About

Welcome to The Person Factor.

Hi there, I'm Donna. Welcome to my solo pro business, The Person Factor. I'm stoked that you've stopped by. 

This is the place for you if you're a bit fed up with traditional approaches to health and safety. It's definitely the place for you if you've found yourself muttering words I better not publish on my website but am more than comfortable hearing in person. There's got to be a better way to do health and safety right?! Does it really need to be this hard?

The thing is, health and safety is really about humans, systems of work and decision making. So we don't really ever 'do' health and safety here at The Person Factor. What we (you and I working collaboratively) do is make systems of work smarter with way less bureaucracy. We use what we know about human cognition and behaviour to make sure we are designing systems of work that set your people up for success and we make sure that our systems have the right amount of flex to accommodate the shift from work as imagined to work as done. Strong systems support people to navigate the dynamic nature of their work with confidence and capability. 

I work with a wide range of industries using strategically cherry picked, research supported methods and principles to provide you with sensible, pragmatic and sustainable solutions that consider the broader context of your organisation. Because of my academic specialisation in psychology, I do lean in that direction - not at all a bad thing. It's important that you know that I can't stand dogma. It makes people nutty and it's incredibly unhelpful when we're trying to sort out flawed systems and frustrated frontline teams. 

 

 

 

Health and safety is not a stand-alone sacred cow. It's part of how you work. With my help, you will learn how your organisation's culture directly influences your frontline workers' confidence and capability within the context of their work. 

Underpinning all of this is the understanding that effective risk management requires radically candid conversations at all levels of the organisation and these types of conversations can sometimes get a bit like a contact sport. Brene Brown refers to this as rumbling. To rumble safely, we need to make sure that we've got a good amount of psychological safety in the room - and I don't mean the "nobody's feelings can get hurt" fake knock-off, I mean the Amy Edmondson version, supported by decades of research where we have high accountability and high care. 

If this sounds like something you would like to talk more about, head over to the contact page and request a complimentary half hour chat. It would be a privilege to hear about your organisation and your experiences within it. 

 

 

 

Working with Me

I'm obsessed with how people work - how they function and dysfunction in the context of performing a task. The dichotomy of how bloody clever we can be versus how fallible we are in these modern times had me hook, line and sinker from day one of my psychology degree. 

My various health and safety roles across aluminium smelting, mining, and utilities has proven to me time and again that crap systems and awful culture will defeat good people every day of the week. If you are serious about wanting to improve health and safety outcomes for your people then there can't be any sacred cows. Challenging the status quo has to really mean we are going to challenge the status quo. Too often, organisations shy away from identifying and addressing systemic, organisational factors, and instead go for the low hanging fruit that is what the frontline worker is or isn't doing. Whilst precision and capability play a role, they are but a couple of factors at the end of a long list of more important things to address first. So, to work with me, you need to wholeheartedly be on board with that. 

Whilst I do partake in strategic cherry picking, the cherries that we pick have to be the right ones for the context of your organisation. It's fairly common for things to get implemented because we get Band Wagon Syndrome or FOMO. Not on my watch. You and I will work collaboratively to ensure we pick the right cherries for your organisation. In this day and age, change fatigue is a genuine threat to business progression. We need to be really smart about what we are doing. I've got you.  

 

 

 

 

Qualifications:

  • Masters of Science - focusing on cognitive & behavioural psychology
  • Certified Fearless Organisation Scan practitioner