Patties Foods is working in partnership with Australian Consulting Network (ACN) to strengthen how incident investigations and safety-related decisions are supported across Australia and New Zealand.
The focus of the work is not on introducing another system or replacing specialist judgement. Patties already has experienced safety professionals, established processes, and clear intent. What the partnership addresses is something more subtle but critical: consistency, confidence, and psychological safety in both decision-making and how people are cared for and spoken with during an investigation — particularly in the early stages, when incidents first occur and decisions are being made by people who are not specialists.
As CEO Paul Hitchcock reflects:
“It isn’t just about the safety people. The specialists know what to do. It’s the two-in-the-morning situations — where someone is hurt, or something has happened — and the person dealing with it isn’t an expert.”
In those moments, people are required to act quickly, interpret incomplete information, and make judgement calls that may later be scrutinised. At the same time, individuals who have been injured or otherwise affected by an incident may be experiencing uncertainty, concern, and vulnerability. Without psychological safety, investigations can unintentionally become defensive, narrowing learning and undermining trust.
A core principle of the partnership is creating conditions where people can think clearly, articulate uncertainty, and explain what they experienced — while still maintaining structure, accountability, and rigour. This supports better judgement and learning early and sets the conditions for investigations to move away from fault-finding and towards understanding, care, and learning — not in hindsight, but while learning is still possible.
Investigation as learning, not hindsight
Rather than reviewing decisions after the fact, the focus is on supporting investigators and leaders during investigations — while also shaping how people who have been injured or affected are listened to, cared for, and spoken with — across roles and levels of the organisation — at the point when information is incomplete and early interpretations shape what is learned.
This creates space to surface weak signals, explore how work is actually happening, and understand the conditions that influence decisions before issues harden or patterns repeat. By slowing thinking down at these moments, investigators are better supported to test assumptions, notice inconsistencies, and identify where change may be required — not just in individual actions, but in systems, expectations, and ways of working.
Building capability, confidence, and culture
Working together, Patties and ACN combine ACN’s investigation and decision-support IP with Patties’ own policies, language, regulatory context, and ways of operating to create a bespoke, human-led investigation assistant. The design is deliberate. Technology operates quietly in the background to support structure, consistency, and sense-making. It does not direct outcomes or replace expertise. Decisions and accountability remain firmly with people.
A key insight in the work is how early judgement shapes investigation outcomes, particularly when information is incomplete and interpretations are still forming. As one leader involved observes:
“It helped us ask questions we wouldn’t necessarily have thought to ask, which changed how we understood what was really going on.”
The real value of this approach sits in building consistent capability across the organisation — how people think, decide, and act in line with Patties’ values and way of operating. Psychological safety is central to achieving that consistency. When people feel safe to surface uncertainty, ask questions, and explain their reasoning — and when those involved in incidents feel listened to and supported — investigations become clearer, learning improves, and defensive behaviours reduce.
Confidence internally and externally
This consistency matters not only internally, but externally. Safety leaders and investigators are finding that being able to clearly show how decisions are reached — grounded in Patties’ policies, processes, and regulatory requirements — makes conversations with regulators more confident and defensible.
Rather than reconstructing decisions after the event, the organisation is able to demonstrate how judgement is exercised at the time, what information is considered, and how learning informs subsequent change.
A leadership choice
From a leadership perspective, this partnership reflects a deliberate shift in how investigation and safety decision-making are viewed — not simply as compliance activities, but as capabilities that are actively supported through structure, judgement, learning, and psychological safety.
As Paul Hitchcock summarises: “The human is still in the loop. The system isn’t making the decision — it’s supporting the decision-making process.”
That mindset positions Patties Foods as a leader in how safety, learning, and judgement are approached: human-led, psychologically safe, capability-focused, and grounded in the organisation’s values and way of working.
