Our people for the future

To deliver on our Health and Safety Improvement Plan, risk management continued to be a focus in 2021-22. By focusing on quality incident management and assurance activities, we reduced our ongoing risk exposure and began improving our management systems to deliver practical and safe systems of work for all high-risk activities, reporting a total injury frequency rate of 6.2 per cent, which is below our target for the year.

Taking a harm-based approach to safety, we focus on the potential outcome of an incident as well as the actual outcome. Our resources are prioritised and focused on high potential incidents to prevent a recurrence. A re-focus on high potential incidents and near misses as a learning opportunity has resulted in strong collaboration with our workforce, contractors and industry. This has resulted in safer outcomes for our people with actions associated with the investigations being shared across multiple forums. We have also reinvigorated a contractor forum, which allows collaboration and sharing of initiatives among our contractors.

In June 2022, we finalised lead Health and Safety indicators across the business to drive a proactive health and safety culture. By focusing on leading indicators, we expect to deliver a future reduction in our traditional health and safety statistics. These indicators will be monitored to track effectiveness and drive our safety maturity.

In September 2021, we launched our Support Crew – a confidential peer support network providing wellbeing guidance and emotional and practical support to our people through the sharing of similar experiences. We have recruited and trained 23 people as part of the Support Crew team and are currently in the process of onboarding new members in both metropolitan and regional areas.

The Be Well wellbeing program was launched in May 2022, providing 62 participants, as at 30 June 2022, with the tools to develop a personalised mental health and wellbeing strategy tailored to their individual psychological health profile and life circumstances to help deal with stress, build wellbeing and resilience.

Our Diversity and Inclusion Plan outlines four priorities, and in 2021-22, we delivered a range of activities and outcomes to achieve our diversity and inclusion targets:

• Women at SA Water

At 30 June 2022, women held 46.82 per cent of leadership positions, up by four per cent year on year. Inclusion targets for women in leadership were written into contracts for our Adelaide Services Delivery, and major and minor capital delivery framework partners.

• Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander employment and retention

Our Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Employment and Retention Plan is helping to achieve sustainable employment pathways for future and existing Aboriginal employees by creating development opportunities within our business. In 2021-22, Aboriginal employment was at .46 per cent of total workforce, peaking at 2.85 per cent in November 2021. A new partnership with the Clontarf Foundation is providing opportunities to support pathways to employment for Aboriginal students.

In 2021-22, we committed to providing three traineeships for Clontarf participants, two regional and one metro, to build professional skills and personal confidence on their journey towards a successful career.

Able Together, the network that directly supports the actions and initiatives in our Disability Access and Inclusion Plan, was launched in April 2022. Enabling our ongoing work to provide a deeper understanding of what our customers, our people and our community experience, we are proactively building a more diverse and inclusive business that reflects the people we serve. The fourth diversity employee network group established to support our people, Able Together joins Together for Women, Pride Together and our Aboriginal and ally group, Kauwi miyurna.

We provide a variety of employment opportunity programs, including water industry traineeships, our graduate program, technical cadetships and work experience and vocational placements. In 2021-22, 26 people participated in our employment opportunity programs, with 46 per cent female graduates and undergraduates. Diversity in our apprentice programs continues to grow with 40 per cent of the intake in 2021-22 being female or Aboriginal people.

As at 30 June 2022:

• 40 per cent of our trainees were Aboriginal
• 42 per cent of our apprentices were Aboriginal or female
• 25 per cent of our cadets were Aboriginal or female.

Sponsorship of the University of Adelaide’s Women in STEM Careers Program, which supports 100 women studying in the STEM fields, continued in 2021-22. The program gives students the opportunity to connect with industry professionals and learn about career options following their graduation, including those in our business. Currently, four alumni are employed through our graduate program.

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In May 2022, Barkuma, Mobo Group, Community Concierge SA, Orana, Jigsaw, SA Group Enterprises, Wesley Social Enterprises and CBS Inc. joined our major framework partners for a South Australian first ‘meet the buyer’ event as part of our Delivering Capital Together Social Enterprise Initiative. Directly supporting our Disability Access and Inclusion Plan, the initiative identified practical ways we can build diversity and inclusion in our business by partnering with and supporting these enterprises through our supply chain and delivery of our capital program.

In August 2021, we were named Large Employer of the Year at the SA Training Awards, going on to be a finalist at the National Australian Training Awards in November 2021. These awards recognise large businesses and enterprises that have achieved excellence in the provision of nationally recognised training to their employees.

The 2021 Innovation and Excellence Awards celebrated some of the incredible people who made a significant difference in our business and improved customer experience across our business.

• Innovation

To prevent quality older assets from becoming scrap, an asset refurbishment program was created. Large valves retired from service are now inspected, stored, refurbished, and put back into service through our capital projects. The asset refurbishment has environmental benefits and helps ensure high quality, reliable infrastructure that is independent of supply chains.

• Safety

Field safety alerts were introduced to enable our field teams to identify high risk work situations through the Work Order App, with safety risks and hazards such as aggressive dogs appearing as on-screen alerts for teams managing or working on the job. Scheduling and dispatch processes for

high-risk work situations were also modified, so risks could be appropriately mitigated before work even started.

• Trustworthy

About 3,000 customers in Yankalilla, Normanville and Carrickalinga were smoothly transitioned to drinking water disinfected through

chloramination in March 2021. The significant stakeholder engagement process ensured more than 1,700 customers were directly engaged, building Fleurieu customers’ trust and confidence in our services.

• Agile

A multi-disciplinary team developed robust methods to detect the COVID-19 virus in wastewater and established a monitoring program using sewage sampling. Our testing became an integral part of SA Health’s COVID-19 response to keep South Australians safe.

• Diversity and Inclusion

A user-friendly GIS system is enabling us to work closely and effectively with the Barkindji–Maraura Elders Council to identify and record cultural heritage at Lake Victoria, protecting and managing cultural heritage material.

• Collaborative

To improve the quality of water from our Millicent Wastewater Treatment Plant for reuse for irrigation by a local farmer, teams mobilised to install, commission and establish a new chlorine gas dosing system and storage hut. This water chlorination and re-use initiative has enabled irrigation using recycled water to be maximised on neighbouring grazing and cropping land, and the quantity of reuse water discharged into nearby Lake Bonney to be limited.

• Courageous

TradeMutt high-vis workwear was made available as part of our uniform, for our people look good and feel good at work while starting conversations about mental health. The eye- catching workwear is designed to help make sometimes invisible issues impossible to ignore, including suicide among men as a significant male health issue in Australia.

• Inspirational leadership

Mark Lewis provided the Adelaide Service Delivery Project team with clear strategic direction in a complex and ambiguous environment. With a down-to-earth, people- orientated approach, Mark brought together a large number of stakeholders to ensure the project balanced a commercial focus with the need to deliver the best outcomes for our customers, both now and into the future.

We have an annual performance appraisal and development cycle aligned to the financial year which includes setting goals, supporting our people’s development and having performance discussions.

In 2021-22, 94 per cent of our people completed their annual performance reviews.