1300 307 445
TRANSCRIPT
Unknown Speaker
This is an ohs.com.au production
Brendan Torazzi
Welcome to Episode 49 of the Australian Health and Safety Business Podcast. I'm Brendan Torazzi, the host of a show and today and with Dr. Gary Marlin from culture radar. Good morning, Gary.
Unknown Speaker
Hi, Brandon. Good morning to you. And thanks very much for inviting me on to your podcast.
Brendan Torazzi
So just to give the listeners a bit of context, tell us how culture radar came into being. And then we'll go into what it actually does.
Unknown Speaker
Okay, not a problem. So, culture radar is essentially a business. Phoenix out of my consulting company, when COVID came along, when COVID hit, clients didn't want you in their offices. And if you can't get in front of clients, and you can't consult, and therefore you can't bill, and therefore it has an impact on your bottom line. And so fortuitously, at the time, my son came to me he he's got a working history in what he calls advertising technology. And he was at a crossroads with his career. And he said, you know, what daddy said, we should put our minds together. And we should pick up one of the service offerings you've got for your clients. And we should see, we could fully digitize that. So that it's not dependent on front in terms of getting in front of clients. And so we, we looked at all the service offerings, and the one that came to mind that could could easily be done was safety culture. We offered a service of designing culture surveys for our for our clients, analyzing the results of that, and then offering some back end consultant services, should the client not have the competence or the capacity within the business to operationalize these strategies and the tactics fell out of the fell out of the survey. So for the last two years, we've been working on digitizing that we've had very good uptake in the mining industry, certainly interest out of the construction industry and out of the industry that I grew up in the rail industry as well. Anyway, we're what we call heavy industry with high risk is what we're looking at.
Brendan Torazzi
So is this like safe? You said safety culture? Is its culture around attitudes towards safety? Or is that the primary focus?
Unknown Speaker
That's where we started? Yes. My consulting business was mainly around around health and safety. And the surveys we did in the old traditional sense, were around safety. But what we found over the last 18 months or so, is that people want to look outside of what I call the subset of safety culture. And cultures are an enormous beast in itself. But you've got to break it down into subsets to fully understand what's going on safety being one of them, that our clients are now coming to us and asking, or could you do something very similar for? So we can find out what our environmental culture is or social responsibility culture, our security culture, we even got some clients asking for a strategic culture survey. And on top of that, too, we do a broad organizational culture survey as well.
Brendan Torazzi
So it's almost like the safety is the foot in the door, and then get some results for your customers that way, and then they go, Well, what else can we do to to get more information or improve our process and
Unknown Speaker
give you
Brendan Torazzi
the culture? I guess that's the bottom line, isn't it? They need to better culture equals better productivity equals better morale, and so on and so forth. Absolutely.
Unknown Speaker
You've hit the nail on the head, you know, your staff here, Brendan? So that's absolutely right. The the safety culture, as you said, was the foot in the door. And then we've had to pivot to look at the other cultures are the cultural subset, shall I say, to you know, that's what the client wants, then then we can certainly give them that and we brought a number of other people onto our team who are experts in those fields, you know, the ones I did mentioned, like environment and social responsibility and so on. Because whilst it's, it might sound easy to I'm just going to develop a tool to capture the information and this is, in our last service offering there's a high degree of social psychology built into how the questions are framed Yeah, what themes are we particularly looking at, and each colorful cultural subset. So for example, I'd go back to the safety culture, we got things like leadership, leadership, so important closely, closely entwined within how your culture is performing and how your leadership performs as well. We look at vision, we look at practice, and we've got learning capacity and things like that. Culture is fairly complex in itself. Many, many of our clients come out of the traditional schools of undertaking a survey and just tell me what my culture is a score out of five, right, you're not doing yourself any failure, it doesn't really tell you the full story, you really need to understand those underlying themes, you've almost done, You've almost got to go down to understanding the underlying statements that they're responding to that gives you the results in those themes. We've, we've used the Cameron and Quinn framework, they have a competing values framework, and we've adapted that and called it our risk dynamics framework. So you're looking at your culture as a multi dimensional thing, rather than just a score out of five. And then I get clients to come back to me and they say, well, it's not really a score out of five can can you put it on a safety maturity model for us? Right? Then I'd say, well, that's my opinion of safety, maturity model, they good, we've got to have these simplified models to understand complex things. But if you overlay a score of five on a safety maturity model, it's like playing Twister on a bi directional escalator. There's just so many moving parts, you can't stand on one step.
Brendan Torazzi
So I imagined that the the trick with this is like it's, you know, we can we can fill out a survey, but then, again, you get the answers, but your expertise, I would imagine is interpreting that data. And actually, what does it mean for XYZ company? And how can they use it to make changes?
Unknown Speaker
Exactly right, what we do is we take that one step further. So I've seen many, many surveys for the clients and just offered tables or pretty graphs, the what does that mean, at the end of the day, it needs to have some interpretation, some analysis is put into it. And the analysis is, shouldn't be just on the score itself. We, when we do the survey, we we asked the individuals to give us some qualitative data to give a fuller picture on why they've picked a particular number of the Likert scale for the quantitative measure. But then we have focus groups as well. So we show them the results live real time, theme by theme, and we have a five minute discussion in a group. And so that triangulates the data to the point, you get some really rich stories about what the culture is.
Brendan Torazzi
So can you give us an example of you know, you don't need to name the client, but give us an example of you know, a company comes along and says Gary would like to do a survey, and then you conduct that what what are the what are the changes you've been able to push through as a result? I imagine it's with culture, it's so hard to change as well. So it's definitely not an overnight thing. It's takes time.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, lucky right there. I use the analogy, it's like, if if you're into trading stocks, and you look at the graph of a stock price, it's a, it's a marathon for the price stock price to increase, you see a gentle rise, gentle climb in the rise. But when it goes wrong, it falls off the edge of the cliff. So it's a marathon, not a sprint to change the culture. But we what we do is in terms of once we've done the analysis, and we give the strategic recommendations and the underpinning supporting tactics for the client to then operationalize in the business, what we do is we look for the low hanging fruit. So we look for things where there's a fairly large gap in terms of where they are now and where they want to be. And, and then where we know there's a quick and cost effective strategy or tactics I can put in place to show they can get runs quickly on the board. And that gets everyone on board with you do a pulse survey down the track to prove that the measure has changed over the KPI. We've got a module within our system called the plot where we go KPI and project management measures in there. So we can prove very quickly with a pulse survey three months down the track, that those measures have changed. Perhaps I can give you maybe two high level examples of that. I won't name the companies in one company came back clearly that the staff really didn't know what their their vision of safety was, it was in lots of documents around around the organization. But, you know, it was it was just words on paper and paragraphs and paragraphs of it. So one of the recommendations that that we gave is to get a clearer picture of what safety is in its organization, the vision is, we need to bring it down in terms of the number of words, try and keep the clear meaning you want, almost make it like a Twitter handle. So it's easy to remember, everyone can memorize it, understanding and it's not just a case of rote, rote learning, this is our vision, you have to understand as well as the context of how it fits into the organization. But then you need to socialize it and not only internally within your organization externally. But the trick there is that once people, once people start talking about safety, you can talk too much about it, and people start turning off. So the one of the tactics was to make sure that we raised it as often as we could, without actually slugging people with it and losing the value of the message. And then we did a pulse survey this organization, and they came up quite significantly higher in terms of the safety vision aspect and safety vision scene. So as I say, We're were looking for, to get quick runs on the board get the low hanging fruit that was very easy to do. And it resulted in the pulse survey showing a step change in terms of the underwriting.
Brendan Torazzi
So in that case, it sounds like it was just, it just hadn't been communicated clearly. And you simplified it and made it put it in words that everyone could understand. So therefore, people got it, and they're on board to found the standard. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
So they had words and words around safety being a priority in the company, and and all of a sudden, once you start doing that, I mean, the natural thing is once you start making something a priority priorities change. And as I said, there were words and words word around it, what they simply came up with, they got the understanding through doing some work with us. We're not here to do safety alone, we're here to do safety alone, you're gonna go broke, you're actually here to do some work that's value to your clients. So we changed the whole mindset that we're here to do work safely to to go hand in hand. So the Twitter pitch they came up with was production first, safety, always. Simple.
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. So I can understand that I think most people could goodnight. That's great. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
So that was, well, I'm giving you another quick example of another client. That was the vision one,
Brendan Torazzi
you know, advertising agencies would charge millions for that, Gary?
Unknown Speaker
My bombing the wrong business. So look, as I said before, there's a lot of underpinning psychological theory and practice behind everything we do in terms of measuring culture and analyzing it and giving recommendations and tactics. So one of the underlying measures in our process is working out what the level of trust is. And we had one client who were performing fairly well, they were, I think, out of 100, their trust level came to about 73. Okay, so we looked at where was the low hanging fruit in terms of trying to get that trust up, or you put some tactics into play there. And three months later, we did a pulse survey. And just on the key themes for trust that we re measured, they came up into the higher ad. Wow. Yeah, significant change over three months. And one of the issues they had with trust is that there were a lot of contractors on site. So it was an us versus us versus them scenario. Yeah. So we put some things into play to consider one team approach to doing business.
Brendan Torazzi
Okay, great. So I'm curious to hear like what makes you know, like a few years ago, you would talk about culture and changing culture and it was all a bit fluffy. It seems like the general business world has moved forward. Now they understand the value of, you know, having a good culture at your organization. What what are the triggers for companies to knock on your door like, is it the sign Is there any like, is there a theme that runs through it? Like, I know, like in training of it's rarely preventative that's always reactionary. And you know, something hits the fan. And they're like, oh, we need some training? Yeah. Is it? Is there something? Is there a trigger like that? Are you finding with, with culture like is that maybe it's a common theme between between customers?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, look, we don't have many people knocking on our door. It's a it's a really us have to go searching clients. But the ones that do come to us here, the key theme is they're starting to see their lag measures. go the wrong way. And so you know, the, within their safety team or their executive team, they may say, we, we have a problem with our culture. And a lot of times they they know, they intrinsically know a little bit about their culture, but it's like a fucking onion, when you start peeling the layers of the onion skin off, they don't really fully understand it. Yeah. So that's where we come in by measuring it to give them an enhanced understanding. I'm not saying nobody knows nothing about their culture. They know intrinsically. So they will come to us. When I start seeing things like that, and there are some, there are some peer reviewed papers out there that shows the link between between your lag measure performance and your safety climate. They've got a symbiotic symbiotic relationship. Yeah. Yeah, it was fully answer your question. I just got the feeling that I may have slightly gone off on it.
Brendan Torazzi
Now, it's just so it's, it's it's the thing that's building and it sounds like, you know, some of those challenges that you've been able to make for companies. There's a direct ROI on that, I'm sure.
Unknown Speaker
Oh, absolutely. Here. Yeah. We know that. We've we're also actually working, we got some people working the background for us trying to define exactly what the ROI is. Yeah, we know it's there. And it certainly is going to help us in terms of when we go and talk to companies to show them a number. It's just hard to define that number at the moment. But yeah, we're working on it. Because it's important for, you know, the executives in the organization to know exactly what rate of return they're going to get. They know they're going to get one. But what is it?
Brendan Torazzi
Yeah. And so it's all done remotely at the moment?
Unknown Speaker
Oh, that's a good question. So prior to COVID, we used to take the traditional approach as well. We used to go into organizations. And we would facilitate the surveys now that one of the reasons we facilitate it is again, it's a psychological theory that you want to get people as little time as possible to respond to the statements because you want their their tested or their gut feel. You don't want to overthink the statement and give you the wrong result. You don't want them to overthinking and overthinking again and think oh, what does the company want me to answer here? Yeah. So that's why we used to go in and facilitate the survey more to get the timing right. So we had to be face to face. But now with seems like you and I chatting on on zoom at the moment, we're using tools like zoom and teams and WebEx and Google me whenever the client wants. We facilitate remotely. We, we have a short training session with someone at client side so they can facilitate in terms of I don't like using this term, but everyone will get it as soon as I say hurting the taps in the room. Yeah, right. keeping them focused is what I probably should say. But we're at the other end of the room doing the timing and to ask any sort of technical questions are sometimes a you know, some of the language we use doesn't translate on some sites too well, or in some countries too well, so we might have to give an example. So for example, one of the one of the questions we have steeped in social psychology is that we consider by trade offs and byproducts and other decisions we make and people stumble on that. That's an important set of wording for you. So then I give a an example of that. And it's contemporary with COVID. Now, we don't want people touching handrails. There's a lot of companies have rules. Say when you're walking up and down stairs, you have something to say three points of contact and touch the head and the end keep a hand on the handrail at all times. About three points is that anyway, that's what they asked. Now they're saying no, you can't touch the handrail because it can be a transmission for COVID. So we've got to understand that well the byproduct of that is going to be that we may have more slips, trips and falls going up and down stairs. So the trajectory of that is We may get an increase in lag measures. But what we're doing is we're taking that trade off of, is it better for someone to have a stumble on steps versus somebody holding on to a handrail? COVID? Yeah, you know, some of the questions do need a little bit of explanation behind them. We actually work with the clients before we do the survey to try and get the language. Absolutely right. And we run a little pilot survey.
Brendan Torazzi
Is a survey delivered online? Or is it paper based?
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. They try
Brendan Torazzi
each login, and you capture each individual. So that sort of thing. And that is, that's a technology that that you've built, or you utilizing another technology to do that, or
Unknown Speaker
currently using a third party, and it's built in seamlessly, but where, because, because they don't have the ability to facilitate on timing and things like that, and have little video voice prompts. To explain questions. We're in the process of developing our own. And we're very close to releasing that we're pretty excited about it. In which case, we won't be there, we won't be needed there to facilitate people can undertake the survey individually. But then we will pull them together for the focus group sessions to show results and then capture that rich dialogue about something or sometimes it's as simple as Ah, yeah, well, that doesn't. That doesn't surprise us move on to the next thing. Yeah, we know that. Yep. And that's important to grasp as well. But then if it's a, say, a poor result, we try and find out what why is it poor, and what sort of things we would like to see done in the organization to fix it? Yeah, so that we capture, as I say, all that rich dialog to give a complete picture of what culture is. Because these are the hidden things, these are the things that you can't grasp. Even by just doing an ethnographic study going on site and observing behavior, and looking at the what we call contracts, and norms and procedures, and policies, and so on. We're even looking at the artifacts, the symbols, that they've got posters on walls, that all tells you a story about culture. But the point is, you've got to get down to those things that are unobservable. And you've got to get people to verbalize them to
Brendan Torazzi
I guess, yeah, that's the thing as well, like you touched on before about employees, or workers answering what they think the company wants to hear, as opposed to what they really think.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, and we've we've done this in Asia and Asian cultures is that you, you don't beg the organization, you give the but it's funny, you know, we've we did one recently in Asia, where in the in the quarter, the quantitative assessment, they all get very good scores. And then when you open up the dialogue, it's completely opposite. So that was a bit difficult for us to rationalize our so we actually held some, some additional focus group meetings to try and understand what was going on there. Yep.
Brendan Torazzi
That's brilliant. So where to from here? Gary, what are you? What are your plans to be? It sounds like you're growing the company. Now you're getting more uptake by some big names. I can see on your website, you've got transport for New South Wales and Vietnam Airlines and a whole host of other big names.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah, we got a few of the the, the big players, we don't have enough room to put all our clients so that you can never have enough. We're always looking for more.
Brendan Torazzi
Is there a sweet spot that this makes sense like X? Like, have you found like, I don't know, a couple of 1000 employees, you need to make it work or what's, what's the smallest number of employees, you could have to get some kind of meaningful result?
Unknown Speaker
Good question again. So we're we're searching for anyone in heavy industry high risk business with 200 employees or more. Okay.
Brendan Torazzi
Oh, that's good. You really, really defined your client. That makes sense. Yeah.
Unknown Speaker
Yeah. Yeah, that's right. It's important. We I mean, you've got to understand the the economics of it, we've got to charge enough to for us to make a profit. We find that any businesses less than that, whilst we believe they get a good result of it, what we charge for it is probably not, yeah, palatable to them. Sure. 100%. But over that, 200 Yet people see the value of it. And they understand that we're there. We're on the journey with them as well. It's not just a case, in the traditional way, ways to do it. either a cultural survey, here's the results. And we'll see you next year. No, we were on the journey. Depending on what level of service to the client wants from us, we've got a tiered levels of services. In our strategic package, we actually run a for our culture summit once a year for them
Brendan Torazzi
now, right, there you go. So I mean, I guess the other beauty of this, the new delivery model is that you're not restricted to, you know, your the world is your oyster. In other words, I think that's what I was trying to say.
Unknown Speaker
Look, the world remains our oyster with the way that we're heading, particularly, because in COVID on, I don't know, if I'm more of a glass half empty than full person. Everyone seems to be positive about COVID. Because we're getting the vaccines. I'm no expert in it. But I just have this nagging feeling that we've got to deal with this for another couple of years before. Yeah, on top of it. Yeah. And so this is the way we've had to keep the world our oyster. Using your words a lot. Yeah. Thank you.
Brendan Torazzi
No problem at all. Okay, well, look, if people want to find out more about your business, what's your website there? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker
it's simply culture. radar.com.au. Fantastic. So they can follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and we've just gone on to Instagram as well. So
Brendan Torazzi
Oh, there you go. Fantastic. All right, Gary. Well, thank you very much for coming on the show today.
Unknown Speaker
Brendan, thank you very much. I appreciate you giving me the time to talk about something we're passionate about. Good on you.
Unknown Speaker
You've been listening to an ohs.com.au production.
Brendan Torazzi
I hope you've been enjoying listening to the podcast if you are. It'd be great if you could help us out by leaving us a review and sharing this with friends and colleagues.