Henschke Wines is a 150-year old family-owned winery based in Keyneton, South Australia in the Eden Valley wine region. The Henschke family spans for six generations and the property was first purchased by Johann Christian Henschke in 1862, while the first recorded sale came 6 years later. Henschke is best known for ‘Hill of Grace’, a Shiraz based wine and their cellar door which was unveiled in their 150-year celebrations last year.
View more at henschke.com.au
What is your job title and what are you responsible for day-to-day?
I am QSE Manager at Henschke, so I look after Quality, Safety and Environmental Management across the business. I manage the certification and ongoing audits for ISO 14001, 45001, 9001 & HACCP systems. I also manage the Maintenance and Calibration requirements for Henschke. Being a small company I have other areas I cover as well. Included in this is Project Management and Contractor Management. Legal Compliance also forms a part of my role and I handle reporting for compliance areas as well, such as APCO, NPI, etc. I am also a member of the Management Team.
What do you enjoy most about your role?
Working for Henschke is fantastic. A small family business who have great values which align to my own. Working in the wine industry, in general, is also great as the industry has a sharing attitude and don’t see each other as only the competition. Companies are able to learn off each other and grow together.
What is the best advice that has had the most impact on you?
One of the things I really believe you should do is “Work to your strengths and do something you enjoy”. I also believe that “You can do anything you put your mind to”. Both of these are things I got from others very early in my working life.
What has been one challenging situation in your role and how did you resolve it?
Working in Safety and Environment across a number of industries means I have dealt with many challenging situations. Rather than pick one I would say the best piece of advice is to build relationships with the people you wish to influence. Don’t just try and tell people what to do to be safe, instead have a conversation with them and listen to what they have to say.
What is something that is unique to your role that others may be unaware of?
A unique attribute of my role is that despite working for a small company, I have been given the latitude to work both in the company and in the industry by my employer. I have the privilege of serving on several wine industry committees and have both helped others and received help from many in the industry in areas of safety, environment and employee relations in the process.
What makes you proud of working in the WHS field?
I enjoy being able to make a difference. Not just in my employer’s context, but in the profession as a whole. I believe we get more satisfaction from helping others than we do from focusing on ourselves alone.
Without Skytrust, what are some of the difficulties you would face in your role?
Skytrust provides a central repository for all the information that staff require access to and enables compliance across all areas of safety, environment and quality management. Without it, my job would be much harder and take a lot longer.
What do you most like about Skytrust?
Probably its simple approach to solving the problems, but mostly the Skytrust teams attitude, that they are willing to make changes to help make it even better over time.
