The Garvan Institute of Medical Research is one of Australia’s leading biomedical research institutes, pioneering study in the most widespread diseases affecting our community today. Garvan’s mission is to make significant contributions to medical research that will change the directions of science and medicine and have major impacts on human health. The Institute consists of various divisions, facilities and sites and a community of workers, scientists, PHD students and contractors.
THE CHALLENGE
The Garvan Institute of Medical Research’s main challenge when first approaching Rapid Global was to find systems to assist in the management of various health and safety issues such as online safety induction training and incident reporting.
With various sites to manage, the team was looking for an occupational health and safety management system that provides one centralised database for workplace incident reporting. The legacy process involved the preparation of hand written incident report forms and this meant that follow up of incidents was both time consuming and unreliable. Furthermore, the Institute as a whole had various departments using separate incident reporting systems making it difficult for the management team to effectively control the risk and ensure incident investigations and corrective actions were being followed through.
For induction and training, Garvan was seeking an e-Learning platform that would enable the Institute to create their own training courses to deliver to PHD students as well as induction training for contractors and workers. With PHD students affiliated with various universities, the e-Learning platform needed to be able to provide evidence of training in order for the affiliated universities to recognise the learning modules completed.
THE SOLUTION
Rapid Incident Reporting was implemented to centralise the existing multiple incident reporting methods in place. Workplace incident reporting varied from first aid injuries to site hazards and are now all reported via the online incident reporting system.
“The system is centralising for Garvan what used to be a number of separate incident reporting systems for hazard/near miss, injury/illness, first aid (work related & non-work related), building/emergency & security incidents. It is so much easier to track all incidents from our sites to ensure that investigations and corrective actions are completed. The reporting ability is also invaluable for quick access to facts and figures for meetings and inclusion into other regular WHS reports.”
– Lisa Moncur, WHS and Compliance Manager – Work Health and Safety
Rapid Induct was launched in 2008 and initially set up by the Health and Safety Administrators for the Institute. Since that time, the system has been expanded to now incorporate over 20 courses written by various Site Administrators according to their various site or departmental training needs. Further to this, contractor documents are collected through the Document Upload feature and allows Garvan to manage and track the insurance and workcover certifications provided by their contractor workforce.
“Garvan has been using Rapid Induct since 2008 and it has been one of the best things we have implemented to improve our provision of training & induction. The Health & Safety Team were the first administrators of Rapid Induct for safety inductions at Garvan but now there are multiple administrators from various areas of the Institute developing and issuing courses. Our course tally is 20 so far and counting! 1635 courses have been completed to date. In addition to the online course function, we also heavily use the Training Manager, Document Upload and Manage Contractors Add on features.”
THE RESULTS
“Staff have taken well to the online systems and it compliments our intranet based WHS Management System.”
Since the implementation of the institute’s Rapid Incident Reporting system there has been a positive adoption of the system by staff and users. With increasingly more incidents being reported to capture the reporting of hazards and near misses. Management have encouraged staff to report incidents so that safety can be managed very proactively. Reports are now being effectively reported and managed
with reports received by management as soon as an incident such as a laboratory first aid injury occurs (i.e. needlestick injury) or site hazard is identified.
“The online system allows for quick and easy reporting of hazards so action can be taken almost immediately.”
The e-Learning program facilitated through Rapid Induct has led to the creation and distribution of multiple courses covering various induction and training topics such as Manual Handling, Radiation Safety Workplace Bullying and Harassment training, Biological Safety and Research Governance as well as Site Specific Induction courses.
“An important part of our continuous improvement in WHS has been the implementation of online systems such as Rapid Induct & Rapid Incident Reporting. Since this time we have had two external audits that showed good compliance in the areas of training & induction, contractor management and incident reporting.”
“Staff have taken well to the online systems and it compliments our intranet based WHS Management System.”
