Case Study One

We were tasked with assisting one of our clients with their ‘Safety Campaign’ during 2015-2018.

Their challenges / pain points were;
1. Poor or no reporting of near misses
2. Staff not reading or adhering to SOP’s (Standard Operating Procedure)
3. Rise in incidents due to complacency
4. Employee dissatisfaction due to workload pressures
5. Lack of adhering to safety regulations due to distrust in management not walking the talk
6. Lack of ‘visible felt leadership’
7. Rise in taking short cuts
8. Poor interdepartmental relationships which led not only to silo thinking but silo working
9. Massive spike in road related incidents due to fatigue
10. Little or no support for the SHE department as employee experience of Safety was that it was used by the company as a way not to pay bonuses under the auspices of poor safety conformance.
11. Poor attendance of Safety Initiatives or Training

After our initial diagnostic our team was able to provide a full report of findings and recommendations. The diagnostic highlighted key pain points which needed to be addressed and from there we were able to set out our outcomes during our client alignment session.
As this was a ‘Safety Campaign’ and not just a once off performance we were able to create a Behavioural Based Programme that truly transformed the organisation’s ‘Safety Culture’.
We implemented our programme in Three phases. Each phase included a combination of the following;
• Industrial Theatre (introduction to the characters & themes, organisational safety challenges, existing safety culture, what to expect on the Safety journey and how the organisation plans to support the individual during this time)
• Forum Theatre (depicting existing unsafe behaviours; inviting the participants to illustrate how said behaviours can be corrected and if it is a system/processes challenge how to support or how to escalate)
• Soap Opera (Film) As client had quite a widespread audience, we created a Soap Opera with identifiable characters (those introduced during the industrial theatre). Each episode dealt with a specific theme and your target audience became involved in the lives of these characters having to deal with the daily workplace challenges. The audience could resonate with the characters and in turn mirror what they felt, experienced and how they turned their worlds around. Each episode was rolled out once a month and key learning were facilitated by the SHE reps.
• Focus Groups (unpacking the key themes and challenges on managerial and leadership level.) This was done through various Role-Plays and ‘White-House’ interventions.
• Due to client’s widespread audience we created Infographics which introduced the key safety role-players within the organisation. The introduction allowed for personal ‘Weekly Safety Tips’ to be delivered to each person electronically via email and Yammer.
• Photo Canvas Storyboards were created by interdepartmental teams to allow for visual reminders on this ‘Safety Journey’. Participants were able to create their own Safety vision and break it down into practical tasks which they then could own and implement.
• Role-Plays were used throughout to enable staff to practically implement the way in which we need to go about being safe always.
• We used a diverse group of actors, facilitators, change specialists for this project. It is important to note that although our team does consist of very well-known ‘celebrities’, their ‘fame’ does not have a cost impact on the program. We work with industry professionals not because of their ‘fame’ but because of their work ethic and their ability to deliver unparalleled results.

Our solution provided our client with and led them to achieve the following over our three-year programme;
1. Overall 95% increase in near miss reporting
2. Overall 68% increase in adhering to SOP’s
3. Staff adopted a safety conscious mindset versus a reactive one
4. New systems were put in place to support staff and provide them with tools to better equip themselves in handling their workload
5. Improved employee-management engagement through small focus group interaction
6. Rise in ‘visible felt leadership’ experience
7. Understanding of true risk and root cause led to decrease in taking short cuts
8. Employees gained a better cross function understanding through various team building interventions. This provided a ‘how can I help’ culture instead of a ‘blaming, finger pointing’ one.
9. Overall 85% raise in committing to the ‘overnight stay’ policy of the organisation which led to a significant decrease of road related incidents
10. Through role-play we enabled the SHE department to engage with the rest of the organisation in a manner that showed care vs the perceived ‘SHE Police’ experience.
11. Overall significant 40% rise in attendance of safety initiatives and training.