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Sentis Pty Ltd - Innovation in Action

Gold Stevie Award Winner 2012, Click to Enter The 2013 Steve Awards for Women in Business

Company: Sentis Pty Ltd, Brisbane, Queensland, Australia
Company Description: Sentis is a successful global organisation, fostering sustainable change through the application of psychology to safety, wellbeing, organisational and leadership performance. Since 2003, we have delivered our services to clients across a broad range of industries, involving over 66,000 participants in 22 countries utlising five languages.
Nomination Category: Company/Organization Awards Categories
Nomination Sub Category: Most Innovative Company of the Year – More Than 10 Employees

Nomination Title: Sentis Pty Ltd - Innovation in Action

Describe for the judges the innovatioins and accomplishments of the nominated organization since the beginning of July last year (up to 500 words):

The CEO launched the Sentis Innovation Team in early 2011, designed to drive Sentis forward in achieving our mission to assist individuals and organisations change their lives for the better. The Innovation Team at Sentis is dedicated to the design, development and evaluation of innovative programs, services, assessments and products that enhance the safety, wellbeing and leadership performance of individuals and organisations.

Senior leaders within the business strategically plan and drive innovation through a fortnightly Innovation Lab – a meeting of Innovation Team leaders and Sentis’ Operations Managers to engage in strategic planning, business forecasting and new ideas generation across all areas of the business. One of the key driving forces behind the establishment of the Innovation Lab is to provide individuals across the entire business with the opportunity to present new ideas relating to products, programs, services, internal process, brand and communication innovation. Prior to each meeting, individuals and teams within Sentis apply for a 20-minute time slot to showcase their new idea or project proposal in order to obtain improvement-oriented feedback and/or organisational support to enable them to implement the idea. To date, this process has been very successful as evidenced by a multitude of new internal business initiatives and external product and service development outcomes. Some key initiatives include The Sentis Academy, our social responsibility initiate iMIND, a critical incident response offering, an ambassador program for recognising safety champions and a support program for FIFO (fly-in-fly-out) and shift workers.

A service innovation that Sentis implemented in late 2011 was the mindfulness-based safety program called oneMIND. 'oneMIND' was developed as a structured approach to communicate a series of mindfulness concepts to employees and provide them with knowledge and skills to increase their 'mindfulness' at work, with the ultimate goal of improving safe work outcomes. Mindfulness involves directing attention in a focused manner, being aware of the environment, and being oriented in the present. This was the first known attempt to utilise mindfulness concepts, an Eastern philosophy grounded in Buddhism, in a safety initiative in the heavy industry. It was also innovative in how the service was delivered to our clients, by conducting the training onsite, in the employee’s work environment, during their normal ‘start of shift’ meetings, as opposed to the traditional ‘classroom’ environment.

Sentis has also developed a customised solution for one of the world’s largest aquaculture businesses designed to drive sustainable change in the organisation’s safety performance. The innovative solution is a self-managed program titled ‘BrainSafe’ that has been created to enable delivery by the client’s own internal trainers. The program is unique from the perspective that it is underpinned by psychology and neuroscience principles aimed at practically changing attitudes and behaviours relating to safe work practices. In addition, it has been implemented in the context of a global business, which means that it is being delivered to hundreds of people in multiple countries each day and has been translated into five different languages (English, French, Norwegian, Dutch and Chilean Spanish).

Provide a brief biography of the person or persons who lead the nominated company (up to 100 words):

With a diverse background spanning education, retail, mining, construction and distribution, Chandra has built her professional career around the application of psychology to global business issues. Her success has relied on her ability to connect with ‘untapped’ human potential in organisations such as Rio Tinto and Fluor (Daniel).

Chandra holds a Bachelor of Business in HR and IR, a Bachelor of Science majoring in Psychology, a Graduate Certificate in Commerce and is a Fellow of the Australian Institute of Management. She is a recipient of an Australia Day Young Citizen Award and has earned multiple accolades for her public speaking.

The CEO (or other principal manager) of this company is a woman, and at least 40% of the management team is comprised of women.