Dig­i­tal trans­for­ma­tion must be in­clud­ed in the cre­ation of a Health, Safe­ty, Se­cu­ri­ty and En­vi­ron­ment (HSSE) cul­ture in every or­gan­i­sa­tion.

That’s ac­cord­ing to AM­CHAM T&T Pres­i­dent Stu­art Fran­co, who was speak­ing at the HSSE Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion launch on Tues­day evening at Ohana Restau­rant in Ch­agua­nas.

Fran­co said the world has seen the un­prece­dent­ed pace at which the field of HSSE has evolved over a short pe­ri­od and this has been large­ly dri­ven by tech­no­log­i­cal ad­vance­ments, height­ened pub­lic and reg­u­la­to­ry at­ten­tion to health and en­vi­ron­men­tal is­sues and the en­dur­ing im­pact of COVID-19.

“Now we must en­sure our safe­ty sys­tems match up to these rapid changes. Sad­ly, we know all too well what hap­pens when we fail to em­brace these changes. Just in the past year in T&T, we have seen the seis­mic im­pacts of ac­ci­dents and emer­gen­cies in the work­place. These in­ci­dents, while trag­ic and heart­break­ing to the fam­i­lies of the vic­tims, can­not be the lega­cy we leave be­hind,” he high­light­ed.

Fran­co not­ed that while or­gan­i­sa­tions may not be able to change the past, em­ploy­ers can trans­form the fu­ture so that their em­ploy­ees feel and ex­pe­ri­ence a sense of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty while in the work­place.

“That’s why we are ask­ing for or­gan­i­sa­tions in all sec­tors of our econ­o­my to adopt a pol­i­cy of full trans­paren­cy in the way we re­spond to ac­ci­dents and emer­gen­cies when they oc­cur,” the AM­CHAM pres­i­dent re­marked.

He said that is why this year the cham­ber wants to en­force a stronger cul­ture of learn­ing, em­pow­er­ment, and sus­tain­abil­i­ty in its HSSE poli­cies and process­es.

“We want to en­sure that we are am­pli­fy­ing the mes­sages we de­liv­er on im­por­tant is­sues such as men­tal health, psy­cho­log­i­cal safe­ty, cy­ber se­cu­ri­ty, gen­er­a­tional di­ver­si­ty, ad­vanc­ing the en­vi­ron­men­tal agen­da, em­brac­ing dig­i­tal tech­nol­o­gy, and pro­mot­ing a process safe­ty cul­ture,” Fran­co dis­closed.

He re­vealed that this year’s HSSE Ex­hi­bi­tion, which will be held from Oc­to­ber 31 to No­vem­ber 1, will have a team of in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal ex­perts who will lead the knowl­edge trans­fer on these is­sues.

The fea­tured speak­er would be Kym Ban­croft who is the Di­rec­tor at New View Safe­ty, which is a spe­cial­ist train­ing and pro­fes­sion­al de­vel­op­ment con­sul­tan­cy com­pa­ny based in Aus­tralia.

“We know our HSSE prac­ti­tion­ers will great­ly ben­e­fit from Kym’s 20-year-plus ex­pe­ri­ence of strate­gi­cal­ly lead­ing safe­ty, health, well-be­ing, en­vi­ron­ment, sus­tain­abil­i­ty, and in­jury man­age­ment func­tions across a di­verse range of glob­al or­gan­i­sa­tions while achiev­ing safe, fair, pro­duc­tive and sus­tain­able out­comes,” Fran­co added.