Construction company awarded for safety innovation

A global innovation award has been won by Boral for its learning system that is designed to increase safety for workers.

The company’s specialist learning technology helps to improve capability and compliance across the organisation, and in turn, make the business safer.

In a first for an Australian building and construction materials organisation, Boral has received a gold medal from the Brandon Hall Group, the US-based leading independent research and analyst firm.

The awards recognise organisations that successfully deployed programs that achieved outstanding measurable results in the areas of learning and development, talent management, leadership development, talent acquisition, workforce management, sales performance and corporate initiatives. Now in its 25th year, the program awards gold, silver and bronze medals across 51 categories. With entries from 15 different countries and across 25 industry sectors, submissions are evaluated by a panel of veteran, independent senior industry experts and Brandon Hall Group analysts and executives.

The Executive General Manager Human Resources for Boral, Bill Fisher, said the award recognised the continuing commitment by Boral to further lift safety performance.

“As a leader in the building and construction industry, our highest priority is to ensure our workers are safe, but this can only happen if you have the right training and compliance systems in place,” Fisher said.

“At Boral, we have placed zero harm at the centre of our business, making safety a key focus across the entire group.

“While we always strive to do better, the latest figures confirm that our safety performance has improved significantly in recent years and it remains strong relative to peers in the industries in which we operate.”

“The use of leading-edge technology methods that help our people train, revise, update and develop their safety skills and expertise have resulted in steady improvements in safety,” said National Capability and Development Manager for Boral Australia Giovanna Romeo.

Romeo said that despite its size and complex workforce, prior to 2015, Boral had no centralised, coordinated learning management system to track all training records and learning requirements.

She said that in 2015, Boral began implementing a new learning management system, Seertech’s iLearning PLUS, across its 6000 employees at over 430 sites nationally.

“The learning management system we introduced at that time allowed Boral to have one central, standard way to access training information all located in one system,” she said.

“It means we are now able to see what training is expiring and complete online training all in one place, while also allowing managers to produce up-to-date reports and identify compliance and training gaps for their teams.”

The Chief Operating Officer of Brandon Hall Group and head of the awards program, Rachel Cooke, said Boral was highly deserving of the Gold award in its category.

“We’re proud to honour the innovators,” Cooke said.

“As human capital management continues to evolve, the creativity of the award winners is breathtaking. Organisations of all size showed that creativity and technology can create new and better work experiences for businesses and their employees.”

Image caption: L-R: Giovanna Romeo, National Capability Development Manager at Boral Construction Materials, with Dylan Rowe, Director Client Engagement Analytics at Seertech Solutions America.