News

As the world of workplace safety continues to grow and evolve, Rokon are looking to embed new habits and have conversations in more innovative ways.

With evolution in mind, we recently looked at our much loved tradition of Mind Your Mates Day, and decided to try something new. The past couple of years we have held this day right before the AFL Grand Final long weekend, and have been inspired by stories of mental health challenges that some well known AFL players have faced during their careers – even as their teams were thriving – and talked about ways to take care of ourselves and support each other when things look fine from the outside but internally individuals may be struggling.

This year, we challenged ourselves to find a new theme, and decided to focus on workplace accidents, and how split second decisions can lead to lifelong consequences.  We kept the format for our 2025 Mind Your Mates Day the same – stop work, gather at a few sites, share a bite to eat together and build on our workplace relationships. Add into the mix a couple of amazing speakers, and you end up with a powerful afternoon of team cohesion and focus.

So who were these amazing speakers? James and Alan from CNBSafe, and wow, didn’t they knock our high vis vests almost clean off!! James and Alan both have lived experience with workplace accidents that ended up completely changing their worlds, and we were in awe of their honesty and ability to cope in the face of incredible adversity. Thanks Alan and James, our teams were thoroughly impressed and very pleased to meet you in person. We can’t recommend CNBSafe highly enough, and encourage all workplace leaders to reach out to and discuss a workplace session with someone from the CNBSafe team. We promise you won’t regret it.

With workplace safety awareness continuing to increase across our teams, we are also very cognisant (as no doubt all Victorian businesses are) of the new Psychosocial Safety regulations coming into existence from 1^st December. Safe workplaces have long been about more than just physical safety, and the new regulations require all employers, workplace leaders and employees to consider whether psychosocial hazards could lead to negative psychological responses in individuals.

While we work through our risk assessments and action plans, we are optimistic that Stop for Safety, Mind Your Mates and other occasions for wider team collaboration and consultation will keep us all Believing in Safety First, and will sustain the open conversations happening across our all our sites. Rokon team members are full of fabulous ideas, and we know that the best way to gather suggestions is to talk to each other and be curious, not judgemental.

Keep the safety conversations thriving, look out for your mates and if you see something, say something. It could very well save a life.