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180
Operatives
140
Office Staff
16%
Increase in profitability
Removing compliance and creating commitment
Cleartrack has been fortunate to work with a series of projects at Kier Highways. This has given us the opportunity to create a real cultural difference aligned to the mission of Kier.
When Kier came to us with the news that they had taken over a contract at Birmingham ISC, we saw it as a brilliant opportunity to support their leadership in turning the performance of a project around.
As well as delivering on the KPIs of the project, leadership wanted to revive the energy of the contract; instilling a culture of performance excellence. They also wanted to ensure the contract earned its place as a key programme of work for the wider business. Alongside this, there were a number of behavioural hangovers from the previous contract owners, including a slow uptake of safety critical behaviours and processes.
In alignment with development across the rest of Kier Highways, Birmingham ISC also wanted to ensure it’s culture shifted away from being one of blame, directive leadership and overly obsessive focus on legal compliance. We called this ‘The Big Shift’.
Co-creating safe systems of work
It was important to everyone at the project that we didn’t delay. The programme kicked off as two face-to-face foundation sessions with 24 area champions. However, given the continual changing landscape of the global pandemic, we ran the rest of the programme as a fully virtual learning journey.
Each cohort experienced 6 modules, specific to the challenges they face at either the blunt or the sharp end. Alongside the introducing the principles of Human and Organisational factors, we offered strategies to identify error likely situations and manage hazards prior to a loss of control. To reinforce the learning, Cleartrack’s Andy Halliday shared his first hand experience of HF in responding as a firearms officer to the Stockwell Tube incident in 2005. This high energy case study, illustrated the physiological, cognitive and social skills that contribute to creating reliability under extreme pressure.
While the office staff and operatives were in separate cohorts, it was vital to get them thinking as one and considering the impact they have on others. We wanted to support Birmingham ISC in creating a just and fair culture, providing every worker the opportunity to share what they needed and to speak up when they saw an issue.
Incident Spotlight
Partway through the programme, Birmingham ISC were faced with an incident that put their learning to the test.
A traffic collision with a street light caused a two-man crew to be called out to make it safe again. They arrived and a bystander captured footage of sparks flying as the saw being used, and the street light falling towards one of the crew.
The incident made the news and the spotlight fell on the crew and the decisions they made. The view of safety would have been to punish and blame the worker. The new view of safety is to build layers of protection, identify what and not who went wrong. In adopting this new approach, the organisation was able to learn, provide training to the workers, co-create clear and unambiguous safe systems of work without punitive treatment of those at the sharp end.
Too often workers are made to pay their account, rather than share there account of how it made sense to do what they did at the time. The response of the leaders creates commitment and demonstrates an intent to learn and improve.
Next Case study
Supporting Junior Doctors at Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Foundation Trust
It’s no secret that 2020 and 2021 have seen incredible amounts of pressure placed on the NHS and those who work there. In the context of the global pandemic, we were extremely pleased to have the chance to support the Junior Doctors at the Tees Esk and Wear Valleys NHS Trust.