The words ‘Health and Safety’ are not always met with overwhelming enthusiasm, so when the Saint Clair Family Estate health and safety coordinator Kerrie Dick was tasked with organising the next training session, she knew she had to come up with something inventive to capture the interest of the team.
“I was trying to think of a way to get those who are not so fond of health and safety involved and get them learning about our systems,” she says.
The solution? A treasure hunt.
Donning eye patches and arming themselves with swords, staff were split into teams of two and had to answer ten sets of health and safety related questions in different places around the winery.
Like all workplaces, there are multiple hazards that staff and visitors can potentially encounter, which means knowing and understanding such dangers is of the utmost importance.
The treasure hunt questions ranged from identifying the location of the winery’s assembly point to naming three types of emergencies one might be faced with.
Each correctly answered question gave the teams a letter which, when all put together, spelt out a location in the winery where the prizes could be found.
Although a fair bit of friendly competition came out in the Saint Clair team, everyone came away with a prize bag full of goodies and of course invaluable health and safety knowledge.
However when it comes down to the ultimate winner, Kerrie insists that it was her.
“I think I was the overall winner! My crazy plan worked – people in the office are chatting about health and safety and those who had negative ideas about health and safety as a system are more receptive to it,” she says.
Although only in its first year, Kerrie was so thrilled with how the staff reacted to the Treasure Hunt, she’s hoping to make it a biannual event.
“A treasure hunt was a way to show that it can be a fun topic to learn about, to show we are proactive in getting our staff on board and learning about health and safety and to prove we are trying to do more as an employer than just fill out forms and tick boxes.”
