A data-driven safer workplace with Tom Aune from Suremploy

Victor [00:00:00]:

Hey everyone, and welcome to Ideas for Your Peers podcast. I'm Victor he Penny, your host, and today we're going to be exploring, I guess, some insights that we can gather before we even get people in the front door. And I'm sure we'll learn a lot more of the importance of that over today's episode. In today's episode, I got Tom owner, who's the founder and director of Shore Employee. Welcome to the show Tom.

Tom [00:00:24]:

Thank you very much.

Victor [00:00:25]:

So Tom, give us a little bit of a background, I guess both about yeah, I'm sure with like most business owners, their business and their actual themselves, the stories kind of intertwined, but give us a bit of a background about yourself and your employee.

Tom [00:00:42]:

Yeah. So I'm a physio. I used to own a couple of clinical practices on the New South Wales central coast and essentially did that for a number of years before coincidentally, I think, starting work with a local food manufacturer across from one of my clinics that eventually asked me to do some of their ergonomic and work health and safety related tasks. And long story short, they asked me to do pre employment screenings. Now, at the time I knew very little about pre employment screening and so we essentially went out about doing what I thought other providers were doing. And unfortunately, after a year or so, looking back at the data we'd gathered with this large, well known food manufacturer, there hadn't really been much impact in terms of injury reduction, let alone some of the other benefits that we're now seeing. And yeah, because there hadn't been any real improvement, I set about for the next six, seven, eight years coming up with methods that are different and would provide and have proven to provide much better outcomes in terms of injury reduction and as a probably unexpected outcome. Also, we're helping clients reduce their staff turnover quite significantly. So, yeah, in 2014 I sold the last of the clinics and just focused on pre employment screenings, which we've been doing nationally for a few years and more recently across the ditch as well in New Zealand. And, yeah, we now just focus on pre employment screening with a little bit of fitness for work as well for injured workers.

Victor [00:02:55]:

Cool. So, well, diving into this, I guess the premise of the show is Ideas from Your Peers. So a lot of the listeners out there will be looking and thinking, all right, what can I gain out of both the pre employment or the health and safety space? But I think if we take even a step further back, you mentioned that there was this period where I don't know, it kind of sounded like you were doing. Whether it was figure it out yourself or what everyone else was doing or a combination of the two, it wasn't really getting any results. It was more along following the process. And I think people listening to this definitely don't want to just follow what's previously been done, they want to innovate on it. Can you talk us through what that kind of process looked like? If that was kind of the case from when you finished working with us or had done this year or two with this organization, what did that process look like, the iterations to, I guess, where it may be now?

Tom [00:03:58]:

Yeah. So we started off doing literally what others were doing. I essentially copied what I could find and what I thought looked good. Now, that included essentially a paper based questionnaire, mainly with yes no answers, and there were quite a few of them, but in that methodology, really poor disclosure rates from applicants. And I guess what I found fairly early in the piece is that unlike, say, a patient coming to a physiotherapist with, say, a shoulder injury, they'll tell you how it happened. Now they can't lie on their side or reach overhead and they want you to fix it. But unlike that fairly open, honest dialogue in a physio clinic with pre employment screening, the candidate or applicant is motivated by quite a different scenario, and that is getting a job. They're not after help, they are literally trying to appear as healthy as possible. And so, yes, no answers in terms of asking about past medical history, we soon found was really one of the significant limitations of the traditional model. The next iteration was probably we've come to a different, entirely different questionnaire set much more recently, which we now call the Advanced Risk Profiler. But I think the next iteration from the original standard sort of model that we now, I guess, see as the old way was to start asking slightly less closed ended and more open ended questions in the actual interview with the candidate. So when we as physios would interview them, we'd ask slightly better questions. And we did, over time, get better and better outcomes. And then the big switch came about seven or eight years ago when we decided that by then we had well over 50,000 data sets and we started to look at what some of that data told us. So we correlated the injury data that we gained from some of our major clients actual outcome data, we correlated that with questionnaires. And long story short, since then, we've been building data driven insights that have ultimately built algorithms that are really powerful in what, as I said, we call the Advanced Risk Profiler, which is now both a very extensively used and data rich musculoskeletal pre employment questionnaire combined with a psychometric tool that is the only one built specifically for pre employment screening in this realm. And also that is then combined with a behavioral assessment tool. So the power of that data driven sort of risk profiling is really where we've ended up and believe that we differentiate ourselves.

Victor [00:07:36]:

There's quite a lot to dissect there. So kind of diving back into the open questions versus, I guess the traditional, obviously more closed or the tick boxes, et cetera. How is that, I guess, beneficial for both you as a company assessing and then I guess the final outcome of being able to we're going to have talent acquisition teams here and health and safety teams. What did the old traditional questions more or less look like? And then being able to get, I guess, more open ended questions. What are the benefits of that?

Tom [00:08:23]:

Yeah, so as I said earlier, some of the traditional questions will readily lend themselves to a yes or no answer. Have you had back injuries in the past? Yes or no, et cetera. Our questions are a lot more open ended. They invite the candidate to be a lot more open. They engage them in a dialogue that is essentially an open discussion that tells us a lot about their past medical history. Now, the reason that is so critical is that there is such a strong correlation between past medical history and future risk and that is both in the psychometric and the musculoskeletal areas. And so for that reason alone, it's so important to understand their true past medical history because we know as an example, that anyone who's had a disc bulge, a lower lumber disc bulge in the last twelve months, is ten times more likely to have another disc bulge. In other words, a recurrence or aggravation in the next twelve months. So critical to know about past medical history, past risk profiling that is as accurate as possible so that we can make sure that they are not only going to be kept safe at work and not end up with a massive workers compensation claim and lots of time off work and potentially a lifelong injury that doesn't allow them to have their retirement enjoyment that they would otherwise have. But in addition to that, we also really want to make sure that they're going to be a good fit for the workplace both in terms of mental function, behavioral profile, and physical capability to meet the inherent requirements of the actual role.

Victor [00:10:26]:

And so you're saying in regards to kind of, I guess the next point from that iteration story was the data driven approach. Now obviously that I feel, and I'm sure many of our listeners do, is that the more relevant data that we can have on a particular person or a particular task or something, anything within our organization, the more informed we can be when making a decision. How is having that data being able to you're saying it allows you to make more effective decisions. How is that, I guess, beneficial for employees if they're looking to have a more data driven approach with their hiring or just even just open our eyes in regards to data across an organization, whether it just be pre employment or not?

Tom [00:11:21]:

Yeah, look, it's often said in medical circles that our work is evidence based and or data driven to whatever extent we can possibly do that, that is what we need to do in all sorts of medical endeavors. And pre employment screening is no exception. We frankly have seen and still do see quite a bit of anecdotal what might seem like instinctive logic that if you say you haven't had a back injury or if you haven't had it recently, that therefore there's low risk. But what we've actually done is we have approached clients, quite a few years ago we started doing this clients that we work with, we've approached them and partnered with them to obtain their actual injury outcome data over long periods of time and sometimes up to 10,000 data sets for one client. So what we've done is correlated the actual injury outcomes with the pre employment screening responses to questions and findings, objective findings that our physios made at the time of assessment. And so as an example, if someone ended up with a shoulder impingement problem, a rotator cuff issue, then we would look back and say all right, what correlated with that from the assessment? And some of it's obvious if you've had previous shoulder injury, but some of it is much less obvious. And obviously the more data you gather, the more powerful that is. And across a whole range of industries, at last count, we've got 132,000 data sets that we've been able to correlate and so building a really powerful risk profiling tool. And the other thing that this has allowed us to do, which is also I think, of great benefit to both us and our clients, is actually build a triage model. Now, due to the accuracy of what I call the advanced risk profiler, that is essentially those three high end questionnaires, because that builds such an accurate picture of risk, we actually have been able to deem someone low risk, low to moderate risk based just on the questionnaires alone, the advanced risk profile, and those powerful algorithms that sit behind that. Which means that at the moment in this incredibly difficult labor market, on average, only around 20% to 25%, depending on the industry, will need to go on to actual physical assessment. That's a really significant saving both in terms of money because only one in four on average of our assessments are actually needing an assessment with a physio. And just as importantly, it saves time for recruiters. And that is so critical because, as most organizations to be aware of in this difficult labor market, if you take too long with your recruitment process or any step in the process, including the medicals, you are at significant. Risk of losing that candidate to another employer who may do less thorough checks, who may not be insuring themselves against taking preexisting conditions in through their front gate. So that triage model has been a direct and beneficial consequence of the very data driven process that we've developed over time.

Victor [00:15:25]:

I'm sure that'll give a lot of people a lot of insights. One kind of, I guess, devil's advocate alarm Bell that kind of rings for me in that situation when you're saying hey versus someone who might not ask as much or might not have the data set. My argument be like, but hey, they're assessing 100% of the workforce, so shouldn't their results or their outcomes or things be better if they're actually physically assessing 100% of the workforce versus the 20 to 20 foot one and four, one and five that you're doing at Shore employee? What do you say to that?

Tom [00:16:02]:

So, look, the interesting thing is that when you look at how physical assessments are conducted and some use the words functional capacity assessment as an interchangeable term, and that's not coincidence, even though we do a lot more than functional capacity, such as the actual ability to lift, the actual ability to bend or squat down, and so on. A lot of the traditional pre employment screening physical assessment methodology is still relying on what you can actually measure. So what weight were they physically capable of lifting? Now, sure, that is important because obviously they need to be able to meet the inherent requirements of the role. But if you can much more accurately determine past history and true risk profiling, it's very often the case that the physical assessment does not actually add very much, if any, objective risk profiling knowledge. Because take the situation that I mentioned before where someone's had a disc bulge, it's quite easy for that person, if they're happy to grin and bear it, to literally do the lifting, do the bending, do the tasks. And sure, they may have back pain, they might even have sciatic leg pain referred down from that disc. But if they're not unable to physically lift the weight, if they're happy to grin and bear it, then there is not necessarily any way that the physical assessment will disclose or uncover that preexisting injury. In many ways, the ability to, and this is part of our advanced risk profile, is we actually have a forensic process that proves to the satisfaction of a court of law, if necessary, whether a candidate is telling the truth on their questionnaires. Now that is very unique and super important because not only am I proud of the ability that we can do that, but probably more so, I'm proud of the fact that we can use that to coach and motivate the candidate to tell the truth. Quite often it's not actually the physical assessment that will be the most accurate risk profile a it's not data driven in the same way as our questionnaires are. The other thing that's super important to understand is that in most industries, the amount of staff, the proportion of a company's staff that cause most of the workers compensation claims costs is actually quite staggering in industries that we're involved with. And we span from aged care hospitals to warehousing to Stevadoring transport, fast moving consumer goods, et cetera, somewhere between seven and a half percent and 10% of an employer's staff will be essentially representing 90% of their costs. So quite a small percentage, seven and a half to 10%, are generally representative of 90% of their workers compensation costs. Now a really important additional fact is that of those around two thirds, both musculoskeletally and psychologically of those claims are actually aggravations of already preexisting injuries. Now what that means for most industries, which is quite shocking when you think about it, is that around half, if not slightly more than half of all injury costs that they're paying for in the workers compensation sphere is actually paid for injuries that they never caused. Let me say that again, more than half of most injuries, workers compensation premiums are paid for injuries that they never caused. Those injuries literally walked in through the front gate already injured. And that's where powerful and accurate risk profiling becomes so critical. Because you can imagine that if you can stop, let's call it that, seven and a half percent walking in through the front gate in the first place, then you are massively ahead of the game in terms of a not hurting and aggravating human beings, but also avoiding up to 90% of your claims costs. Really amazing data that we've found from all these 132,000 data sets that drive what we do every day.

Victor [00:21:51]:

That's incredible to kind of dive into that because I'm loving this. Hey, let's be able to use data to apply a risk profile to these people that we have fairly high confidence that is going to correlate to a potential injury or an injury in x amount of amount of time. What does that look like down the track? So let's say it's seven and a half percent of these staff that you are identifying, for the listeners, for people tuning in, who they might have, I don't know, a soaring injury rate or it might be costing them a lot of money or whatever in between. What does that look like for an employer or a company that you've worked with?

Tom [00:22:48]:

So in terms of those people who walk in the front gate already with an underlying condition or in many cases already injured, that person will, depending on the industry, quite likely be a risk for the life of that worker for their whole tenure within that organization. So not only will the people walking in the front gate cause quite often they'll get injured within the first year, or even less sometimes, but in terms of the longer term, really not at all unlikely that those same people will be what they call serial claimants and end up with long term problems. We have actually developed using the same risk profiling tools, but applied slightly differently and with a lot of medical legal input. We've developed fitness for Work assessments that are very, very accurate and more used for existing injuries. So workers with injuries that may be non worker related injuries who are returning to their job. The GP might have given them a full clearance after a period of absence or suitable duties, and again, because of the same no fault system. That essentially means that if you have a preexisting injury and it gets aggravated at work, then it becomes compensable regardless of how it originally happened. That same principle obviously applies not just at pre employment, but to existing staff as well. So really important to know that someone returning from non work related injury is actually safe to return to work and not going to be aggravated, either musculoskeletally or psychologically by the role that they're returning to, because otherwise it becomes compensable in exactly the same way as it would had they actually done the original injury at work in the first place.

Victor [00:25:01]:

That's interesting. I think it'd be pretty powerful for a lot of organizations as well, just being able to bring people back with some confidence. Not the people back with confidence, hopefully they've got confidence, but as an organization to bring them back with confidence, knowing that it's not going to either put the worker at risk or create more headaches in regards to this is obviously tying into the data driven approach. You've got all this injury data, you've got all this data to be able to put people into a risk profile. What's the flow on effect for organizations that have started using this who may have either used something in the past or not used something in the past? What are the outcomes, I guess, of using a data driven approach?

Tom [00:25:48]:

Yeah, and this is one of the areas that we're extremely proud of, is that we have numerous testimonials and case studies across a range of industries that show two major outcome data sets that we're really proud of. One is that over a three year period, essentially the three year workers comp claims cycle, we typically reduce the actual workers compensation premium for an organization by half. So 50% of what it used to be after three years, which for some of our clients is tens of millions of dollars saved per year, and with a return on investment of around six to 800% on what they're paying us. The second thing, apart from that very significant reduction in workers compensation premium cost, is a reduction in staff turnover. And in this labor market, that becomes so significant because depending on the industry, it can cost thousands, tens of thousands of dollars to essentially replace a worker. In aged care. At the moment, for example, it's around $16,500 per employee that you're needing to replace. And depending on, we've got industries that we deal with where, for example, wages are much higher and then it becomes exponentially higher when staff turnover remains high. And so we've actually had organizations where they reduce their injury costs by half, saving the millions of dollars, but the savings from reduced staff turnover and better staff retention were actually greater than that workers compensation saving. So really two significant outcomes that we can provide well, that we see and have numerous case studies demonstrating, yeah, it's impressive.

Victor [00:28:01]:

I guess if you've got less people I'm sure injuries change the culture at a workplace, and if you've got less people injured and on some sort of modified duties within your workplace, there's bound to be improved workplace culture. I guess off the back of it. I know I'm mindful of your time, so we'll wrap up shortly. But just in regards to, again, looking at those savings and things that you do have, has there been organizations that you've worked with that you've been able to compare, say they might have not been using or using somebody else and then they've moved to a more data driven approach. And I guess that outcome of like, hey, does every pre employment assessment reduced by this much? And is data driven all hype? Or is there actually I'm sure there is a lot of validity behind it. I'm not trying to diminish it, but I like to play the skeptic in a lot of these things. Has there been that kind of look through the microscope?

Tom [00:29:19]:

There has. And not just in the case studies that I've mentioned, and obviously that comes through in some of the testimonials we've got. But when you're doing it, as you quite rightly, say, comparisons that are valid, you need to consider a number of factors. For example, are you comparing apples with apples when it comes to is it the same workers compensation jurisdiction, for example, that you're comparing with is it the same time period? Because things can obviously change environmentally and in terms of the job processes, et cetera. One great case study that speaks directly to that, that springs to mind, is one of Australia's largest aged care providers who decided to run an experiment. So they were opening two facilities, both in the same state and both in the same financial year. They were large aged care facilities, but at that stage they chose to use sure employee in one of those new facilities and to not use us in the other. At the end of the first twelve months, when we looked with their broker at the data, the outcome data, it was really quite astonishing to us. So the one that didn't use us had eight serious injuries at a cost and a statistical claims estimate of around $400,000 in that one year, in the same year. And at the other facility, which was exactly the same size, they had two injuries, not eight, but two. And they were much, much less severe. In fact, the total cost was $7,400 as compared with $400,000 in the other facility. So not only a very substantial saving in that twelve month period, but that's also eight people they didn't have to replace while their workers, their lost time injury persisted. They didn't have to obviously pay their workers comp claim. And logistically, we all know how difficult it can be as well as culturally to deal with workers compensation claims. So yeah, quite a significant difference. And that is a case study that whilst it's rare in that we were able to so objectively compare apples with apples, it is really quite common because by having workers comp premiums generally, we obviously know that whatever we were comparing with before we started. Be that another provider who uses more traditional methods or perhaps in some instances no provider at all, that we quite consistently get those outcomes. But yeah, as you say, it is nice to be able to demonstrate that through the data driven model that these have actually been validated.

Victor [00:32:28]:

Yeah, that's impressive and something you and the team should be very proud of. And last question obviously, being an innovator or a bit of a pioneer in this space, what excites you about the future in both the health and safety or the pre employment or maybe what things do you see that? What do you see the future of this space looking like?

Tom [00:32:56]:

Look, needless to say, I am absolutely convinced and motivated that this will be a very data driven future. And by the way, that is not just in pre employment. I mean so much in this workplace environment and whether you're looking at productivity or injury management or a whole number of other initiatives, data is so important. And look, another thing that I see increasingly being likely in this space is the ease of access to assessments. Now, our models are actually almost 100% done online. So all of our advanced risk profiling questionnaire work is online. And probably around 90 plus percent of our actual physical assessments, musculoskeletal assessments, are also conducted online. We did that over the last six years so well before COVID But I see that as becoming more and more popular because the advantages are amazing. Data wise, the outcomes are virtually identical. We assessed the first 10,000 we did virtually and compared them with the last 10,000 we did face to face. And the outcomes were exactly the same. They were within 1% of precisely the same accuracy of risk profiling. And add to that the fact that because they're done online, they can be done from the comfort of the applicant's own home in their own time, from anywhere. That saves enormous amount of resources, time, money. And also, because I'm able to do it all online, we can literally book applicants in with one of our staff, regardless of any local practitioner being available next week or in a few days time. We can generally do it today because our assessors, they're waiting to fill up their slots and not dependent on geography. And look, the other thing is that I'm not paying rent in dozens and dozens of towns around Australia, which means I can pass on those savings to our clients where in this labor market, for starters, price is important because there are lots and lots of challenges out there that we all know.

Victor [00:35:45]:

Awesome. Well, thanks so much for jumping on Tom. It's been an absolute pleasure. You're a pioneer in the space. And, yeah, this is the whole, like I say, the whole premise behind ideas from your peers. This has hopefully opened the mind up of some of the listeners out there, of what they can potentially do and the effects that it can have in the health and safety space by having a more data driven approach. Whether that's using and creating their own internal systems and things to drive change or if it's tapping into what Shore employee has to offer. If people are interested in finding out more, where can they go to find out more about shore employee or about you?

Tom [00:36:27]:

Yes. So shoreemploy.com au that's s u remploy.com au only one e. And, yeah, we'd love to answer inquiries and see whether we're a good fit for a particular organization and hopefully can help.

Victor [00:36:45]:

Awesome. I'll chuck that in the show notes and look forward to touching base and chatting again soon.

Tom [00:36:52]:

Thanks, Victor.