Activating a safety culture
I’m sure we’d all agree building an effective safety culture is the right thing to do, but deciding on a strategy and making it happen are two different things. Our advice, based on years of experience, is that to ‘get it off the page’ your key is to activate supervisors and first line managers. They’re always the ones who make or break a strategy based on what they do and don’t do every single day.
Value added
So what do we activate? What can you expect your supervisors and managers to do? A SafetyWise® graduate will:
- proactively lead a safety change where it matters – on the frontline.
- use our unique coaching model to carry out effective safety conversations i.e. conversations that are question led, with the purpose of embedding key behaviours and improving performance.
- positively reinforce good behaviours and the early stages of engagement – even when that is challenging.
- solve problems proactively, but in a way that takes in wider issues i.e. looks past the immediate presenting issue and considers the longer term. Someone who is a great firefighter may also be your biggest arsonist if they don’t close out issues.
- carry out team briefings that actually do what they’re supposed to i.e. not 5 minutes of mumbling, staring at the floor with a large dose of “don’t shoot the messenger”.
- put forward a positive safety message even in challenging circumstances.
- contribute positively in group settings, helping to manage objective discussion and group problem solving.
- improve the use and effectiveness of current safety systems.
- be a great source of constructive feedback, delivered in an objective way so you can actually do something about it
Wouldn’t it be great if your supervisors and managers walked the talk like this?
About SafetyWise®
Day 1
Using our unique style of drama based learning we take the group through an impactful workshop which builds their skills, gives them practical tools to work with and importantly challenges their mindset on safety and safety practices.
Key topics and activities:
- Interactive tailored drama to “hold up the mirror”, engage people with the learning and illustrate personal impact and the consequences of decisions and actions
- The need for a behavioural safety culture and individual responsibilities
- Behavioural drivers and how they impact on safety
- CoachSafe: our unique safety coaching model to bring structure and improve the effectiveness of conversations
- Tailored scenarios to build the skills and allow people to practise having effective safety conversations with different presenting issues and different and relevant characters
- ActSafe: feedback, peer coaching and action planning to catalyse each individual
At this stage we know they can do it in the “classroom”, the next day tests it all out in the reality on-site.
Day 2
Skills practised in a workshop are one thing but learning needs to be in the reality of working life. So, Day 2 includes getting out on site where we coach each person conducting actual safety conversations.
Key topics and activities:
- Check in: review of the core skills, the CoachSafe framework and how this will work in practise once out on site.
- TalkSafe: tools, techniques and tips for delivering team briefings.
- Roadmap of the day onsite to make sure each individual will get their personal ActSafe items practised and fine-tuned.
- Safety coaching conversations with people on site, feedback and coaching to cement good practice and build skills further.
- Safety tours to test assumptions, gather data and identify improvement opportunities.
- TalkSafe: practising team briefings again using the key observations and improvement ideas gathered from the day.
- ActSafe: building up more detail on their personal action plan.
At this stage we know they can do it when we’re there but we’ve got them committed to tasks and changes and they have a deadline to work towards because we’ll be back to check in 4-6 weeks’ time.
Day 3
SafetyWise® is about activating change, not just talking about change. It is also not just about the intention to change, in other words a promise that you will change when things aren’t so busy.
So, to make sure habits are changed and new behaviours are embedded, we check out progress, build on positives and re-activate the group on Day 3.
Not only is this day invaluable in providing each individual with a deadline and the support needed to keep changes going, it also acts as a critical element in our quality assurance process as it is always carried out by Harry Gallagher or Shaun Curry who lead up our Behavioural Safety team.
Key topics and activities:
- Check in: progress, good outcomes, opportunities, challenges and barriers
- Group coaching: to work on specific issues and navigate towards workable and committed solutions.
- Group skills to discuss issues constructively, question facts and assumptions, challenge unhelpful behaviours and ultimately collaboratively problem solve
- Final sign off as SafetyWise®
We’re now sure that each person can and has “walked the talk”. They have made changes and embedded new habits which will last.
Our People
The workshop and on-site coaching components are delivered by a team of two expert behavioural safety facilitators who are trained actors with the capability to bring believable characters to life and respond to the group to enhance the learning.
Day 3 is always run by Harry Gallagher or Shaun Curry, who lead up our Behavioural Safety team, so we have an additional level of assurance and scrutiny. When we sign-off your delegates we guarantee a level of capability so we think it’s right to have this additional level of scrutiny.
Our Guarantee
So what is it we’re guaranteeing? Our promise is that everyone we sign-off has the proven ability to engage in effective safety conversations; they have the necessary knowledge, understanding and skillset and have demonstrated they can put this into practice, not just in the training room but out in the live environment both supervised and unsupervised.
[manual_related_posts]
