He’s done it! Zoologist Mark Gresser has crossed the finish line walking from the furthest points of Australia to raise money for youth mental health. It has been an epic feat of willpower and endurance, along the way Mark has had some amazing experiences and faced some real challenges, he shares some of them with us here.
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Each year at Biologic, we pause and take a day off from field work and report writing to reflect on safety. Stepping away from the routine of the office, meetings, and laptops allows everyone to be fully present to discuss how we can continue to strengthen and protect our safety practices and culture.
A key takeaway from the day was everyone’s desire to build and maintain a strong safety culture.
What is a strong safety culture?
To us, a strong safety culture means not becoming complacent. Whilst we make sure to celebrate our wins, we also continue to do the work throughout the year to foster accountability, build awareness, and maximise clarity amongst teams. A safety-first mindset means enabling each team member to be confident in playing their part.
A strong safety culture also involves:
- Prioritising people’s psychosocial safety as well as their physical safety
- Enforcing a no blame approach so that each team member feels safe and comfortable to speak up
- Encouraging proactive hazard and near miss identification and reporting
- A sense of personal accountability from everyone, ensuring that safety does not lie with one person or department
- Clarity on policies, processes, and reporting lines. Everyone knows what to do, how to do it, and when
Celebrating the wins
In 2026 we had a lot to celebrate. We achieved 0 lost time injuries (LTI) over 12 months and 6,076 field days. Even though our field work has increased by 7%, our total incidents and incident rates are down 5% and 11% respectively.
This is an achievement we are very proud of. It is a result of effective processes and systems, as well as people who continue to assess their environment for any potential risks, even if it is a place in which they have worked many times before.
It is also a demonstration of the commitment of our in house Safety and Mobilisation teams who work meticulously to prepare our field teams prior to mobilisation. They work with our people through the completion of paperwork, training and onboarding, and continue to support them whilst they are in the field.
Accountability and awareness
A safety culture requires everyone to take accountability and be aware of their surroundings.
To really drive this in 2026, we implemented the ethos of calling out the hazard, the behaviour, the pressure, and even the silence.
This means encouraging more reporting and broadening the scope of what should be reported in our internal systems to include more near-misses and hazards. Being proactive in identifying things early allows us to put a resolution in place before an incident occurs.
Research tells us that for every serious incident there are dozens of near-misses and hundreds of small hazards that went unnoticed or unreported. Catching these before they escalate, and fixing root causes, allows us to continue improving the ways in which we work.
Maximising clarity amongst teams
Clear communication is a huge element of physical and psychosocial safety.
So much of what we communicate every day can be lost in the subtext or the phrasing of a requirements as a suggestion. After all, casual is built into the Australian vocabulary.
We focused on cutting through unclear communication, with help from guest speaker, Andrew Horabin from Bullshift. He spoke about how clear, direct communication promotes clarity and removes room for error and misinterpretation.
At Biologic, safety is non-negotiable. Everyone has a responsibility to act safely and speak up to promote the safety of themselves and their teammates.
