Gareth Beck
- Wellbeing Business Partner, Air New Zealand
1. How did your career journey lead you to a role in Health and Safety?
My career actually started in geology. I studied geology at university and moved into ground engineering works in my first job which involved geotechnical works and contaminated land. In this line of work there are many hazards around in your day-to-day tasks. I worked for some clients who had very strict health and safety rules including how they operated in and around hazards.
I moved to New Zealand almost 10 years ago and the gulf between Health and Safety in the UK and New Zealand seemed large to me, so in my new place of work I tried to upskill everybody in and around best practice. When I was working quite closely with the Health and Safety Manager of my previous business, they said I'd be great in a health and safety role, so when the opportunity arose, I took it.
2. What about your role makes you want to get up in the morning?
In my current role I'm still learning so much about the aviation industry and also about Air New Zealand, and that's what gets me out of bed. I've been here for 10 months now and there's always something new or that I didn't know before. I enjoy any chance where I can meet others in the business - as there are 11,000 people doing varying and different roles all to get an aircraft in the air.
3. What are the biggest challenges in your industry at the moment?
I think this is pretty much public knowledge in the sense that we are trying to restart an airline after losing a third of our employees - so trying to get the right talent and everybody ‘flying’ in the right direction is the biggest challenge right now.
This comes at the sacrifice of certain areas of the business where people have to do longer hours, and extra days all to keep things ticking like clockwork. We tend to shout about safety in NZ but whisper about the health aspect of H&S. My role now is very much in mental well-being so I find myself doing more in this space. However, whether you're in aviation, construction, farming etc, unless you've been under a rock, the wellbeing of your people will have been affected to some extent in the past few years and so providing a safe and healthy workplace is paramount. It's important to understand which risks in the workplace are impacting your workers' mental health and whether controls can be put in place.
4. What skills are the most crucial to succeeding in this career?
Knowing when you’re not the expert - just being curious and asking the right questions of the employees you work alongside and the systems you work within. Just because the procedure says to do something a certain way doesn’t necessarily mean its right.
I have had the pleasure of working with the two extremes - the enforcing, patronising H&S professional, and the curious, empathetic H&S professional - and know which I would rather engage and talk with as a worker.
5. What is the best bit of advice you have for someone looking to move into this area?
It would be to network. I'm grateful for the many amazing people out there in the New Zealand H&S industry who were willing and able to support me and point me in the right direction when I first started out. My philosophy in life is if you don’t ask you don’t get, so putting yourself out there is a great step! Along the way I've met some awesome people who I check in with from time to time, to ask dumb questions or to challenge one another.
I think it's crucial to surround yourself with great people who you can use to sense check or bounce ideas off of, or who can provide another point of view.
