b.SAFE@Brathay Safety Culture Event: 'Change the conversation, change the culture'

Due to the current pandemic these events have been suspended for the time being. If you are interested in joining one in the future please contact info@beecld.co.uk.

"To be leaders in safety we need to be experts in people"
Dr Rob Long, Riskex.com

This FREE event is intended to:

• Share the results of research undertaken by leading safety training provider Beehive with Bangor University into safety culture
• Introduce Beehive’s trust-based safety culture model, the D2iT
• Experience new approaches to developing safety behaviours using Brathay’s unique learning environment

Download the latest information here b.SAFE@Brathay Safety Culture Seminar, October 11th 2019.

Using the Bradley Curve Model of safety culture transformation, during the event we show the enormous reductions in accidents and injury rates that have been achieved by the development of safety processes and procedures, regulation and training since the 1950s and 60s, with associated improvements in productivity. We then explore how to achieve the next stages of safety culture – independence and interdependence – which have the lowest levels of associated accident and injury. Importantly, to achieve the next steps in safety culture it is not simply behaviours but how those behaviours change people’s attitudes towards their own accountability, relationships and trust, that will trigger the transformation in safety.

Organisational development consultancies such as Brathay and Beehive are best placed to develop the relational skills and interdependent mindset needed to achieve this step change, and how using the outdoors as a low risk but still safety critical learning environment brings impact and immediacy to behavioural safety training, which the participants will have the chance to test out.

We assert that not all behaviour change is the same. First order change, doing more or less of what is already done (eg wearing a hard hat every time, not just when you think it’s important), is often a matter of raising awareness, reminding people what they’re supposed to have done and why, making it as easy as possible and incentivising it. Second order change is transformational, and requires a change to fundamental values, beliefs and attitudes as well as behaviour. It is strategic, takes time, energy, money, and commitment from the top, and is a process, rather than an event. It also requires a different approach to safety education, one that is focused more on individual and organisational development rather than skills training. We explain why behaviour change initiatives often fail - misdiagnosis of the kind of change required and therefore the kind of interventions needed to achieve it, and too little involvement from the top.

Another stopper to behaviour change discussed during the day is psychological risk. Making significant changes to behaviours, particularly when it comes to challenging, questioning and anything that requires people to ‘stand up and stand out’, involves psychological rather than physical risk; the risk of humiliation, rejection, or bullying, for example. Creating an environment of trust creates a sense of psychological safety, conducive to open reporting and challenge. Beehive will share the results of research into safety culture and in particular building trust they undertook with Bangor University.

All this is particularly timely, with the introduction of the new international safety standard, ISO 45001, which focuses on continuous improvement, ensuring employee engagement and visible leadership in safety programmes, and emphasising the need for safety to be ‘built in’ not ‘bolted on’ to business processes. The systemic approach to organisations, used by OD specialists such as Beehive and Brathay, are positioned as ideal to ensure the integration of safety in every function and at every level. We use our SySTERMS Model and activities to illustrate the connections between different organisational functions, and show why, as Dr Rob Long states:

'Safety is all about people not just process' and why Brathay and Beehive, as experts in people, can help organisations along the road to safety culture transformation.

For more food for thought please go to Sara's blog https://bsafebuzz.com. For more details of the seminar contact mark@beecld.co.uk or call 07798866242

Interdependency and its relationship to safety/performance

‘Interdependency - the quality or condition of being interdependent, or mutually reliant on each other (dictionary.com)’

Everyone knows that high performing teams get better results, but not everyone knows that high performing teams create a safer working environment. This was something that DuPont discovered in 2009.

DuPont had noticed inconsistencies in safety records across its sites internationally and so went about investigating why this might be. The results revealed a direct correlation between the safety, productivity and profitability of a group or team with its culture. DuPont needed a consistent way of describing the different kinds of behaviors and mindset found in the different cultures so that the most effective could be replicated across its sites. In order to do this DuPont took Steven Covey’s stages of adult development from his book ‘The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People’ and applied the mindset and behaviors described there to the safety cultures observed in the work place.

Covey differentiates between:

• people with a Dependent mindset and behaviors, who take little responsibility for themselves and their own actions;
• people with an Independent mindset and behaviors, who take personal responsibility for themselves and their actions, and
• those with an Interdependent mindset and behaviors, who recognise that they need other people and vice versa, that their behaviour and mindset impacts on and is impacted on by others, and therefore that collaboration and cooperation are the most likely way of everyone getting their needs met.

DuPont used these three stages and added another – Reactive - to describe four stages of safety culture, which they then correlated with levels of accidents, injury and defects. The result was a model called ‘The Bradley Curve’. 

The shift from independence to interdependence in a team or organisation is a step change, however, requiring different skills, different attitudes and comfort with complexity and ambiguity. Being part of a truly interdependent team is often described as a deeply emotional experience. It’s not something that can be explained in a training room, it’s something that needs to be felt, experienced. And it doesn’t happen by chance, it needs careful development with opportunities for the team to build relationships, ‘storm’ and come back together. 

Which is where b.SAFE@Brathay comes in. The new partnership combines Beehive's safety culture research with Brathay's experience of building high performing teams to facilitate exactly this shift for their clients. It's a new approach to safety education.