Building A Culture Of Workplace Safety In Australia: An Interview With Nick O'Kane
Nick O'Kane, National Sales Manager at Barrier Group, is committed to making Australia a country that champions workplace safety through innovative safety solutions.
Helping customers right across Australia, including big warehouses, factories, stadiums and airports, Nick is on a mission to "leave job sites a safer place than when he first meets them".
With seven years of experience at Barrier Group, Nick can often be found sipping on a long black coffee from his Essendon Bombers mug. A "guilty pleasure", he calls it.
In this exclusive interview with Nick, we uncover his passion for workplace safety culture, his journey, and the steps he takes to drive workplace safety across multiple industries.
Table of Contents
- What is workplace safety culture?
- Tell us about yourself
- How does your job role influence customers in creating safe workplace environments?
- A new customer seeks a new safety solution for their business. What do you do?
- What are the daily challenges you face?
- What are your predictions on the future of workplace safety culture and the safety industry?
- Your Turn: Ask Nick and his team anything!
What Is Workplace Safety Culture?
"It's faceted, but ultimately, workplace safety is about workplaces providing a culture that revolves around safety for staff to ensure they go home the same way they started", says Nick.
"But really, safety culture covers a broad gamut of areas and products, including queue management, having gates, rails, car parking, and more. It's really about creating a controlled environment where people can move about safely, especially when vehicles and machinery are in operation."
Tell Us About Yourself
"In my career, I've had the opportunity to oversee the operations of our sales and customer support teams in Victoria and New South Wales. With over 1400 skews, we play a significant role in helping customers, distributors and retailers and providing them with the best outcome," Nick explains.
"The best part of my job is empowering the team with product knowledge and solutions that can be passed on verbally over the phone or email or directed to our external sales force when going out to visit the customer base."
"We thrive in an environment where the top priority is establishing a culture of safety and constant collaboration."
How Does Your Job Role Influence Customers In Creating Safe Workplace Environments?
"We have many opportunities to help customers in their mission to enhance workplace safety culture. Although not all operations and client site projects run smoothly, the good thing is that we have a complete in-house design department," said Nick.
"It only helps us to create new safety products and customise existing products to cater for customer needs, but it also gives us in-house training ourselves, helping us to know what to do in nearly all situations."
A New Customer Seeks A New Safety Solution For Their Business. What Do You Do?
"It's for sure a joy to meet new businesses and learn how they get their products and services out to their customers right across Australia. Being able to advise and assist them in carrying out their daily tasks with a good safety outcome is something that Barrier Group does well." Nick says joyfully.
"Firstly, the key thing is to listen well to the customer and identify the point of call in the first place. From there, we can establish what they need and get our external sales prompted to do a free on-site assessment to create a well-catered solution and build a relationship with that customer."
"Once approved and our team and the client have devised a plan, we go into production, and the warehousing staff get the order together and send it."
What Are The Daily Challenges You Face?
"So, the biggest challenge we face is that we do a lot of safety product design and customisation here at Barrier Group. In particular, our fabrication is done by our partners overseas. So, occasionally, we have time delays, and it's a bit of a genie's bottle knowing what the next order will be. It can be difficult, but we have tried our best to provide safe products and solutions and have a good, deep stock holding here."
What Are Your Predictions On The Future Of Workplace Safety Culture And The Safety Industry?
Nick goes on to say how, "Obviously, the future of safety will only improve as time goes on."
We then broke this down into these four questions:
- Why is safety important? Why does safety matter?
- How is AI transforming health and safety?
- How are workplaces implementing workplace safety culture and equipment?
"AI (Artificial Intelligence) and Automation are becoming massive in the warehouse and distribution space. Therefore, as businesses come to terms with the different AI machinery and products that are out there, combined with how they implement it into their new facility, there'll obviously be many changes that will have to happen under that warehousing operation to ensure workplace safety culture is maintained."
"At the end of the day, why safety is important and why it matters is about making sure everybody on a site goes home safe."
"Barrier Group, aware of the increase in Artificial Intelligence and automation, has developed and improved its product range to cater to these growing businesses, which require equipment and pedestrian safeguarding. This helps to minimise the safety risks that workers face on the job."
Your Turn: Ask Nick And His Team Anything!
Nick has (happily) agreed to answer your questions through email or a call from the sales team. Whether you have a question about workplace safety culture, Barrier Group, a free on-site assessment of your business, or the Essendon Bombers, we'll listen in closely and learn as much as we can about you and your business's safety needs. Don't be shy.
Recently, we interviewed Nick O'Kane as part of our 'Meet Our Experts' video series, where we speak to our talented team at Barrier Group about their role, areas of expertise, dedication, and the advanced technology that sets Barrier Group's safety solutions apart in the safety industry.
