadership. This very calm, even voice said, “The two of you get into my office now” and you could almost... And what what I studied about her and what I realised it took many years to reflect on is that the louder people would get around her, the quieter she would speak. 

J: Right. Right. 

T: It slow it down. And I feel like now I look back on that it was so powerful. Yeah. And she just brought us in the office and said, what? What are you guys doing? 

J: Right? 

T: You know, this is just not the right approach. And it's so interesting how those real antithesis, those people that are the complete opposite. Yeah, the opposite of that kind of yelling, screaming red culture 

J: …that can get so much done. 

T: Yeah, absolutely. And that's why she was just one of the most powerful leadership role models for me over the years. And 

J: yeah, right. 

T: You know, just so incredible and just really taught me about the fact that, you know, just because you're in construction, you don't need to lower yourself to that kind of level of behavior. And I think that's what we're talking about today is. Turning everything you thought you knew on its head. 

J: Yep. There's so many contrarian approaches to, I guess, human psychology, really. At least what I've noticed in in my time with well, from when we, when we experimented with rewarding people for safety ten years ago, you know, the first time we did that, the stock approach from a lot of people in the industry was “why are you rewarding them for doing something they should already be doing?” And we didn't have a good answer to that. But our answer now to that is, “Well, how's that going?” And they say, “well, they're not doing it.” It's like, “okay, so what are you doing about it?” “Oh, I'm slapping them harder. You know, I'm punishing them more.” “How's that going?” “that’s Not working either.” Well, I wonder if you should try some encouragement. 

T: You know, so you're so right, James. And it's interesting because we find particularly, you know, when you come to the end of a job and you would 100% relate to this. 

J: Mm hmm. 

T: When you come to the end of a project, your ability to use the stick on a subcontractor or in a series of workers becomes much less powerful. 

J: So true. 

T: Because they they're leaving soon. Yeah, you've got. And, you know, those last couple of months when you've got your ass hanging out, you’re flat chat, just trying to get the thing built. You bring those subbies in and start screaming, yelling at them or threatening them. Even with penalties or financial penalties or whatever. They’re just going to kind of check out. 

J: Yeah. Yeah. 

T: And then they do. And you say you physically can see on their faces that they have checked out and they're like, I just cannot wait to get off this job. And not only that, physically, people will stop turning up. Yep. There'll be injuries. Incidents. There’ll just be real, just the quality takes a dive. Everything. And so one of the things that we do is when we have situations like that, it is we turn it on its head and we say, right, what can we do to reward that time? Can we throw more barbecues? Can you give out some awards? Can we create a shared goal that may not be around, you know, time or money, but it's something that is meaningful to the workforce that demonstrates that we care. And often that can give us even one or two of those events or ideas, depending on the job and the situation. And the subcontractor can just give you that little bit of extra energy to get to the the job in a positive way. 

J: Yes. 

T: …and enjoy the last leg of the journey. So, you know, 

J: I think that's it's so true. You know, it reminds me of a left field thing. This is on a tangent. But I read a book about John Monash, that general in the First World War and, he actually studied engineering, so he was an engineer then he went to law. Really interesting story. He was a Jewish kid from country Victoria in the militia because it was before - we only formed our armed forces after we federated it's probably 1905 or something. So in the late 19th century when he was a kid, he joined the militia because that's all there was in Victoria. So: Jewish, from a colony, part time militia. And there was a fourth thing. Oh, German. German extraction. of German origin. Okay. So all the things that the British High Command weren't a fan of in the First World War. Anyway, he gets sent to Gallipoli as a senior soldier. As a senior - I don't think he was a general at the beginning - and so he goes through Gallipoli and then he started to win battles and the way that he did it was when he went to a new area he would communicate. So it was quite revolutionary because the, the Lord such-and-such who were the leadership on the British side said, you shall do what I tell you, the end. Right. And so the soldiers really weren't clear on what they needed to do and couldn't actually give feedback back up because Lord such-and-such wouldn't hear it. Whereas this Jewish colonial, part time soldier, kid engineer said, Look, here's the plan guys, I'm going to tell you it. You go and tell your teams, and at least you know where you sit in the overall plan. Tell your teams, get them to come back and let's iterate it back and forth. And so they'd iterate these plans and they just kept winning because, you know, everyone knew what they had to do. But one of the other things that was interesting and this is getting to your point was that he wanted to have small wins. So he would because he wanted to give his team the soldiers this. He wanted to get the dopamine hit from a win. So if there was even a little, little skirmish or something like that, he would say, you know, organise it, go and do it. Even if it didn't make a whole amount of a lot of sense in a strategic sense. Go and do it. And so they would go and do it and they'd come back and that and there was a little win, mini win. Okay. So admittedly, this is a wartime example, but war does test us in many ways, right? So it's the same sort of thing, isn't it? It's like get the teams to do something, give them a little win so they get a sense, they get a taste of it, you know, and that'll contribute to the overall project. So yeah. TANGENT. But John Monash is interesting. 

T: I love that and like let's be honest, a lot of people that are in construction would very much, you know, say that sometimes construction's not that different from war. You're in the trenches, right? You've got this. 

J: True, lots of metaphors. 

T: So that's really interesting. But I absolutely love that. And, you know, it's interesting that example I gave earlier about, you know, we got that subbie in in that room and we had that chat and we came up with this sort of joint plan where we felt like we were, you know, together. We were going to, come out with this plan together and we're going to move forward as a team. And, you know, and right at the end of that chat, we sort of said to each other, what we've had all these issues, we've had kind of a few hits, we've taken a few hits. To your war analogy, what what's one thing we can do to really celebrate? Like what is a win that's coming up. Yeah, that we can celebrate. And it was interesting because like we were in this hole literally and figuratively in this hole with all this gear and we were trying to get out of this hole and and the guys said, look, if we can just finish the dig and just remove this scaffold stair, right? And just get in there and get on with it. That's got to be like, why don't we make that? And we decided, let's make that like the, the kind of the moment. And then we'll do this massive barbecue. We'll give out some awards. Yeah, we'll do a big thank you to everyone, make everyone feel really amazing and just showcase and it just shows. It doesn't matter what the win is, and it doesn't need to be that everything's perfect. And I think that's that's a really interesting concept, as if you put safety on a pedestal and if you treat it like it's this, this mystical thing, if everything's not always perfect, you know, like this whole “zero” concept which has been proven to be just diabolical and unachievable. 

J: Let's talk about that, because that's another fascinating paradox, really, or it sounds good at the beginning, but it has this interesting outcome. So, tell me about so for the for the audience, we're talking about the whole zero harm. There's many ways to term it, but it's basically that, isn't it, zero incidents, zero harm with, you know, and the you see the posters and you see it in many construction and mining companies and it's frankly understandable why there would be that because it sounds right. So I'd love to hear your viewpoint as to what the problems might be with it. 

T: Yeah. And it's interesting because in the middle of my career was around maybe ten years ago. “Zero” was the thing. So it's interesting because it kind of crept in and it's funny when you hear something and you've heard it for the first time, I asked the question probably everyone would ask when you first hear zero. And I was like, “ …like sorry to, you know, be be naive, but how can you achieve zero on a on a construction site?” And I quickly learned from that that you weren't allowed to say that. Right. So you know, that was like the sacred cow. You couldn't speak against zero. That was just blasphemy. So, no, no, no, no, no. You can't question zero. 

Yeah. Okay. 

T: “Zero is achievable. And anyone who doesn't believe in it,” you know, right. Like “there's the door” type. So, you know, and that was yeah, that was really interesting. So, and it's funny because I tried to live in a zero environment in a couple of organisations I worked in. And and the fascinating thing about zero is and this concept which, like I said, is put up on this pedestal and you can't question it is we now know and it's been proven and we've proven it in our Organisation, you have to have a transparent reporting culture where you're seeing a lot of near-misses reported through. 

J: Yes. 

T: And, you know, on occasion, you're going to have, you know, a finger or a scratch or something more serious. You've got to report those and you got to hear about them. And you've got to make it okay to report that. 

J: Yes. 

T: To actually prevent more serious things happening. But what zero drives and what it drove in the organisations I observed was this absolute fear around reporting. this absolute fear around transparency. And you'd be sitting in a meeting and people and it got to the point where I'll never forget because it was zero, you'd start arguing and spending hours and hours in meetings with leaders about a scratched finger or a cut hand because, you know, it's 

J: whether it should be reported or not you know, 

T: like it's it's zero, right? So then you're banning people walking backwards and then you're, you know, you're writing things into a set of like increasing standards, which no one has time to read and stop making sense. And you're making a bandaid like something where they've got to go to the M.D. and they've got to, you know, they've got Spanish Inquisition and, you know, 

J: so it becomes farcical. 

T: it does. And it gets to the point where someone and I'll never forget sitting in a meeting once and we're having a talk about someone walked backwards and tripped at a mine site. And so they were literally debating whether or not we ban walking backwards. 

J: Wow. 

T: And I'll never forget I'll never forget this superintendent who I greatly respect. And he was one of those guys. He just you could tell he a tried to kind of like you know, toe the party line about zero. But he just turned and he said, you know what, this is all bullshit, right? He goes, Let me tell you something. I'm not going to ban walking backwards. You do that and I'm out. He goes, because this zero bullshit, it's not working. 

J: Yep. 

T: Stuff's happening out there every day. We're terrified to tell you. And it's because of this reaction, 

J: right. 

T: You know, and and so I think seeing that and having people courageous enough to challenge that concept and say, actually, let's turn it on its head. And let's make reporting okay and say we want to hear about things which, let's be honest, is the complete opposite to how right now the regulators, you know, actually. So so you have incidents or you're reporting incidents as a business. You’re a problem to be fixed. Yes. You know, so it's really interesting. 

J: It's fascinating. And and thank you for sharing that. I had it sort of half formed in my mind. But you've you've cleared it up and you've given me another insight, because similarly what I noticed was that if there's zero, then the only thing that can happen in the real world is failing zero. And so if you're always failing and this whole concept of no accidents, no such thing as an accident, so then someone's responsible. So everyone's kind of like, don't look the safety person in the eye. And so they’re disengaging or lying about the incidents and both those things are causing more harm. So zero is causing harm, which is crazy. 

T: It's so funny. James The more you talk about it, the more like safety. It's almost sometimes the polar opposite of what, you know, you first think to be right. And that's why I think challenging everything and, you know, being courageous enough to be able to challenge some of these, like we call them sacred cows is is really important. And it's interesting you say that because you think you go on a job or a project where you have an incident. And I often find in the early stages of a project, while they're still establishing their planning and communication and the culture, that they'll have a near-miss and it'll be like a warning, you know if we tackle in the right way, if we have that transparency, we can get in and support them and say, right, guys, let's let's look at why this is happening. And you can only do that if you've got that culture where people feel comfortable enough to let you in and to be honest and to say, look, guys, you know, we've had a near-miss. Let's talk about it yet. if you don't have that and you say we've got a zero culture and it's in the early stages of that job and I've already had an incident. Guess what? You've failed. And that's what Zero feels like. 

J: Yeah. 

T: Just having experienced it myself as a safety professional at that time, zero feels like constant failure. And. And it's not that the concept is sound. No one should go to work and not come home exactly how they went to work. 

J: And that's not in doubt. 

T: Yeah. You know, everyone agrees to that. We all agree with that. We believe in zero fatalities, zero permanent disablements, but it's the path to get there. And it's almost like does that need to be so explicit? Does it need to be thrown in people's faces? Because to our point, you start on a job and you've already broken zero, which let's be honest, if you're transparent happens within the first few months, like you said, you've already failed. And then, you know, you've lost you've lost that ability for people to feel like they can succeed. 

J: Yes. Yeah. Brilliant. Now, looking forward, you know, vision for future sort of stuff. Where do you see the industry headed? Where do you see safety? You can be a realist here. You can be a dreamer. You can do whatever you want. But I'd love to hear your view. With your background. And from being a little girl holding on your dad's hand as he toured the sites and learning from him to where you are now in a in a senior leadership role looking after, say, one of Australia's great building companies. Where do you see it moving and in which sort of direction? 

T: probably the first thing I'd say is my passion and my hope for the future is that and I always say this if we're doing our job as safety leaders or what, I'd love to see the vernacular change eventually to like, you know, risk leadership, and planning coaches. I would love that we do ourselves almost out of a job in the next, say, 20 to 30 years in that leaders own that role And and I think, you know, we move more into being like the coach and the conscience of the organisation and a lot more about leadership planning and communication coaching and cultural coaches and sort of throwaway the word safety altogether, because operational people believe that safety is just an intrinsic part of their job. 

J: Yeah, 

T: you know, I think that would be awesome. But really more practically, like I've got three, three kids, my heart and soul 

J: awesome. 

T: I've got two boys and a girl. So six, four and two. So that's a really interesting, 

J: super colorful 

T: and even just coming to this discussion with 

J: I really appreciate that I heard them in the background. It was dogs that were kids. There was all sorts of things 

T: really lucky that my husband is so supportive. But you know, I would love to believe my kids love construction. They love it. You know, we always joke that like we're going to be like a crew on site one day. But I guess my my passion is, is to think that I can put them on on a construction site or I can support them to be on a construction site, you know, working as carpenters or plumbers or electricians or a crane driver, which my daughter like is really excited about one day,. And know that they're going to go to work and they're going to be not only like safe, physically safe and not have any fear about that, because let's be honest right now, you can't say that. And we've got enough examples to say that that's true in the industry. But but are they going to be better for having worked on that site? Because their mental health is going to be supported, because they're going to be cared for as a whole human, even if they're a little bit different or if they think or learn differently and you know that they're going to be rewarded for what makes them great and they're just going to have this wonderful, dynamic experience. So that's kind of my my dream. 

J: Unreal. That's it's so well put. Well, Tamara we're at the end of our hour. It's flown. I really appreciate hearing your viewpoint and your insights into the industry, and it's very exciting to have you in a leadership role. I'm sure your father, Keith is super proud of you. And yeah, I look forward to working closely with you with Scratchie and Richard Crookes. 

T: Thanks, James. It's been a pleasure.