Our previous article looked at some of the challenges facing client organizations, and how, given the complex nature of wind farm construction sites, it was critical that companies overseeing projects with multiple contractors take a ‘hands on approach’ to safety. We discussed the importance of demonstrating strong leadership, encouraging communication and providing adequate resources to support the process of change.

Here we present a live case study illustrating how Global Construction is creating a lasting effective safety culture, where people connect personally with the importance of health & safety, take responsibility for their actions, and strive for a management/worker relationship based on openness and transparency. We will look at the challenges facing Global Construction, who is affected, and some of the steps that have been taken to create positive change.

Setting standards, not following them

Like any major organization, Global Construction has clear legal obligations to safeguard the health and well-being of its employees and the public. As the HSE and the Institute of Directors both recognize, effective safety leadership requires workforce involvement. Organizations need to get better at actively seeking workforce opinion and involvement with management as a driving force to developing an effective safety culture.

However, nothing can change without the willingness and commitment of leaders to sit down with frontline operatives, listen to what they have to say and be influenced by it.

The leadership team at Global Construction take their health & safety responsibilities very seriously, and recognize the challenges they face. David Macdonald, Civil Engineering Director comments:

‘We want our business to set standards, not to follow them. Transparency is the only way to break down barriers and encourage people to speak about health & safety. We need to show our workforce that when they speak up they’ll be taken seriously. Creating this kind of culture is necessary for continuous improvement and is in itself something we always have to work at.’

With our help, Global Construction set out some ambitious, but very clear objectives:

• Create a level playing field for everyone to express views and share experience about health & safety
• Remove barriers to communication between people from different parts and levels of the organisation
• Connect people personally with the importance of health & safety
• Motivate staff towards taking personal responsibility for safety
• Identify priorities for safety improvement

Risking a new approach

Current methods of health & safety training, based on following rules, and listening to instructions, are not always effective ways to create wholesale cultural change. What is often needed is a more human, inclusive approach in an environment that brings people from all spectrums of the organization together. The focus in this space should be about what the participants think and feel, and what is important to them.

We designed a forum event, based on these principles. At the heart of the event was a story – Cable Strike – based on a real incident that resulted in the death of a worker at Global Construction. This story was the stimulus and it was designed to be hard hitting, emotional, challenging and uncomfortable.

Cable Strike

Cable Strike was performed as a live piece of theatre in the middle of the room surrounded by workers, managers and supervisors. Following each scene a series of core questions were posed:

• From your experience what stops management and operatives from intervening in unsafe situations?
• Where does your personal responsibility for safety start and stop?
• What are the barriers to open and honest communication?
• How do we improve our learning from incidents in order to improve our own and others safety?

These questions encouraged people to engage with the theatre - they were encouraged to record their thoughts, feelings on tablecloths using words and drawings. These table cloths were later transcribed to filter out people’s views and concerns.

“It’s about family”

Cable Strike confronted the workforce with the gritty reality of what happens when human and physical factors combine to create a serious incident. The story came from their own organization and involved people just like them. This process was designed to engage the room emotionally with the consequences of unsafe acts and help them make personal connections with the value of health & safety.

People’s reactions showed the impact of the story:

• “It really hit home what can happen when you carry out your duties in the wrong way”.
• “We carry out this type of work on a daily basis. It showed how easily a serious incident can happen.”
• “It’s made me think more about my actions”.
• “A bad decision was accepted and not questioned”.
• “It sent a shiver up my spine while watching”
• “I feel grief and anger that it happened”
• “It was painful to watch”
• “It was very emotional. I couldn’t help thinking about my own family”

At the end of the session everyone was given a child’s hair band to symbolize the daughter’s loss of her father, creating a powerful link between the story and their own lives. One man summed up the session up by saying ‘Its about family’ a sentiment shared by many others in the room. The statement ‘its about family’ is now being used at Global Construction to describe the value of health & Safety to the organization.

As David explains: ‘What I learnt most was that the way to make health & safety meaningful to people is to show it’s about their home life, their family. We all work to live not the other way round.’

Building trust and working together

The Safety Forum delivered four priorities for safety improvement:

1. Improve communication and worker involvement.
2. Simplify near miss reporting by evolving this into safety observations.
3. Use technology to improve feedback and communication with the workforce e.g. email, text messaging.
4. Provide better explanations for specific rules and regulations.

These priorities come from a process that has genuinely involved all workers. The Forum created an open environment where everyone was mixed up at the tables. Managers, supervisors, operatives, directors, office staff sat together to discuss these questions. This process cut across hierarchical barriers, and enabled people to trust and learn from one another.

David continues: “many of our guys have worked with us for a long time but still this event helped to banish some assumptions people had about one another and developed understanding. I think the most important message the day gave was that in this organization we respect everyone’s views as valuable. In my mind that is key to being transparent. I want our sites to be places where people can challenge one another no matter who they are.”

“We also discovered that although we tell people what they should and shouldn’t do, we don’t explain why that’s the case. People told us that if they understood why a rule was in place, then they would be more likely to comply with it. So that is one of the priorities that we’re going to take forward – better explanation. As far as worker involvement is concerned, a point was made that site operatives should be involved in writing site RAMS [Risk Assessment & Methods Statements]. This is also something we will take forward.”

As the directors at Global Construction demonstrate, effective safety leadership involves a process of building trust, where communication and understanding are improved across individuals and groups of people, irrespective of position.

It was equally important to create a culture in which people can listen to one another, respond positively to feedback and learn from their mistakes. The ability to speak up irrespective of who is being spoken to, or doing the speaking, was also important, and this required the development of a more open, transparent communication structure.

Since the Forum sessions, Global Construction has taken several steps to put these principles in practice, ensuring a process of continuous, lasting improvement and a new safety culture that permeates across the entire organisation.

David Macdonald comments: “As a leadership team, clear communication and transparency across the organisation continues to be a priority. We’ve taken action on the specific issues raised at the Forum in June and we send out a monthly bulletin keeping people informed about what’s happening.

We also have a monthly safety forum where Neil [Health & Safety Manager] and I will visit each of our sites so that workers have the opportunity to give us feedback, ask questions or raise concerns. So we’ve increased our visibility considerably.

We’ve just laid 400m of water mains through the centre of Inverness where the information we had about existing pipe-work was unreliable. The fact that we’ve managed to navigate that territory without incident shows the level of our competence and care – particularly the way we’re communicating with contractors. But of course we can never be complacent.

The industry is always evolving and we must continue to work hard to reinforce the right culture. We want this Forum to be a regular event where we bring the workforce together and challenge everyone to share ideas to improve safety practice. These events need to be interactive, engaging and innovative, offering something different each time to make people sit up and take notice.”

Editor's note: This article was kindly provided by Esther Walker, Co-founder and Director of Forum Interactive. Dr Walker is a social scientist, facilitator and gestalt therapist. She specializes in the influence of work culture on the way individuals think and behave and the interventions which support safe and healthy work practices.

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