Stadco Automotive, a manufacturing division of Magna’s Cosma International operating unit, is an international Tier 1 supplier of automotive Body-in-White products and services. Their core capabilities being aluminium, steel stampings and assemblies. The safety and wellbeing of its employees is the highest priority for the organisation. Stadco wanted to elevate the level of understanding and engagement of the workforce and worked with Juice in the design and delivery of a culture change programme focused upon behavioural and attitudinal safety. This programme was named “Don’t Walk By” to empower the employees by encouraging them to discuss and take action about safety with one another.
It was recognised that part of the challenge lay in motivating leaders to accept their responsibilities and lead safety effectively. An essential component was to also positively promote at grass roots level the ‘stop, call, wait’ principle to give empowerment to the people to stop a process if they felt in danger.
The programme consisted of site-specific health and safety climate surveys, site visits and consultation, internal communications (flyers, posters, invites), full-day leaders’ events, half-day staff events and post-programme evaluation work. The events were delivered to every employee in the organisation using actors who created Stadco based scenarios to demonstrate how safety can be both positive and negative in the workplace.
In the months following rollout Stadco has seen significant improvements with reportable accidents reduced by 50% and minor accidents by 60%. Hazard and near miss submissions have increased tenfold as a result of greater employee involvement. The Don’t Walk By programme played a key role in achieving the shift in culture required to enable this to happen. It became evident that our award-winning approach to training, utilising a blend of expert facilitation, theatre, film and interactivity was a key success factor in our continuous improvement journey for safety performance.
Following the successful delivery of the Don’t Walk By programme in the UK we were asked to deliver the same in Stadco’s German facility in Saarlouis. This was delivered in October 2015 to both Leaders and Staff, proving to be extremely worthwhile with delegates making commitments to change their behaviours.
In the execution of this exciting programme, we have developed a number of collaborative partnerships across Germany, establishing a robust delivery mechanism for our unique and high-impact approach to Behavioural Safety and Culture Change which we anticipate will be of significant interest to a wide range of industries and businesses within the country.
