Australia’s forest industries congratulate Wespine Industries on winning the ForestWorks Innovation in Training Award at the National Forest Industry Awards – organised by the Australian Forest Products Association (AFPA).
Wespine secured the award off the back of a massive training program focusing on the culture of the leadership team, supervisors and shop-floor employees undertaken over a four-year period with surveys conducted throughout.
Since 2018, Wespine has achieved a business-wide reimagining with remarkable results. The leadership team was diversified to bring in a broader range of people of different ages and genders, to develop and implement a comprehensive change program throughout the whole organisation.
Following leadership development for the leadership team and supervisors, significant change and increases to employee engagement were achieved. All employees also attended a two-day “You Can Count on Me” workshop, which focused on improvements in worker skills and the key personal reasons for work safety such as safety culture, risk identification and rules- based verses independent thinking.
As a result of these efforts, Wespine has achieved, among other things, record safety results and record sales volumes in the 2021 financial year.
Wespine is a key part of Western Australia’s forest industries. Its softwood sawmilling operation has been providing high quality timber for housing, packaging, and landscaping products for the Australian market since 1985.
AFPA CEO Ross Hampton said, “On behalf of Australia’s forest industries I warmly congratulate Wespine Industries on receiving this terrific award. It was selected from an amazing group of applicants, all of whom would have been deserving winners. Its training program has achieved great results. Congratulations Wespine Industries!”
ForestWorks sponsored the award and General Manager Yvette Nash stressed how valuable a commitment to training is. “Wespine shows that investing in training delivers – record safety results and record sales volumes – so we congratulate Wespine on this award and the example it sets for training across our industries,” Ms Nash said.
The National Forest Industry Awards are organised by AFPA.