Photo: 2024 RM Advancer Award Winners
This article was produced in partnership with Vero.
Australian organisations are rethinking resilience as risk factors shift and innovation accelerates. This transformation is on full display at the Vero RM Advancer Awards, now in their 17th year, which celebrate firms leading the way in preparedness and risk leadership.
Dale Garbett (pictured below), Vero’s risk solutions manager, explains that entries this year highlight how technology and strategy are evolving, “Nominations have included AI-powered bushfire cameras, drones inspecting premises, and timber manufacturers replacing hydraulic oil with water to reduce fire hazards,” Garbett told Insurance Business.
“Lithium-ion batteries have emerged as a key threat, powering everything from phones to mobility scooters and e-scooters plugged in at desks.”
The proliferation of these power sources is forcing organisations to develop new protocols around charging stations, storage and emergency response.
Vero understands that risk management is, by definition, a work in progress – something necessarily dynamic and iterative. "We often hear people saying, ‘I'm not ready to submit an entry into the RM Advancer Awards yet, because it's still a work in progress’," Garbett said. "[They would say] ‘when we finish our risk management and we get it to the standard we want it to be, then we can submit an entry.’”
Although striving for perfection is admirable, attaining it is seldom feasible given the continuously evolving risk factors present in today’s environment.
The RM Advancer team introduced a continuous improvement category to this year’s awards. This category invites businesses to demonstrate where they started, where they are today, and to show improvement based on their own context. The message to organisations is simple: tell your story as an ongoing, dynamic, evolving project.
"There's no such thing as the perfect risk," Garbett said, who heads the RM Advancer programme at Vero. "We're looking to encourage improvement, and we're looking to recognise effort and progress."
The awards have grown into one of the clearest indicators of how organisations across Australia are redefining what “good risk management” looks like. Once focused on compliance and technical controls, today’s submissions reflect a wider emphasis on adaptability, culture and collaboration. The addition of the continuous improvement category underscores that shift inviting companies to share lessons learned rather than polished outcomes, and reminding the sector that resilience is a moving target, not a finish line.
This shift in philosophy appears to have unlocked a wave of entries from organisations that previously felt they weren't ready. “We've had the highest number of entries and one of the highest standards of entries that we've ever had – and that goes across all product lines,” said Garbett.
While technology often grabs the spotlight, it is organisational culture that ultimately drives meaningful and lasting change in risk management. Across award submissions, Garbett observed that culture emerges as the crucial foundation—one that is both the hardest to transform and the most vital to long-term success. Shaping a culture of proactive risk awareness, openness, and continuous improvement is not only a formidable challenge, but also the key factor that enables organisations to adapt, evolve, and thrive amid ever-shifting risks.
Organisations are seeing higher volumes of near misses and safety concerns raised by staff, not because workplaces have become more dangerous, but because employees feel safer reporting problems without fear of blame or retribution.
"If you see it, you own it," Garbett said, describing the expectation in modern workplaces. "In the past, people often ignored issues and hoped someone else would pick it up. But people own these incidents, and they feel empowered to make sure the workplace is safe for them and their colleagues."
Psychosocial risks represent a category where increased reporting doesn't necessarily mean increased incidents. Mental health issues have lost much of their stigma, and many organisations have responded by training Mental Health First Aiders who work alongside traditional first aid personnel.
"If someone has a physical disability, you can often see it," Garbett said. "But if it's mental illness, it's less visible or not visible at all."
Garbett noted that one judge recalled how in the past, admitting to depression or mental health struggles would have meant being treated very differently by colleagues. Today, organisations provide specialist support quickly, with employee assistance programmes and dedicated resources to help staff recognise when they're struggling and support them through it.
Another significant shift reflected in this year's awards involves the role of insurance brokers. Where they once focused primarily on placement, many now function as trusted advisers with deep knowledge of risk management.
"Traditionally, it was insurers that mostly drove the risk engineering and risk management," Garbett said. "Brokers are now playing a bigger role. They know what insurers want and what standards they expect."
This evolution was initiated in hard market conditions that forced brokers to differentiate themselves through value-added services. To place risks successfully, brokers needed to ensure those risks were managed well and presented effectively to the insurance market.
"Developing the plan and making it real and operationalising it for the client is very strategic," Garbett said.
Increasingly, brokers nominate their own clients for awards, championing risk management programmes they helped design. "There's more collaboration," Garbett said. "The insurer and the broker are working closer together on things like risk management more than ever before."
Broker opportunity lies particularly in business continuity planning, where many organisations remain unprepared despite the high stakes. Garbett advocated for a questioning approach: asking clients a series of "what if" questions to expose vulnerabilities in their disaster response plans.
"What if a bushfire starts here, what if the bushfire spreads and damages your site, what if you can't get into your site for three months..." Garbett said, describing how the questioning should cascade through worst-case scenarios.
The solutions don't need to be complex. "You can get consultants in, and you can spend weeks on this stuff, or you can have a simple plan on the wall to say, who are your emergency contacts, where does everybody go if you can't get into this site," Garbett said. "Just have a very simple plan, make it very workable and available."
Human nature tends toward believing that disasters happen to other people, particularly in small organisations where staff are consumed by daily operations. Brokers can encourage clients to step back and evaluate whether their systems for dealing with disasters are adequate.
The judging panel for the awards also reinforces the focus on continuous learning and knowledge sharing. Four independent judges, all risk managers or specialists in fields like return-to-work consulting, review the submissions. Many are previous award winners. The panel rotates partially each year, keeping some judges for continuity while bringing in fresh perspectives.
"Judges benefit from getting a window into the world of a range of organisations and how they're facing challenges," Garbett said. "They get an opportunity to learn from reading finalist submissions."
The judges this year included Dr Mary Wyatt, who specialises in return-to-work consulting, along with risk managers from organisations including Metcash, Event Hospitality and Costa Foods. Their independence from Vero and the nominated organisations ensures the credibility of the awards programme.
The award evening itself functions as a networking opportunity where organisations facing similar challenges can connect and share approaches. The recognition and networking opportunity has proven more valuable than the $2,000 prize that winners receive for risk management training and development.
Winners receive not just a trophy and development funding, but credibility and publicity that strengthens business partnerships. Organisations value the platform to tell their stories and share solutions to risk problems.
The programme is open to Vero and Intermediated GIO Workers Compensation clients across all sectors, with categories for continuous improvement, small and medium enterprises, large commercial organisations, and dedicated streams for workers compensation and public liability.
For brokers, the awards provide a platform to demonstrate value beyond transactional services, building trust and long-term partnerships with clients. The programme reinforces the broker's role in driving proactive risk strategies rather than simply facilitating insurance placement.
"Organisations have a desire to share best practice with others and to help others, and the RM Advancer Awards provide the perfect opportunity to do that," Garbett said.
Find out more about the RM Advancer awards here.
Disclaimer:
This article is sponsored by AAI Limited ABN 48 005 297 807 trading as Vero Insurance (‘Vero’). The information is intended to be of a general nature only. Subject to any rights you may have under any law, Vero and its related bodies corporate do not accept any legal responsibility for any loss or damage, including loss of business or profits or any other indirect loss, incurred as a result of reliance upon it – please make your own enquiries.
