HSEC Industries · Mentoring
Senior HSEC mentoring for sites that want to do better.
HSEC Mentor is an ongoing partnership for HSEC teams in Australian mining and high-risk industry. We sit alongside your people and lift their capability, judgement and confidence over time. It's grounded in a biopsychosocial approach to injury and worker wellbeing, and a contemporary read on psychosocial hazard under WHS law. Delivered by a practitioner who has worked on site, not from a consultancy office.
Most HSEC consultancies sell deliverables. We sell capability. When the engagement ends your team is stronger and your systems hold up under pressure, because the people running them have been mentored, not just supplied.
The biopsychosocial approach
Whole-person recovery, not just claims processing.
Injury management has moved beyond physical rehabilitation. The biopsychosocial approach treats recovery as a whole-person process, the body, the mind, and the social and work context that sit around them. We embed that thinking into return-to-work planning, early intervention, and the way your team supports injured and distressed workers. It's also the honest foundation for meeting psychosocial hazard duties properly, rather than papering over them. People go home in better shape. That's the measure.
Why this matters now
The HSEC function is changing faster than the support around it.
Psychosocial hazards are now explicit regulatory duties. Injury management has moved to whole-person recovery. Most HSEC departments are capable people stretched thin, carrying converging compliance frameworks without external support. They don't need another consultant report. They need someone experienced in their corner, lifting them rather than replacing them.
What it covers
A defined scope of practice, shaped to your site.
Injury management and return-to-work
Biopsychosocial RTW planning, early intervention, psychosocial risk screening, and capability uplift for injury management coordinators and RTW leads.
Psychosocial hazards and mental health
Psychosocial hazard frameworks under current WHS law, control design and consultation, and building psychological safety into leader behaviour, not just policy.
HSEC department capability
Coaching for HSEC Managers and emerging leaders, role and team clarity, strategic planning, and support through regulatory interactions and PIN resolution.
Emergency response and readiness
ERT capability review, training and competency design, scenario design and adjudication, and incident response leadership before, during and after.
Systems, governance and assurance
Critical review of management systems against operational reality, audit preparation, document review, and board reporting that surfaces what actually matters.
The engagement is shaped to what your site is actually carrying, not a fixed deliverable list.
Engagement tiers
Three tiers, scaled to your team and the intensity of the work.
Foundation
- Email support between sessions
- Annual HSEC capability review
- Single nominated contact, typically the HSEC Manager
- Site visits by arrangement
Partner
- Priority email and phone support
- Biannual capability review and roadmap
- HSEC Manager plus one direct report
- One scheduled site visit a year
Embedded
- Direct line access and on-call advisory
- Quarterly review, roadmap and board-ready reporting
- Full HSEC department, including injury management and frontline leads
- Two to four scheduled site visits a year
Pricing is provided on request, set with reference to site scale, risk profile and team size. All tiers are annual subscriptions with quarterly check-ins to confirm fit and direction. Engagements are arm's length, GST inclusive, and contracted through HSEC Industries.
How an engagement works
It starts with context, and it earns its place every quarter.
Scoping conversation
A no-cost first conversation with your decision-maker. We talk about what the site is carrying and whether this is the right fit. If it isn't, we'll say so.
Site immersion
Before mentoring begins we spend time understanding the site, usually a visit, a review of key HSEC documentation, and conversations with the people involved.
Mentoring cadence
Structured but not rigid. A current incident, a piece of regulatory uncertainty, a difficult team dynamic, a draft procedure. The agenda comes from your team.
Between sessions
Support for the things that can't wait. The regulator phone call, the incident at 2am, the draft response that needs another set of eyes. Access depends on the tier.
Review and recommit
Reviewed quarterly. If the work isn't landing, we change it or end it. The aim is genuine capability uplift, not contract continuation.
Who it's for
An honest read on fit.
A fit for
- In-house HSEC functions that want to lift capability without replacing it
- HSEC Managers carrying load and needing a senior thinking partner
- Sites navigating regulatory change, post-incident recovery or transformation
- Leaders who want HSEC to be a genuine contributor, not a compliance overhead
- Injury teams moving beyond claims processing into whole-person recovery
Not a fit for
- Sites wanting a contractor to write procedures or run their management system
- Organisations after a single-event training package
- Sites unwilling to engage honestly with what the mentoring reveals
About the practitioner
Jen Gainford, founder of HSEC Industries.
Jen's background pairs operational depth with system-level thinking. Her qualifications span mines emergency response and rescue, a Diploma of Paramedicine, a Certificate IV in Training and Assessment, and Work Health and Safety, and she is advancing her credentials with a Diploma of Work Health and Safety focused on psychosocial WHS and biopsychosocial injury management.
She has worked on site from Medic and Emergency Services Officer through to Coordinator and Superintendent roles, leading teams of 6 to 15 people. A good deal of that work has centred on medical audits and rescue capability statements, taking sites that had drifted out of compliance and getting them back to standard.
Jen and her team have adjudicated and mentored at surface and underground emergency response competitions for more than six years, and produced training and assurance work for some of Australia's largest mining operators. She founded Acenda, the community and learning platform for emergency response professionals. She speaks plainly, holds the standard, and brings the human realities of site work into every engagement.
A rising tide lifts all ships. HSEC Mentor exists because the industry gets safer when HSEC departments get stronger. Every site we mentor is a site where workers go home in better shape than they otherwise would.
The whole brief, in two words.
Next step
Find out if HSEC Mentor fits your site.
The next step is a scoping conversation. No obligation, no cost. We'll talk about what your team is carrying and whether HSEC Industries is the right partner to walk alongside you.