Tailoring an employee support program to workers’ needs: Australian Agricultural Company

The Australian Agricultural Company (AACo) is Australia's largest integrated cattle and beef producer, with properties, feedlots and farms in Queensland and the Northern Territory. Its 460 employees include rural workers, corporate workers and an international team. The organisation reviewed the risk factors affecting its workers' psychological safety and wellbeing and identified several hazards and areas for improvement. These included isolation, limited WIFI and telephone reception, workload pressures (long hours and physically demanding environments) and interpersonal challenges.  

The organisation’s existing Employee Assistance Program (EAP) had a low uptake – 2.43% of the workforce had accessed in the past 12 months and 1.2% in the previous year. And workers who did use the program reported they did not receive useful insights about their challenges or how to address them. They were often referred to other service providers, and the support felt impersonal.  

“Low uptake is not a sign of success—it’s a sign that people aren’t accessing the support they might need,” said Jacque Healy, AACo’s Injury Management and Wellbeing Advisor. 

AACo set about tailoring a new service to workers’ needs. It had to be rural-focused and personalised, and it had to provide proactive and reactive support while reducing barriers to accessing services. Working with Strive, the organisation identified they needed more than a traditional EAP, to just ‘assist’ people. Together, they established AACo’s Employee Support Program: 

• Employee Support, providing one-to-one coaching for all workers – personal or work issues could be discussed 
• Manager Support, coaching managers on how to have difficult conversations with workers and debrief following incidents  
• Support for family members, helping family members of workers experiencing a mental health issue.  

AACo worked hard to promote the new Employee Support Program provided by Strive internally. They introduced a dedicated hotline and a text line for younger staff, created and distributed flyers and materials to promote the program and encourage uptake and communicated this to each forum our monthly operations ‘online muster’ posted on the internal ‘Workplace Page’. Strive consultants were allocated to regions across Queensland and Northern Territory to build an ongoing relationship with workers, and staff bios were shared so that AACo employees could familiarise themselves with the consultants available.  

The program was launched through feedlot/farm and station visits in September 2021. These station visits allowed workers to engage with support people in a relaxed and familiar setting, often going out to work with them on a tour for Strive to also experience ‘a day in the life of an AACo employee’.  

“You’ve got people sitting underneath trees, processing cattle, going for bore runs or doing pen riding in a feedlot, they end up chatting to people. People have a counselling session sometimes without knowing they have a session. They end up just having a bit of a chat about their life in general. Our approach is the same as it is with injuries — we don't want something to become chronic before it's treated. We approach mental health in the same way.” Jacque Healy, Injury Management & Wellbeing Advisor 

Response to the new approach exceeded expectations, with over 15% of the workforce engaging with the Employee Support. Over 120 support sessions and 12 trips to various stations/farms/feedlot were completed. Strive and AACo continue to map out travel to visit more stations during 2023, with Strive covering our VRG region recently with more trips planned. 

AACo was awarded a Safe Work and Return to Work award in 2022 by WorkSafe Queensland for Best Commitment to Work Health and Wellbeing.