Terri-Lee Morris, HSE Manager
Terri-Lee is a Health Safety Environment and Wellbeing (HSE&W) Manager with a demonstrated history of working in the engineering, oil and gas industries. She is skilled in change management, strategy, leadership, compliance, training and Environment, Health, and Safety (EHS).
Hi Terri-Lee, can you tell us how you got started in health and safety?
As it happened, my sister worked within an environmental consultancy and I was able to do work experience in the environmental remediation field. I enjoyed the work and the positive impacts that cleaning up contaminated sites had on the environment. I knew I wanted to work within the environmental remediation space and have been fortunate to spend most of my career looking after HSE&W in this area.
Where have you gained your extensive experience?
In my early career, I worked as an occupational hygienist, where I primarily completed air-monitoring at gaswork remediation and landfill sites, in addition to auditing dangerous goods and hazardous substances. Then, I moved into mainstream safety within the finance and insurance industries. I soon returned to environmental remediation, looking after HSE&W on contaminated site remediation and highly complex projects. Seeing my workmates complete such hazardous and demanding work safely was incredible.
What prompted your decision to join ATC Williams?
I was the Victorian HSE Advisor at Golder for almost eight years, and Darren Watt (ATCW CEO) was the managing director. It was a great place to work. Darren is genuinely passionate about safety, and when this role became available, I jumped at the opportunity to work with him directly. I soon discovered that the ATCW workplace is one where people genuinely care about and celebrate each other. In my year here, I’ve seen the company wrap their arms around people during tough times and celebrate their successes. Joining ATCW was a great decision.
How have you approached the HSE&W role at ATCW?
I have focused on changing the culture through conversations and developing HSE&W Leadership Behaviours. We have been undertaking conversations about safety and wellbeing to make it a normal part of work. We take HSE&W seriously, and there can never be too many of these discussions as part of everyday business. The HSE&W Leadership Behaviours outline simple actions that our people can take to ensure they and their workmates get home safely each day.
Our operations managers and team leaders now initiate safety shares during meetings, and our project managers involve project teams in project planning. We hold regular in-house technical seminars, where HSE&W is incorporated in presentations and workshops so that it is an expected part of the agenda.
Another focus area is wellbeing. Psychosocial hazards fall under this umbrella, and we have engaged the Black Dog Institute to assist us in raising awareness and finding realistic solutions to the pressures our consultants face. I am passionate about implementing meaningful wellbeing interventions here at ATCW and supporting our people in managing all aspects of their wellbeing.
Can you share how you approach this in your life?
I firmly believe that work should not impact your personal life. Every person should go home at the end of each day and not be impacted by work (physically or mentally). For me, it’s about having good, firm boundaries between work and home. Sometimes, it’s addressing mindset too, such as our tendency to say, ‘back in my day’ as a way to shrug off fatigue or unsupportive workplace conditions and soldier on. Wellbeing includes knowing that it’s okay to define and separate life outside of work.
Where are you seeing culture shifts concerning HSE&W?
I see this through the HSE&W conversations and behaviours, which are now becoming the norm. From a risk perspective, the focus has been on ensuring our site work is well planned and that site engineers are actively involved here. I do see that the culture is shifting. We encourage our people to share anything from home or work they think others can learn from, speak up, address HSE&W concerns, and find solutions. I celebrate these conversations as they create a dialogue everyone can learn from together.
We absolutely need to meet legislative obligations to keep people safe. Along with getting home safely, our people should be able to arrive home happy. Seeing that our people feel safe raising concerns and knowing that others have their back and are looking out for them makes my day.
– Connect with Terri-Lee on Linkedin
