Janette joined JLL with close to 30 years of experience as a work health, safety, environment and injury management professional for a wide range of high-risk industries including waste, water, energy, utilities, construction, road, mining, oil and gas, project delivery/ engineering consulting, manufacturing and finance. Janette challenges the traditional methodology of safety and environmental management by looking at change through a different lens to build organisational trust and drive out fear. She applies a philosophy of staying curious, driving safety capabilities to develop organisational resilience, and engaging with people on solutions that lead to business improvement. Through innovative collaborations, she develops robust strategies, management systems, processes, cultural change, hazard reduction and questioning that all contribute to safety through high-quality performance outcomes.
As a Health, Safety & Environment leader, what do you feel is the most important aspect of your role?
Janette: As a leader in this field the vital aspect of such a role is to be a strong collaborator with exceptional stakeholder engagement skills. You need to have strong situational awareness and a high level of emotional intelligence. Unless you have these attributes, it is difficult to drive any people-based improvement processes.
You mentioned that one of your current key challenges is the use of tech platforms that support business processes including analytics, how does this challenge affect you in your role and what processes are you taking to overcome this?
Janette: Analytics is critical these days to receive information in real-time to understand trends, causes, and effectiveness of actions connected to many input factors to inform you what is happening. Analytical platforms once set up, save you time and effort and guide you to where your programs need to focus, they assist in driving accountability and make information more readily available. In my role, I am working with business analysts and system developers to identify the needs and set up platforms to do this.
Since being in the industry what notable changes/challenges have you encountered?
Janette: I have been working in the industry for a long time, I still get disappointed when I see fatalities and serious injuries occur, they are all preventable. The organisations that really invest in their people and work hard to drive improvements and positive cultures get the best from their workforce. Bringing contractors into the mix when delivering projects brings in the biggest challenge to delivering work safely when you don’t have control over investing education and skill development with your people you are working with human factors that bring uncertainty. Ensuring accountability down the line within a workforce is a challenge and one that is hard to execute unless it is driven by the top down.
When implementing new health, safety and environmental strategies, what are some key tips making new strategies a success?
Janette: Understanding the “why”! Making sure you understand what makes people work, know what is working, what is not working and be clear on the why. Let the workforce be a part of developing the solution so they own it, let them champion and execute the solution with their peers. Be able to measure it and set continual improvement is vital.
ABOUT JLL
Jones Lang LasSalle (JLL)
We’re a Fortune 500 real estate services company, with about 80,000 experts in over 80 countries all around the world. We’ve been around for nearly 250 years and have worked on some of the world’s biggest deals and real estate projects, but we don’t just think about square metres, deals done or contracts to be signed. At JLL, we go beyond that. We look for ambition.
We discover the things our clients want to achieve and of course, the things our people want to achieve. We work with impressive clients, from all kinds of industries; from tech start-ups to big global firms. We assist our clients to buy, sell, lease, let, value, design, fit out, manage and sustainably operate buildings across all asset classes.
We’re here for the people and companies who want to find and create amazing spaces.
