safety culture Archives

b.SAFE Reenactment Workshops: transforming safety culture through storytelling

‘Systems that value stories and storytelling are potentially more reliable …. people know more about the system, know more of the potential errors that might occur, and…are more confident that they can handle those errors that do occur’’
‘Organisational Culture as a source of High Reliability’ Karl E Weick*

On January 24^th 2018 a serious incident took place in a cinema in Dusseldorf. Similar incidents took place on power plants across Europe from 2019 to 2024. The bad news is that in all cases the unexpected release of latent energy resulted in what could have been life changing injuries. The good news is each of these incidents were simulated, part of a b.SAFE Reenactment Workshop. These workshops were run by Beehive for Uniper. Called ‘change the conversation, change the culture’, Uniper was using the workshops to enhance their safety culture with the transformative power of storytelling and reenactment.

Intentional error

After each incident was played out scene by scene the groups held a debrief to discuss how the interpersonal relationships and behaviours of the characters contributed to the end result. This was followed by key skills development which Beehive designed to meet the specific needs of the client. Then a clear plan to avoid a similar incident was discussed and agreed. Finally, the participants had the chance to change the ending; to work with the actors to change the conversations and behaviours and prevent the accident from happening again. Because humans engage with stories more than facts all participants, whatever their level of experience or understanding, became engrossed in the action. In all cases the participants left with better skills and more motivated and inspired to make changes back at work. This is why reenactment workshops are so powerful. They reach the parts of the workforce other types of development just don’t reach. As one participant commented:

The activities that made you stop and think differently. They made you reflect and dig deeper into why

Uniper b.SAFE Reenactment Workshop participant

Scenario reenactment

Scenario re-enactment is widely used in safety critical industries where trial and error is simply not an option for learning. Event rehearsal and contingency planning are both situations in which role play is a powerful tool.

But how does storytelling and reenactment enhance your organisational safety culture? And what sets the b.SAFE reenactment workshops apart? It’s their focus. They hone in on interpersonal relationships, lack of trust and immature safety culture. They explore how these latent conditions make accident and injury so much more likely. And having an in-house script writer, co-director of Beehive and b.SAFE Sara Lodge, means the scripts and workshops can be tailored directly to the client’s needs.

Beehive’s research partnership with Bangor University

Mark Sykes, co-director of Beehive and b.SAFE, and Sara have spent the last fifteen years providing high quality behavioural training to safety critical industries. Originally an organisational development consultancy specialising in behaviour change, the shift in focus to safety culture took place after Sara partnered with Bangor University’s Wales Centre for Behaviour Change, part of the Psychology Department, in 2013.

She worked with client Alstom Power Services and neuropsychologist Paul Carter to conduct research into the Bradley Curve, in particular the key interpersonal factors that most contribute to Interdependent safety culture. This is the culture associated with the lowest levels of accident, injury and defect. From this Sara developed a model of trust-based safety culture and what is now Beehive’s flagship safety leadership programme, the b.SAFE D2iP (Dependency to Interdependency) programme. b.SAFE, Beehive’s safety culture brand, was born.

‘b.SAFE Reenactments’

The shift to reenactment workshops for Beehive was a by-product of this work. Sara and Mark designed the first workshop to address a lack of compliance in Alstom’s workforce in relation to Permits to Work. Bringing an on-site incident resulting from a PtW violation into the training room created immediate impact. Participants were given the chance to use their new skills immediately to change the outcome of the scenario. Because of this, the impact of individual behaviours on safety was brought to life in a way that no other form of training had done before. The effects were dramatic. Incidents involving permits dropped by half in the next year. That’s why Beehive developed the b.SAFE Reenactment Workshops – because they work. As another participant comments:

The acting adds a fun and practical twist to the education. This is one of the best courses I have ever attended.
Uniper b.SAFE Reenactment Workshop participant

Trust-based safety culture

The trust-based safety culture model that Sara developed as a result of the research partnership has informed Beehive’s unique approach to psychological safety and safety behaviours ever since. Because of this, since 2014 Beehive has worked with clients across the power sector, delivering reenactment workshops in UK and Europe. This is alongside their flagship 12 month safety leadership programme, the b.SAFE D2iP. The D2iP is designed to help people move along the Bradley Curve. Part of it is delivered at the Brathay Trust in Cumbria, an organisation that Beehive has a long collaborative relationship with. Brathay is a specialist in experiential learning, and its unique learning environment is another way Beehive makes its safety training high impact. To hear the power of the combination of Beehive’s expertise and Brathay’s resources, listen to Geoff Livingstone, a participant on the b.SAFE D2iP Safety leadership programme.

Geoff Livingstone describes the impact of the residential module at Brathay on Beehive’s b.SAFE D2iP Safety Leadership Programme

Creating a workshop – script writing and design

‘Writing a script for a client is a complex task’, said Sara, Beehive director. ‘The scenarios are often based on one or more real incidents. I can’t write them too close to the real action. But I have to write them close enough to it to be recognised and credible to the audience! I need to make the characters and events believable. The task and incident have to be credible and staged to create genuine shock and impact. Like any drama there has to be a convincing dilemma to drive the behaviours. Then I have to include variety, humour and tension across different scenes to keep the audience interested. This is while incorporating the specific client safety management system and correct terminology. Then the workshop content has to be developed and designed around this. It’s a bit like putting a jigsaw together!’

Delivering the workshop

‘This becomes more complicated when we are delivering to different countries and in different languages and cultures.’ Mark continues. ‘On the Uniper project we have delivered native language workshops in Germany, Sweden, Netherlands and Hungary. Not everything translates across languages. But we’re talking about human dilemmas and they are the same across continents. There are logistical challenges in taking the workshops onto site too. However, having been on the road with our teams delivering in Sweden, France, The Netherlands and Germany as well as UK I’ve seen how the different national as well as site cultures respond to the concept. It’s always the same, they always engage. That’s why we use reenactment and storytelling in our safety education.’

Showcase event

On October 23^rd 2024 Beehive will be showcasing their reenactment workshops at a seminar at Brathay Hall in Cumbria. We want participants to experience one of the workshops, as well as explore Brathay’s unique learning environment. Beehive and Brathay have a close collaborative relationship, sharing the same values and methodologies, and their partnership is a long and productive one. To see if you are eligible for an invitation to the seminar and to find out more about the b.SAFE Reenactment Workshops please contact info@beecld.co.uk.

To find out more about people development at Brathay Trust please go to https://www.brathay.org.uk/people-development/

*Weick, Karl E., ‘Organisational Culture as a source of High Reliability’,California Management Review, Volume XXIX, Number 2, Winter 1987 – p113

Emotional resilience – making health and safety personal

‘All My Sons’, a play by Arthur Miller, is about greed and human weakness under pressure. A cracked cylinder head and a difficult decision leads to many deaths, including that of a son. It makes me think of a comment made by a participant on one of our reenactment workshops. He’d been involved in an incident which though serious could have been much more so. Now, before putting anyone to work, he asks himself, ‘would I put my son to work in this situation?’ Safety had become deeply personal to him.

Everyone is someone’s son or daughter

That universal idea – would I do this to my son/daughter? – is the central theme of the play . All My Sons is as good an analysis of the causes and devastating consequences of a protection v. production decision as any event report or case study. It explores the need for personal qualities, like courage and resilience, under pressure. Our participant’s comment wasn’t intended to exclude women, he just didn’t have a daughter. But what had happened brought very clearly into focus that he’d been complacent and not very courageous in confronting a colleague, and it was only luck that stopped serious harm happening to another. He realised that similar complacency from someone else in another environment might put his son in danger. Through that incident he became aware of safety in a different way, the difference between ‘knowing’ and knowing.

‘Knowing’ and knowing

The ability to catastrophise is an important skill for a safety practitioner. Part of the role is anticipating what can go wrong, and mitigating risk. But there are two different types of knowing that things can go wrong:

One is the intellectual knowledge, based on training, rationality, laws of probability, physical properties, situational conditions, and endless induction presentations, that mistakes happen and so may happen to you.
The other is ‘lived experience’, the very personal, visceral knowledge you gain through being personally involved in an incident, directly or indirectly. This cuts through the psychological defence of ‘it would never happen to me’. The knowledge that the world can turn from comfortable predictability to chaos without warning is something that can’t be learned through a toolbox talk. And it has a profound effect.

Safety – it’s personal

Those who do not have the lived experience can’t have the second type of knowledge. That’s not a failing, it’s a fact. And there can be a problem if things become too personal. If there is any kind of post-traumatic impact after an event such as hypervigilance – seeing danger in everything – it can be paralysing. So, as a psychiatrist colleague said once, relaxed vigilance is best – being alert to the risks and mitigating them while still functioning as effectively as possible.

Getting the balance can be a challenge. Having been involved in a significant incident in the workplace where the unimaginable happened, I’ve seen and experienced personally the impact that such an incident can have. Also, as a police officer, I dealt with others’ life changing events on a shift by shift basis; events which had both accidental and intentional causes. Later, as a trainee psychotherapist, I worked with people coming to terms with the effects of similar kinds of incidents and events on their lives. There’s no solution – these events are part of living.

Safeguarding – an essential part of QHSE

A significant indicator of a mature safety culture is when safeguarding goes beyond compliance and purely physical safety to psychological safety and well-being. To do that we need to make safety personal. So ask yourself the questions, ‘Would I be happy for my son or daughter to work in the environment that I do? If not, what can I do to change it?

Case study – Mark Sykes, Beehive Director says:

“While suicide obviously effects all genders, I know personally how hard it is to be a man and talk about feelings when something bad has happened. Not having anyone to talk to about how you feel reduces your emotional resilience. I have two sons in their thirties who, while being apparently happy and stable, are at a very vulnerable age when it comes to emotional well-being and risk of suicide. The statistics are frightening. It really brings it close to home.

https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/healthandsocialcare/causesofdeath/articles/leadingcausesofdeathuk/2001to2018#uk-leading-causes-of-death-by-age-group

A participant on our D2iP b.SAFE Safety Leadership programme shared that through the coaching skills that he’d learned on the programme he had almost certainly prevented someone from taking their own life. We can never be sure of course, but I know that had I had the skills, knowledge and awareness I have now in my 20s and 30s I would have made very different decisions.

Beehive’s mission is to reduce error and accidents at work by taking a different approach to safety education and safety culture. We see developing the skills of emotional resilience as being directly related to keeping people safe at work. ”

Related b.SAFE workshops

The link between well-being and error is clear and yet not well-researched. For more information on B.SAFE’s ‘Well-being and error’ half-day on-line workshop please contact info@beecld.co.uk

For more information about the b.SAFE D2iP Safety Leadership Programme contact Mark Sykes on mark@beecld.co.uk or go to https://beecld.co.uk/b-SAFE-D2iP-Safety-Leadership-Programme

How coaching can support a healthy nuclear safety culture

b.SAFE Bitesize – a series of short training, webinars, blogs, podcasts and videos on all things health and safety

b.SAFE Bitesize – ‘How Safety Can Support a Healthy Nuclear Safety Culture’

In this podcast, the first of a series of four, Sara Lodge describes how coaching supports the development of a healthy nuclear safety culture.

Coaching

As both an activity and a management style, coaching has, over the last 20 years, become a mainstay of organisational development. This is because it:

increases accountability,
improves morale,
increases productivity
and increases well being, among other advantages, in both coaches and those they coach.

The benefits of coaching to the world of health and safety are also being more widely recognised. Because of this, IOSH, among other bodies, is promoting ‘Coaching for Safety’ programmes to support safety practitioners in their roles.

Nuclear sector

The nuclear sector has fallen behind in this. While much has been made of the need for a safety culture specific to the needs of the nuclear sector, there seems to be little recognition that development of these traits require a different set of skills to technical. This is something that we’ve noticed in our work in highly regulated sectors. While cultural or behavioural change initiatives may be outlined in detail, the skills required to achieve them aren’t. Therefore, while money may be spent on change programmes, because little money or effort is put into developing the skills essential to their success, the programmes fail, or are not as successful as they could be.

Coaching skills

I argue that coaching skills, which incorporate:

goal- and outcome setting
active listening
questioning skills including open, interrogative, exploratory, probing, confirmatory and challenging questioning
summarising and consensus building
collaborative problem solving and action learning
empathy and relationship building
constructive challenge
feedback and appraisal
reflective practice

Nuclear safety culture

Are all vital to building the kind of nuclear safety culture traits which evidence shows are needed to avoid major events, and I’d argue to investigate them.

Listen to hear the first part of my explanation why.

It’s time for a ‘soft’ SQEP*

* ‘Suitably Qualified and Experienced Person’

A couple of years ago I gave a presentation to the North Wales IOSH branch on behavioural safety and safety culture. There were 70 people – their biggest turnout in four years.

As part of the presentation I showed the following slide and said, ‘OK, these were the answers, so what was the question?’

The response was immediate – ‘the attributes of a good manager’, which is true. The actual question was ‘What makes a good supervisor/site manager?’ and I asked it of fitters, supervisors and site managers as part of research I undertook with Bangor University and Alstom Power Services (see my blog ‘We need a new approach to safety education’). Further discussion showed that there was wide recognition that these attributes in supervisors and managers helped to reduce error and error pre-cursors and supported other behavioural safety elements such as open reporting, questioning attitude, stop the line and human performance. So far, so good.

However, when I asked, ‘So how many of you and your organisations actually recruit or train for these attributes in your engineers, supervisors, QHSE managers or site managers?’, the answer was – none. That’s quite an incongruence – while it is widely recognised that these attributes play a significant role in creating a safe working environment, this recognition was not reflected in recruitment or training practices.

Communicating culture

In 2011 The Work Foundation published a report entitled ‘Good Work and Our Times’ in which it emphasised the role of first-line management in communicating culture in an organisation. Supervisors and managers are the people who create the day to day experience of the employees working for your organisation, who set the behavioural examples, who create the climate in which safety is carried out, who have the awesome responsibility of setting people to work in dangerous environments. They are the people who put into practice the organisation’s culture on the front line.

Yet how many of them understand that this is a crucial part of their role? And how many of them are suitably qualified and experienced to do this, equipped with the knowledge of human behaviour and motivation, team behaviours, communication skills and with the emotional resilience, to fulfil this role?

b.SAFE D2iP ‘Dependency to Interdependency’ Safety Leadership Programme

Beehive’s flagship leadership programme – the b.SAFE D2iP Safety Leadership Programme

Beehive designed a behavioural safety programme – the b.SAFE D2iP ‘Dependency to Interdependency’ Safety Leadership Programme – based on the research results for Alstom Power Services which resulted in significant changes to behaviours in first line supervision and management. Those changes had a significant effect on results, but the effects were further reaching. Once the behaviours became embedded it became apparent that the agency fitters used did not have the behaviours that Alstom now required. The drive and initiative of QHSE manager Mick Edwards, who was at the forefront of the behaviour change project, led to us working with the agencies rpoviding the fitters-introducing the behavioural model, explaining the need for a different approach to recruitment, and giving guidance on how to interview for behaviours. In short, introducing a whole new perspective on what being SQEP – suitably qualified and experienced for a role – meant.

The D2iP is now our flagship programme and we’ve delivered it in the power and rail sectors to excellent results.

Better recruitment cheaper than training

It is far cheaper to recruit people with the right attitudes and behaviours than it is to change the behaviours and attitudes of people already in role. This extends to recruiting people who are open to learning and change. But first these attributes and behaviours have to be taken seriously by the organisation in relation to risk and safety. They have to become part of the organisation’s criteria for recruitment, and those recruiting have to understand why and how to interview for behaviours and attitudes, as well as technical or operational qualifications and experience. Which leads to the question – is it time for ‘soft’ SQEP?

How coaching supports ‘Individual commitment to safety’

Coaching can support ‘Individual commitment to nuclear safety’ by increasing accountability, promoting a questioning attitude and improving communication flow.

My last article about how coaching can support a healthy nuclear safety culture outlined the three categories of WANO traits:

Individual commitment to safety
Management commitment to safety
Management systems

I’m going to take the first of these, and show how the mindset, skills and tools of coaching can contribute significantly to ‘Individual commitment to safety‘.

1. Individual commitment to safety

Trait: ‘Personal accountability’

This trait focuses on the need for people to take personal responsibility for their actions. It also relates to understanding the importance of sticking to nuclear standards, and taking ownership of behaviour and work practices. Working across groups, departments and teams to make sure nuclear safety is maintained forms a part of this trait too.

How coaching can help

To be personally accountable for your actions – to recognise your own responsibility and agency in maintaining nuclear standards, for example – needs an ‘Adult’ mindset. That’s one that’s grounded, situationally aware, problem solving and accountable. Coaching, because it invites people to reflect, think through a course of action, consider different options and make a decision, invites an Adult mindset. (see Ego States model below)

A ‘Parent’ management style with too much ‘tell’ encourages an ‘Adapted Child’ mindset. This can result in people becoming resentful or resistant; a ‘jobsworth’, blaming others or being passive and over compliant – acting without thought or accountability. None of these are helpful in developing personal accountability.

"How coaching supports 'Individual commitment to safety'" bsafebuzz.com. The 'Ego states model, a model of personality in which different elements of the personality - Parent, Adult and Child are used as a way of describing and analysing communication. — “How coaching can support ‘Individual commitment to safety'”. The Ego states model is a model of personality in which different elements of the personality – Parent, Adult and Child – are used to describe and analyse communication. *Ego states are ‘consistent patterns of thoughts, feelings and behaviour’.* Parent ego state is split into the two functions Controlling and Nurturing, and Child into the two functions Adapted and Free. *Coaching needs an Adult mindset, and invites an Adult ego state response.*

Trait: Questioning attitude

The focus of this trait is the importance of avoiding complacency, challenging assumptions and the unknown, and recognising the uniqueness of the nuclear context.

How coaching can help

A questioning attitude is the essence of coaching – it’s what coaching is all about. Knowing what questions to ask, however, and how to control and structure a conversation is a real skill which takes time and practice to develop. Coaching training develops and refines questioning skills, along with other interpersonal such as listening, non-verbal communication, feedback and goal setting. These skills are valuable for everything from improving the effectiveness of human performance tools to event investigation.

Trait: safety communication

The focus of this trait is on making sure there's broad, open, candid and free flowing communication, up and down the organisation.

How coaching can help

Karl Weick in ‘Organisational Culture as a source of High Reliability’ (California Management Review, Volume XXIX, Number 2, Winter 1987 ) asserts that “accidents occur because the humans who operate and manage complex systems are themselves not sufficiently complex to sense and anticipate the problems generated by those systems”. High reliability organisations need ‘rich, dense talk’ so that humans have the data to understand complex systems. The richest information is gained through face to face interactions.

Use of open questions, the basis of coaching, can increase the richness of face to face communication as it encourages people to talk and share knowledge, thoughts, feelings and concerns. Using coaching interactions encourages the free flow of information, as individuals are asked to think through and share their decision making processes and rationale for action.

Coaching and safety

I hope in this article I’ve done enough to start to convince you that the process of coaching in the nuclear workplace, along with the mindset and skills developed as you learn to coach, and the mindset encouraged in the person being coached, all help to develop and support ‘Individual commitment to Safety’.

Tomorrow I’ll explore coaching’s contribution to the second category ‘Management commitment to safety.