Members of the RMS team participated in 3 days of professional development at the Adventist Business Professionals Conference on the Gold Coast, held June 4-6, 2019.

RMS were invited to host a plenary session and several workshops on a variety of risk and safety topics. It meant a lot to us that we could share with 270 delegates what we are passionate about, what makes us tick and why we are here.

In planning our contribution to the event we were compelled by the persistent message of current risk and safety literature that any enterprise, business or organisation needs to lead with safety. Organisations that don’t put safety first, quickly become the subject of litigation, bad press and financial loss. The message that, “if you can’t lead with safety, you can’t lead business,” was coming through to us loud and clear.

However, we’ve been shown that better risk management practice can help successful organisations achieve their goals now and into the future. We could think of no one better to deliver that message of “hope” than Mr David Tattam of Protecht, who impressed us with his take on Risk Management during our 2018 Safety and Risk Forum. Mr Tattam redefined Risk Management for our team as “Outcome Management” and his expertise in presenting this shift in mindset was well-received at the Business Professionals Conference.

It was very affirming to RMS that the coordinators of the Business Professionals Conference agreed and saw value in RMS hosting the first Plenary. Our guest speaker, Mr Tattam, was equally surprised by his billing, commenting during his presentation that, “not so long ago the risk management session at any conference would be scheduled on the last day…after lunch!” Clearly times have changed and our organisation has begun to recognise that good risk management is just simply, good management.

Also part of the RMS line-up was Professor Sidney Dekker who challenged us to do “Safety Differently” and Mr Paul Bogacs who opened our eyes to creating mentally healthy workplaces.

We congratulate the coordinators of the Business Professionals Conference for a high quality, valuable week of training and we thank them for inviting us to contribute to the continued education of Adventist professionals throughout the South Pacific Division.

Photo credit: Linzi Aitken