RADIO TONI with Toni Lontis

Let me tell you about our guest today, Amanda Karpeles, whose interview is titled - A new approach to communication, breaking down boundaries.

Amanda Karpeles is a Brisbane-based entrepreneur who has developed an emergency communication platform that offers an agile solution to the dynamic risks of remote and isolated work in fluid situations. Her focus is upon elevating safety, performance and bringing safety and safety communication to the front line. Amanda has extensive legal, business, and financial management experience spanning 20 years, having incorporated and run her own legal practice and as a Partner in a national law firm.  During her legal tenure, she acted for large and small enterprises and individuals in all areas of injury law from the Magistrate's Court up to the High Court of Australia. She has forensically examined over 4000 workplace injuries, in conjunction with experts, to identify the legal culpability around accidents due to:

• workplace prosecutions,

• coronial inquiries and

• workers compensation liability.

In 2018, Co-founders Amanda Karpeles and Ash Raina joined together to develop digital solutions that would enable organizations to take rapid, relevant safety action in a crisis or emergency and reduce the risk associated with people working in remote and dynamic environments. SafeTag has been developed based on:

• extensive occupational health and safety research and insights

• 20+ years of legal practice in WHS

• 20+ years of experience developing easy-to-use technology solutions that drive efficiency in operations. 

Amanda seeks to disrupt what it means to be safe. 

Let's start the show with her favorite quote - Albert Einstein once stated that: "If you always do what you always did, you'll always get what you always got." We need to allow ourselves to think differently, and new things will happen.

Good afternoon Amanda and welcome to Radio Toni. Every Day, business, so glad to have you here with us today.

I wanted to start today with some of the statistics around workplace incidents, accidents and claims. These stats from WorkSafe Australia

• As of 16 September, 84 Australian workers were killed at work in 2021. In 2020, 182 Australian workers were killed at work compared with 183 workers in 2019.

• The total cost to workers and the community of workplace accidents is 61.8 Billion!!

• In 2018–19, male employees accounted for 62% of severe claims, while female employees accounted for 38% of severe claims.

• 2018–19, across the age groups, older workers were more likely to make a serious claim, particularly those aged between 45 and 54 years.

• Most mechanisms of injury involved similar proportions of claims by males and females. The mechanism with the largest difference by gender was Mental stress, which accounted for 5% of claims by males but 13% of claims by females.

• America - In 2018, 5,250 workers lost their lives on the job as a result of traumatic injuries; according to fatality data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), An estimated 2.4 million workers sustained work-related injuries and were treated in emergency departments during 20193 - Male workers accounted for approximately 64% of the work-related injuries treated in emergency departments - https://www.cdc.gov/niosh/injury/fastfacts.html

• Worldwide - The ILO estimates that some 2.3 million women and men around the world succumb to work-related accidents or diseases every year; this corresponds to over 6000 deaths every single Day. Worldwide, there are around 340 million occupational accidents and 160 million victims of work-related illnesses annually. https://www.ilo.org/moscow/areas-of-work/occupational-safety-and-health/WCMS_249278/lang--en/index.htm

1. Let's start with you and your story; if it's ok, can you share a little of your life with our listeners. What got you to this point in time with a fantastic solution to a troubling workplace fact?

2. What is SafeTag? How does it work?

3. What are the essential features of SafeTag? Protection for solo workers, alerts, notifications, roll call, management dashboard,

4. How are businesses keeping in touch with their staff at the moment? 

5. Are businesses moving to technology wisely? 

6. What are the business expectations of staff? 

7. Is there a reluctance of staff to change the way they do things? 

8. How can we learn from our behaviors? 

9. Where are you going next? 

10. Can you tell the listeners about the special offer you have for them today - We have a 1-month free trial for the first 100 enquiries

11. How do people connect with you Amanda?

(These are just points and questions to give us a background, but we will go where the conversation takes us)

THANKYOU Amanda!

Toni's notes

For the last 30 years, I have seen the same approach to the same problems; I have forensically examined over 4000 workplace injuries across hundreds of businesses and saw lots of money spent with minimal improvement, rather than deal with the aftermath of an injury, I want to do something about it. I wish to offer a new approach to helping people to communicate daily.