HSE Community Insights - Rod Maule
Rod Maule – General Manager Safety and Wellbeing at Australia Post
What do you think the 3 biggest opportunities that the HSE profession are faced with in the constantly changing world of work?
The HSE Professions greatest opportunity is to reinvent itself to be strategic thought leaders that help transform organisational cultures. I don’t mean limited to safety culture I mean helping lead organisations to transform into more caring, connected and innovative workplaces. As safety both physical and psychological is tangible and relatable to everyone in the organisation then those organisations that can tap into the benefits of safety leadership will derive productivity, innovation and become places people want to join or never leave.
The HSE profession has an opportunity to work in partnership with the HR function, change managers can be the foot in the door for need to change and success of culture change.
The final opportunity comes from leveraging the influence and relationships built that the great safety teams and leaders have found within organisations during COVID in helping navigate these challenging times. COVID has transformed organisations forever in turning on its head some of the myths that we all lived with. The myth about working from home challenges, the myth of speed of change and technology. More has been done in many industries including ours at a faster pace than previously could have been imagined. Lets leverage that new found capability and belief in the organisations to speed up change and help organisations to be successful into the future.
What are the top 3 capabilities required in your view for success in the future?
Safety professionals need to be enablers not doers, through expertise, innovation and influence.
Expertise in that baseline, you need to have expertise in your function through a combination of formal education and/or significant work experience.
Innovation in that you need to be able to keep pace with changes, connect across industry and be able to help bring innovative idea’s back to the organisation.
Influence in that you must not only know your stuff however that is no good if you can’t actually influence your stakeholders. Depending on your role it might be the Board, Senior Managers, Operational leaders, frontline teams, other functions or all of the above. You must develop and hone your influencing skills and focus on your strengths and manage your development area’s. If you can’t do this you will not be successful.
Looking back over your career, if you could change one thing, what would that be?
To be honest apart from taking up investment banking as a career when I was young enough to have that option not much. I love my work and I have always invested in learning new things, both formally through my Bachelor degree, MBA, Graduate Diploma in Studies and a range of roles over my career. Every job is an opportunity to learn and bad experiences also help you learn where you want to play. My only advice would be too make sure you take ownership of your choices and don’t let situations control you. If the job is not working then do something about it and take control.
What is innovative about the organisation you are working for?
Suprisingly for a 210 year old Australian Organisation Australia Post is amazingly innovative. The transition from a letters business that does some parcels to a Parcels business that has an important but declining letters business has been fast and transformational. The pace of this change has accelerated remarkably during COVID and the significant multi million dollar investments in new technology, automation, customer understanding and new ways of working is remarkable. I would recommend anyone who wants to be at the cutting edge of innovation in logistics, customer service or safety to think about joining Australia Post.
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