There’s one animal that should never have survived at all but, in fact, thrives in one of the world’s most inhospitable environments because of a fantastic safety culture and an amazing ability to co-operate…The Meerkat.

These furry little creatures use all the same traits as successful teams in the human world to survive deadly snakes, birds of prey and rock monitors in the deserts of Namibia. Meerkats share responsibility for safety and have adopted a system of interdependence, ensuring all members of the team (or mob) are always looking out for each other, both at work and at play. Their success and well-being relies on a few key elements:

• Communication

• Co-operation

• Instinct

• Interdependence

While meerkats make superb team players, there’s another, much bigger group of animals that have been using natural leadership skills to survive for thousands of years in almost every extreme environment.  Elephant groups are led by truly exceptional example from their leaders, matriarchs, who are regarded as the world best natural leaders.

The matriarch makes many of the decisions for the group’s wellbeing, however, any member of the group can share an opinion which the matriarch may follow. Her leadership is based on experience and wisdom but also on the ability to listen to other group members – The matriarch oversees a just culture.

An important trait of elephant leadership is bravery. A herd will always defend a fallen member. During drought it takes a brave leader to lead the herd out of the secure wildlife reserve in search of water. Matriarchs are described as respectful, knowledgeable leaders with compassion, integrity and clear boundaries. Elephants are one of a handful of animals that exhibit a degree of self-awareness. They are also unique in their reaction to the death of their own herd members and will often revisit the remains of their loved ones. Similarly matriarchs from different herds will pay respects to the matriarch of another herd.

Essentially, elephant leaders display all the best leadership qualities -

• Pragmatic Empathy

• Sharing A Vision

• Respect

• Consistency

• Leadership By Example

• Communication

• Evolution

In the workplace, the Giants of Leadership approach acts as a powerful training tool to support any organisation commited to achieving a world class safety culture.  The message exposes how an organisation’s cultural agenda isn’t always set by its supervisors and managers but often by what we might refer to as cultural leaders.  A cultural leader might be a popular employee on the shopfloor or a mid-level manager who’s built up a good rapport with colleagues across the board.  Giants of Leadership encourages these people to take responsibility for the wellbeing of their colleagues, teams and ultimately their organisation.  By setting the right tone with leaders, an improved culture follows and this allows for safe behaviours and best practices to follow suit.

Meerkats and Elephants are fantastic advocates of safety and are an inspiring and memorable way to communicate with trainees within every part of an organisation. Lattitude have developed two, full programmes which take the concepts outlined here to the next level, for out-of-the-box use in the training room or development and integration into a larger initiative.

All For One – The Meerkat Way deals with the challenges of teamwork and communication in building an interdependent culture in the worlkplace. Giants of Leadership – The Nature of Safety uses Elephants to communicate the need for strong, pragmatic leadership in safety and why it is the secret ingredient of every great safety culture. Both programs include breathtaking and unforgettable imagery, featuring the latest BBC Wildlife and BBC Nature footage of animals in their natural environments, capturing the imagination of every audience.

For more information and details of availability, please call us on 01435 831500 or e-mail info@lattitudeproductions.co.uk

View more info:

All For One – The Meerkat Way

Giants of Leadership – The Nature of Safety

What Is Behavioural Safety?

Behavioural Safety is an important part of safety that unsurprisingly focuses on people’s behaviour.

Why Do We Need It?

Traditional safety firstly focuses on hardware, equipment, housekeeping, tools, machinery guarding and the like. This is critical of course, and helps us achieve SAFE CONDITIONS and a SAFE PLACE OF WORK.

The natural next step is to work on procedures, instructions, and safe methods of work, Permits to Work and so on. This is all about SAFE SYSTEMS OF WORK

Even where companies have put all this in place, there is evidence that accidents and injuries are still happening at work. Companies that have done all of this have realised that at some point the safety performance stops improving – it levels out. They have realised you cannot achieve zero injuries without tackling behaviour as well.

Even if you had the best systems and procedures in the world, and the most immaculate and tidy workplace, injuries will still occur if people break the rules, defeat guards, take short cuts, don’t wear their PPE and so on.

At least 95% of injuries at work have an element of unsafe behaviour – the things we should do but don’t, or don’t do when we should.

On the positive side, because it’s PEOPLE that have accidents, and PEOPLE that cause accidents, it’s also PEOPLE that can prevent them, hence the role of BEHAVIOURAL SAFETY as well as the other things described above.

Why Do People Behave Unsafely?

There are many, many reasons…

· Sometimes people don’t have the tools and equipment to do the job safely. (Sometimes they do have the tools and equipment, but don’t use them)
· Sometimes the rules and procedures haven’t been put in place. (Sometimes they have, but people don’t follow them)
· Sometimes they feel under pressure for production and safety gets compromised.
· Sometimes people take shortcuts because it’s easier, simpler, saves time
· Sometimes they’re just not thinking. Or they’re tired, stressed, distracted, unwell or preoccupied. (We’re only human after all!)
· Sometimes we see people behaving unsafely, but we don’t say anything or do anything.

So, What Do We Do?

There are only 2 types of unsafe behaviour

· Those we don’t recognise as unsafe
· Those we ignore

Firstly, we need to be clear on the safe behaviours we expect of people so it is clear what’s acceptable and what’s not. And we need to enforce it.

Secondly, we need to have a workplace where we never ever ignore an unsafe act. Whenever we see somebody doing something where they’re at risk, we say something, or do something.

Is It That Simple?

No, clearly if it was that simple we would have done it already! It actually goes much deeper, to the CULTURE in the workplace. Management have to do their part, in creating a culture where SAFETY is valued higher than anything, even production.

NOBODY COMES TO WORK TO HAVE AN ACCIDENT

NOTHING is worth being hurt for.

NOTHING is so important we cannot take the time to do it safely.

How Do We Improve?

One of the best ways to improve things is to talk about what we see in the workplace.  It’s about watching people work, looking for safe acts and unsafe acts, and having a discussion about what we’ve seen. The aim is to stop people being hurt at work. We can do this by talking to people, by getting them involved, by understanding the concerns they have and the real issues they face on the shop floor.

Does It Work?

There is plenty of evidence from companies using behavioural safety and seeing dramatic improvements in their safety performance. WE can improve the safety performance here by getting involved in behavioural safety.

About the Author

Martin Woodall is a leading behavioural safety expert, delivering training and consultancy on a regular basis to a long list of major clients.  To get in touch or to book Martin, contact Lattitude on +44 (0)1435 831500 or e-mail martin@lattitudesafety.co.uk.  Visit the Lattitude Safety Consultancy website by clicking here.