Jenine Turner is a woman of many hats—director of an auditing and consulting firm, farmer, and educator. To make things even more complicated, Turner works alongside her husband and son, and serves the heavy vehicle industry, which constantly undergoes legislative changes.
To juggle these commitments and stay on top of industry developments, Turner utilizes some innovative approaches, which others can easily implement in their own businesses.
Following advice from her brother, around 16 years ago Turner made the decision to begin auditing heavy vehicles and started her own business, Just Logistics. The venture proved to be a success and soon there was too much work for Turner to handle on her own, which led her husband, Peter, to join the operation.
“To keep costs down he became an auditor to do some of the entry audits for owner operators,” Turner says. “He started out doing a bit of part-time work with me and then we decided that we were just too busy and he came to work with me full time.”
Three years ago as Just Logistics continued to grow, Turner’s son Mitcham joined the business.
Although Turner acknowledges that working alongside her husband and son can have its challenges, she enjoys the flexibility that comes with working in a family business. To make it work, Turner treats Mitcham as an employee while at work.
Key to integrating Mitcham into the family business was having him go out and work with clients. “Mitcham went out to consult and actually spend time in the companies where the truck drivers are and having real face-to-face conversations with them when he was training,” Turner says. “He has a far better knowledge of auditing as a result.”
As director of Just Logistics, Turner is responsible for the majority of the day-to-day running of the business, which includes bookwork, reviewing audit reports, marketing, and auditing and consulting. The three Turners all do the same work with respect to auditing and consulting.
“Consulting gives you a realistic view when you are auditing,” Turner says. “It’s easy to tell a company what to do, but you first have to understand how hard it is to do.”
Turner is a strong believer in the importance of understanding the industry you are working in, which in her case is transport. And in this industry, keeping up to date with the latest changes to legislation can be a challenge.
“Because the type of auditing that we do, we have to have an understanding of industrial relations law, road laws, new tribunal laws, and health and safety laws,” Turner explains.
Working nationally adds to this challenge. There is some form of legislative change almost every week. “This means that every month there are new laws somewhere,” Turner says.
To stay up to date with these developments, Turner takes an innovative approach that involves extensive reading and research, attending tribunals, hosting information days, and creating presentations and fact sheets—all of which she promotes through Facebook.
“Sometimes I create a PowerPoint presentation and make my husband and son watch it,” Turner notes. “Recently, I sent a two-page flyer on some of the changes to the law to about 200 clients plus my own family and subcontractors.
“Every couple of months I put out a newsletter to remind my clients of different things within the laws.”
Although it sounds like a full-time job in itself to produce these efforts, Turner proves that it is possible to run a business, audit, consult, and stay on top of legislative changes while educating both her staff and customers at the same time. The benefits of ensuring staff fully understand legislative changes while educating the marketplace at the same time far outweigh any possible negatives and can only benefit the industry as a whole as a result.