Two years ago I stepped into a new role, General Manager Health Safety and Environment at Australia's largest energy generator — right in the middle of the most complex energy transition this country has ever seen.
Coal power plant closures. Renewable construction. Gas operations. Hydro. Virtual Power Plants. Thousands of contractors. An amazing HSE team. A suitable budget. And a risk profile that shifts and evolves faster than an annual programme could likely ever keep up with.
Here's what I've learned: the biggest threat to HSE performance isn't a single hazard or aspect. It's the "annual reset trap" — the deeply ingrained habit of building a 12-month programme of work, ticking through it, then starting again in July like nothing carried over.
It sounds productive. It feels structured. But it's a trap.
The Problem With 12-Month Thinking
When I arrived, one of the first things I did was look at how many discrete "programmes" and “initiatives” were running across the business. The number was... big. Lots of activity. Lots of energy. But activity isn't the same as impact.
The Total Injury Frequency Rate was increasing, much of this was attributable to low-impact injuries — but that's exactly the point. Volume-based activity doesn't automatically translate to improved outcomes. If your strategy resets every financial year, you're perpetually in "launch mode" and never in "embed mode."
I've worked in manufacturing, construction, fast moving consumer goods, and energy — and the one pattern I keep seeing across all three is this: organisations confuse programme volume with strategic maturity. More programmes ≠ better performance. Fewer, sharper, longer-horizon commitments do.
Doing Things Differently
In this role, and as a leadership team, we made a deliberate choice. Our HSE strategy is lean and purposefully synchronised with the business strategy. It's not a standalone document gathering dust on a shelf — it's embedded in the change.
Its reviewed, analysed and interrogated monthly. It’s agile. It has to be. When you're simultaneously managing the construction of renewable assets worth billions and the decommissioning of coal power plants, your risk profile doesn't wait for a neat financial year boundary.
This means our HSE strategy lives and breathes. It flexes when a new site enters construction. It adapts when regulatory obligations shift — like when the Commonwealth Code of Practice for Managing Psychosocial Hazards at Work landed in November 2024, introducing new hazard categories around job insecurity, fatigue, and intrusive surveillance that are directly relevant to a transitioning workforce.
You can't just push change. You have to walk alongside your people.
Psychosocial Risk Is the Case Study
If you want proof that annual thinking fails, look at psychosocial safety.
Mental health conditions now account for 10.5% of all serious workers' compensation claims in Australia — a 97% increase over the past decade. The median time lost? 37 working weeks. That's five times longer than the median for physical injuries. Median compensation sits at $65,400 — more than four times the all-claims average.
You don't solve that with a 12-month awareness campaign. You solve it with sustained, multi-year investment in leadership capability, work design, and genuine cultural change. NSW's Work Health and Safety Regulation 2025 now mandates the hierarchy of controls for psychosocial risks — this isn't optional anymore.
Having led HSE through both the construction of renewables and now the decommissioning of coal assets, I've seen firsthand how job insecurity, role ambiguity, and change fatigue compound across a workforce. These aren't risks you can programme-manage your way out of in a single year.
The Counterargument — And Why It's Partly Right
I'll be honest — not everyone agrees with me on this. Some practitioners argue that annual programmes aren't the problem; poor design and lack of accountability are. And they're not entirely wrong. A well-structured 12-month plan with genuine executive sponsorship can absolutely deliver results.
But here's the distinction: a plan is not a strategy. You can have annual plans that serve a multi-year strategy. What you can't do is mistake the plan for the strategy itself. The moment your "strategy" expires on 30 June, you've lost continuity, institutional memory, and — critically — the trust of frontline workers who've seen too many programmes come and go.
BUSINESS PARTNERing Is the KEY
Having worked in manufacturing, construction, global logistics, and energy, the one pattern I keep seeing across all industries is this: leaders who invest in programmes over people leave a gap the moment they walk out the door.
Making a deliberate choice to invest in "business partnering" as a core capability, is a must. Not as a buzzword — as a genuine skill set. The modern day HSE professionals needed to understand the commercial drivers of each asset. They needed to sit in planning meetings, not just incident reviews. They needed to speak the language of the operators, the engineers, the project managers.
Some people pushed back on this. There's a legitimate concern that when HSE gets too close to the business, you risk losing your independence — your willingness to challenge. Take that seriously. But I argue the opposite is actually more dangerous: a HSE team that operates at arm's length from the business isn't "independent." It's irrelevant.
The trick is building people who are confident enough in their technical expertise to challenge constructively AND commercially literate enough to not just be invited into the room in the first place, yet to influence and drive change of the decision makers and line owners. Being successful at this, is the gateway to impacting performance.
What I’ve Learnt In Two Years
The Australian Work Health and Safety Strategy 2023–2033 sets a vision of "safe and healthy work for all." That's a decade-long commitment. Work-related injuries and illnesses cost the Australian economy $28.6 billion annually. Over 400 serious claims are lodged every single day.
These aren't problems that respect financial year boundaries.
One of the things I learned leading a team, is that the hardest part isn't the strategy — it's the discipline to protect it from being carved up into annual slices that lose their connective tissue.
So if you're an HSE leader heading into FY27 planning right now, here's my challenge: before you build next year's programme, ask yourself — what's the three-year story? What must be true by the end of FY27 that isn't true today? And does this year's plan genuinely serve that, or are we just resetting again?
Grateful for two incredible years with an amazing team navigating this together. Proud of what we've built — and excited for what's next.
Bring on tomorrow. 💪