Austube Mills celebrated its 80th anniversary last year. Its Endeavour Award-winning Code of Practice safety campaign has also been a long time in the making.
The former OneSteel Australia Mills business saw parent company Arrium update its Codes of Practice (COP), and this became a catalyst for rethinking Austube's entire approach to safety.
This approach has been adopted at sites at the company's network of manufacturing and warehousing facilities in NSW, Queensland and Victoria.
"We pride ourselves as Austube Mills to be a strong manufacturer of high-quality product," Garry Meagher, Austube's Manager, Safety, Quality, Environment and Training (SQET), told Manufacturers' Monthly.
"But the underlying thing that embeds that is that we care for our people, and it's about providing safe environments so that our people can flourish and have the opportunity to make quality products in Australia."
Austube's COP campaign was launched in January 2015 with its animated ambassador 'Zero', to help encourage teams to alays choose the best safety behavior – whether at work or at home.
The launch took place across the company's three sites and was also Skyped to their inter-state sales managers to ensure everyone had the same simultaneous experience.
The presentation involved a letter read to the audience that was written by Austube's Safety, Quality, Environment and Training (SQET) Council to explain why the campaign was being rolled out, how it was evolving and what each individual could do to keep it relevant.
The letter read, "The video and the five posters are the first stage of this campaign, with the rest of the 10 codes to be rolled out at a later date, so all will stay tuned for more later this year.
"Our business has certainly had an interesting journey up to now; from being safe because we have to adhere to the rules, to being safe because we want to protect from harm, and while ever our people are still harmed, we still have work to do.
Staff were brought in on the making of the video and Austube's site lead teams in on the campaign's messaging to gain relevance to Goal Zero: Zero Harm, Zero Waste.
The campaign included an updated and rebranded personal COP booklet, educational video and poster suite, a 12 month employee engagement strategy, an infographic detailing the campaign's journey, internal communications activities in the lead up to the launch – all aiming to develop employees into stronger safety leaders.
"Our key message was this – 'You do it mostly right at work because you have to, now it's time to take those best practice behaviours off site so you can help protect your loved ones at all times," reads their nomination.
"You'd hate to have allowed harm to occur to your baby, wife or father, knowing you knew how to prevent it from happening.'"
Austube the largest Australian manufacturer of the widest range of high quality structural steel pipe, tube and open profile sections that are third-party certified (ACRS) to the highest AUS/NZ Standards.
"We benchmark Australia-wide and worldwide. But again, it comes down to the human factor for us, and we rely on and invest in our people," said Meagher.
(Pictured: Garry Meagher, Austube's Manager, SQET, and David Duncan, Managing Director, SICK.)
Austube Mills
1800 281 424
www.austubemills.com.au