Our Brief:
To help design and facilitate an innovative and experiential safety leadership programme to help continue a materials manufacturing company’s determination to eradicate workplace accidents after recent fatalities.
The Challenge:
Having received plenty of classic safety leadership training, we were challenged to come up with some innovative experiential learning tools to support a full 3-day programme for senior leaders in a materials manufacturing environment. The company was suffering from low engagement scores amongst the workforce and this was also very likely contributing to lack of vigilance at work or willingness to embrace safer practices.
The Solution:
We spend time interviewing workers in the company’s factories to uncover challenges and issues with the way safety was being managed. We created a range of actor-based immersive encounters for leaders to have a full experience of the inner voices of their people. We challenged people to engage in real safety conversations with the actors to practice their skills, and also challenged them to re-write the inner monologues of the people they had heard to an aspiration that would guide their planning for their future initiatives and communications.
We also researched and devised an emotional experience of safety involving the staff and trainee dogs at the Guide Dogs Training Centre. In particular, the focus was on exploring how interdependence was achieved through partnering, encouraging, and training, as opposed to top down command and control, and how this principle could be applied to help motivate and engage workers to take safety more seriously.
Results:
The programme has gone on to roll out across the entire company. Impacts were being assessed when the COVID crisis hit.