The 2009 Telstra Business Awards offer businesses the chance to celebrate the story of their success. Success not just on the bottom line, but in the journeys taken by founders, partners and staff along the way.  The Awards recognize not just ultimate success in business but also the courage, skills and innovation needed to breathe life into a nascent business idea.

 

Directors - Bruce Lewis and Deborah Jones accept their Finalist Award

at the Awards ceremony on 28/07/2009 at the Hilton Hotel Brisbane.

 

 

OnGuard Safety Training Pty Ltd  -  Gold Coast  QLD      Download Media Release  PDF - 63KB

 

     Why our business is unique?

 

1. We offer a product in a market that no one else has bothered to invest.

 

We are educating young people in workplace safety – in real time. NOT learning about workplace safety, they are participating in a school based workplace safety training program.

They are being instructed in the safe operating procedures of potentially harmful machines and equipment. The safety training and the safety aware culture they will transfer to their future workplace is immeasurable – already statistics in school workshop reportable incident rates has dropped substantially.  In some Australian country regions we have been told that employers are asking students from local schools seeking work, to view their OnGuard Safety Certificates. 

We are very proud of this fact!

 

2. We are innovative.

 

No private or government organisation produces the specific training resources that we do. 

WE DO NOT HAVE A MARKET COMPETITOR!

 

3. We are growing.

 

Australia – we continue to develop our penetration in the Australian educational market

We are positioning ourselves to expand our position to be the “benchmark” in OH&S training in the sector. Then we aim to repeat this into the light engineering sector.

 

Overseas - We have connected with the AusTrade TradeStart Program. To date, through this program we have had meetings with AusTrade BDMs from Mauritius, South Africa, Japan, China, India and Chile.  As well we joined a trade mission with the Gold Coast City Council to Hong Kong and China.  These meetings have established a broad list of contacts who are interested in this type of training, particularly the government meetings that we held in China.

 

4. We employ staff from specific programs.

 

We employ staff from programs designed to train school leavers (school based trainees) or employ persons with differing employment histories (back to work programs etc).

To date we have signed up and trained FOUR school based trainees (Alex, Daniel, Sam, Jamie-lee).

We have employed FIVE back to work employees (Trevor, Gary, Charmaine, Kylie, Daniel). 

We are currently employing Matthew in a Cert IV IT Multimedia traineeship.  Then we have Kathy, a work experience - return to work mother.  We pride ourselves in offering employment opportunities to young and ‘not so young’ people in our local community.

 

There are five award categories in the Telstra Business Awards:

1. Business Owner Micro-Business Award
   For businesses with five employees or fewer.

2. MYOB Small Business Award
   For businesses with more than five employees, but less than or equal to 20 employees.

3. Panasonic Australia Medium Business Award
   For businesses with more than 20 employees, but less than or equal to 200 employees.

All entrants will also be considered for the following two specialist Awards:

• AMP Innovation Award
  For businesses that have successfully introduced an Innovation.

• Sensis Social responsibility Award
  For demonstrated leadership and contribution by a business to the environment, people, education or the community.

State/Territory Awards

All category winners will be announced at the State/Territory presentation dinners. Winners of the three qualifying categories will also be eligible to win the overall Telstra Business of the Year for their State or Territory.

 

National Awards

Category winners in each State/Territory will be eligible to represent their business at the national awards ceremony in their respective category. The winners of the overall Telstra Business of the Year in each State/Territory will also be eligible to be named the 2009 Telstra Australian Business of the Year.