Armer Farms

Putting health and safety first

Farming fatalities have surged across Australasia, with FarmSafe reporting 72 deaths and 133 serious injuries in Australia in 2024 alone. In New Zealand, WorkSafe recorded 14 farm-related deaths - accounting for 40% of the nation’s total workplace fatalities. Governments have been quick to respond, ramping up sentences for farms that fail to take safety seriously.

 

Vehicles, manual labour, heavy machinery and unpredictable weather are just a few of the major risks involved in farming.

 

So, how do you make one of the most dangerous jobs in the world… safe?

 

Shifting the safety mindset in dairy farming

Armer Group is a family-owned agribusiness that has always tried to ‘do things better’ - from excellence in productivity, animal welfare, people and environmental practices, to adopting modern agritech. But, despite its best efforts, incident rates were rising and many viewed safety reporting as an administrative pain due to tedious paper-based reporting systems.

 

After four years of using Onside, serious accident rates at Armer Farms have dropped significantly, while incident and risk reporting rates have soared from just a handful to over 150 annually. With the ability to quickly log risks, incidents, or near-misses straight from their mobile devices, staff and contractors can alert each other - and leadership - in real-time.

 

This has directly contributed to a flourishing, proactive culture of care -  where everyone plays a part in keeping each other safe

“We’re 17 dairy farms and 2 support blocks. With Onside, we can operate as 1. We can identify critical risks, feed that information to the board, trigger immediate investment and take action.”
Rebecca Schwass, Health & Safety Manager

How can we improve our visibility?

Waihora Station is one of Armer Group’s dairy support blocks. With more than 1,000 hectares, 4,000 cattle and 37 road-access gates, Station Manager, David Briscoe, previously relied on visitors driving back and forth to the station office (18 kilometres away) to sign in and out.

 

Unsurprisingly, many contractors skipped the process altogether.

 

With Onside’s auto-arrival feature, sign-ins now happen automatically as staff and contractors cross the property boundary - or instantly via scanning QR codes at the nearest gate with their mobile devices. This has saved up to 60 minutes per visit. David can now see, in real time, exactly who is entering or leaving through each gate. The simplicity of the system has also driven widespread adoption, giving him a clear, comprehensive view of all activity across the station.

How can we elevate our safety culture?

Previously, with only a handful of incidents reported each year, accidents were on the rise - largely due to limited visibility and a lack of data to identify and address underlying issues.

 

Today, workers can simply snap a photo of a hazard, tag its GPS location, add a brief description, and submit it through Onside. The report is instantly visible to all staff, contractors, and even visitors. This streamlined yet detailed approach is transforming how teams engage with risk reporting - making it more accessible, proactive, and effective.

 

“There were a lot of assumptions around risks”, explains Rebecca Schwass, Armer's Health & Safety Manager.

 

"People wouldn’t report overhead powerline issues because they assumed the chances of an accident were so small - but in the last three years we’ve logged five major incidents involving overhead powerlines. Onside’s data helps us recognise these trends and act on them - raising awareness about real risks.”

How can we thrive as a business?

Improving safety outcomes is just one of the benefits the Armer Group has seen since implementing Onside. Greater visibility of people movement means David and his team can plan more effectively and avoid interruptions (such as unexpected visitor vehicles blocking roads while David’s team are moving livestock).

 

By incorporating Armer Group’s own set of forms into Onside, previously paper-based tasks, such as weekly vehicle safety checks, can now be submitted and stored within the Onside app, on any mobile device.

“We run a tight ship. If something that should take 30 minutes takes three hours because of a surprise visitor, that throws everything off. Onside helps us avoid that.”
David Briscoe, Station Manager

How can we turn safety into a strength?

Despite operating in one of the toughest and riskiest industries around, Armer Group's adoption of smart, user-friendly technology has dramatically transformed their safety culture. Their willingness to innovate and ditch paper-based methods have made it easier for everybody to actively report and encouraged wider participation.

 

For General Manager, Scott Armer, Onside’s greatest strength lies in its simplicity - and its power to reveal the patterns that matter.

“We started with Onside to fix the basics: people weren’t signing in. 4 years of data later, we've achieved far more than that and have a better understanding of where the issues really are.
Scott Armer, General Manager

One example: while quad bikes are often flagged as dangerous, it was actually two-wheelers causing most of the injuries across their farms. “They’re not fatal, but broken ankles and collarbones add up,” Scott says. With more than 17 farms spread across geographically distant properties, Armer Group now uses Onside not only to spot these trends but to empower farm teams to suggest practical solutions - and to back those ideas with data.

 

“People are getting it” Scott laughs. “If they want something fixed, they put it through the health and safety lens - it tends to get quick traction.”

 

And that’s a good thing. With farming under increasing scrutiny, Armer Group is proving that embracing health and safety technology isn’t about compliance, but thriving in the long run.

 

How can be more proactive with safety?

With Onside.

 

Find out more about Onside’s key health and safety features:

• Immediate, real-time incident management

• Digitised safety inductions and training records

• Always-accessible emergency plan and SOP depository

• Report, investigate and mitigate with one app, end-to-end