Influencing safety behavior: An interactive workshop

campaign, which facilitates a cultural change in safety

(a) (b) (c)
Adrian Etter , Paul Hügli , Uwe Schüttler
(a)
HR-PE-MBP, SBB AG
(b)
K-Si-AVS, SBB AG
(c)
P-OP-RSQ-AUM, SBB AG

Article Information Abstract

Keywords: This paper describes a workshop campaign at the Swiss Federal Railways. The
K1, Safety behavior purpose of this campaign is to influence safety behavior of all employees and
K2, Cultural change working teams independently of the hierarchical position and working environment.
K2, Coaching We present the implementation process of the workshop campaign, which works
K4, Story telling his way through the company like a snowball effect starting on the top of the
K5. Appreciative inquiry
pyramid. We describe a highly structured interactive setting (interactive
communication platform), which allows a manager to easily switch into a coaching
Corresponding author: role. We present the concept of an easy to use toolbox and emphasize the very
Dr Adrian Etter encouraging development of the key performance indicators of the Swiss Federal
Tel.: +41792521822
Railways in the topic of safety. We finally present our learning’s from this very
Fax.:+41512203645
e-mail: adrianetter@bluewin.ch
challenging project.
Address: Hochschulstrasse 6, 3000
Bern 65

The implementation process was designed as a top down

1 Introduction
The Swiss Federal Railways is the largest railway
company of Switzerland. The company has 27978
employees, transports 327 million customers per year and
transports 230000 tones freight per day.
Safety enjoys top priority at the Swiss federal railways.
It is part of the brand value of our company. The company
makes a constant strive for improving safety [1]. An
external audit, made by the consultants of DuPont Safety,
indicated that the safety culture of our company should be
developed from a reactive attitude towards an attitude of
prevention. For this purpose we have design an
interactive coaching platform, an implementation process
for this workshop campaign as well as tools, which all
together should enhance the speed of this cultural
change. This change should finally contribute to a positive
influence in safety of our company.
2 Describing an interactive workshop
campaign
2.1 Cultural Change designed as a top down
process
Cultural change is always associated with leadership
and management tasks [2]. To accompany this change,
we specially designed an interactive communication
platform (ICP) in form of a coaching session. As target
population, we assigned functional management teams.
process. The concept is shown in fig.1. The consequence
of this process is a snowball effect, following the
hierarchical pathways of the company. To guarantee a
certain sustainability of this cultural change, we added a
horizontal process, which means that each management
team is supposed to repeat the ICP four times within 12
months fig 1.
2.2 Management requirements of the ICP
The ICP was developed to save management
resources. The amount of time assigned to the ICP should
be as short as possible (max. two hours) and compatible
to a standard management meeting. No special room
requirements should be necessary to perform an ICP. By
doing so, no travel expenses will be generated; no
seminar locations will be needed. The ICP session should
furthermore directly contribute to the personal objectives
in safety of each manager. These objectives are directly
linked to one of the three top corporate management
targets, which is safety. Furthermore no special coaching
skills should be necessary. The story line and the
structure of the ICP session should allow a manager to
switch from his standard role to a coaching attitude
without major obstacle and a special training.
2.3 The role of the safety coaches
Our company has a staff of professionals specially
trained in safety issues. These employees are experts in
all different aspects concerning safety. We decided to
integrate the safety coaches in our program. We assigned
them the role of management partners in this campaign.
Etter et al. Interactive communication platforms as tool for a cultural change in safety behavior
They should be able to coach their managers by helping
them to prepare an ICP. For this purpose we designed a
very pragmatic training. The security coaches learned,
how to use the tools, how to perform an ICP session and
how to perform an ICP preparation with there assigned
managers. Trainings where performed in German, French
and Italian.
2.4 The tools for the ICP session
Coaching of the ICP should be as simple as possible
for the coach and motivating for the team. We developed
for the coach (the head of a given management team) an
easy to use, reduced to the maximum toolbox. Tool
number one is a poster (165cm x 115cm), which allows
visualizing the coaching process and coaching outcome
fig. 2 and fig. 3. The second tool is a set of coaching
questions. Coaching questions are written on coaching
cards fig.4 and fig. 5. There is one and only one coaching
question per coaching card fig. 4. The ICP session is
designed as a step by step easy to follow approach. Each
card has a dedicated place on the poster fig. 3. The order
of the coaching cards reflects the story line of coaching
dialogue fig. 3. For this purpose we designed a system,
which allows the coaching cards to be easily and
intuitively classified fig. 4.
2.5 The leadership speech of the CEO
Introduction of the ICP session, part one: The key
element of this step is a leadership speech from the CEO
of the company. This speech was supposed to create the
necessary sense of urgency for the topic and link the
subject to one of the three top management targets,
which is safety. This speech should also reflect the spirit
of the workshop campaign, which was strongly inspired
by the approach of appreciative inquiry (AI) 1 [3]. This
leadership speech was recorded on DVD. It contains the
welcome message and encourages the audience to
continue the success story in safety and to work hard to
even improve the already very high safety standard. This
speech therefore enforces the visual key of the success
story, which is shown in fig. 2.
2.6 The success story in safety
Introduction of the ICP session, part two: The key
element of this step is a visual description of a success
story of our company fig. 2. The technique we use in this
step is the story telling approach [4]. The story we focus
the attention on, talks about the reduction of work based
accidents by 2/3 over the last 14 years. It also shows the
gain of productivity in the same time span of over 80%
fig.2. These facts suggest that employees and working
teams have a profound knowledge about how to deal with
safety hazards and how to improve safety gaps. The
coach is supposed to create a coaching dialog by telling
this story to his management team. This story is meant to
mobilize the resources and to create motivation and pride.
In this context we defined resources as talents, creative
imagination, skills and knowledge of all individual being
present. By creating a dialog the resources are amplified.
After this sequence the ICP session switches to the side
two of the poster fig. 3.
1
(AI) follows the assumption: Social systems develop in the
direction they are looking and the questions, which are asked,
determine the discoveries of the journey. (AI) focuses on the
strength, on the positive and the potential of a system.
April 6th – 8th, 2011, Madrid,Spain
2.7 Focusing on one subject in the wide field of
safety
Introduction of the ICP session, part three: In this step
we introduce a subject, which has to be treated during a
defined ICP session. This tool can be used to treat many
different subjects, not only safety issues. On the bottom of
the poster of side B we dedicated four squares for this
purpose fig. 3. In the example discussed, the
corresponding coaching cards where designed to
stimulate a coaching dialog about some basics in safety
prevention fig. 4 and fig. 5. Each card has its dedicated
place on the poster. The order reflects the story line of the
coaching dialog and should help the coach in structuring
his coaching session.
2.8 Working with examples from the own
environment
The last card of the introduction is an action card. No
question is formulated but just an encouragement.
Participants of the ICP session are invited to work on
situations in there own working environment, which deal
with safety hazards. Transparency and shared knowledge
about the safety situation is now about to emerge. To
structure this approach, we have subdivided the side B of
the poster in three main columns of green, orange and red
color fig. 3.
2.9 Discover the own success stories
The green column is dedicated to the success stories
of the team. The corresponding coaching questions are:
How was this success possible? What can we learn from
this success? This step is of prime importance for the
motivation because it links the effort of the team with the
success story of the company fig. 2 and the leadership
speech of the CEO, which has been described in 2.5.
2.10 Identifying safety hazards
The orange and red columns are assigned to examples
of safety hazards in the working environment of the team.
The coaching dialogue is stimulated by the question:
What do we have to do, for improving our safety? The
coach briefly calibrates the poster. He explains, by using
dedicated coaching cards, the meaning of green yellow
and red (for each different subject, the poster has to be
recalibrated). Participants now identify situations they
have noticed and write them down on yellow post it’s
(76mm x 127mm). They then classify them according to a
personal estimation in one of the three columns
mentioned before. A typical outcome is presented in fig 3.
A specially designed coaching card proposes a way to
discuss the Post it’s in the green column. For the Post it’s
placed in the yellow or red column, another coaching card
proposes a coaching dialogue.
2.11 Bringing intentions into reality
The outcome of this step is a plan of actions. The team
has to improve safety by distributing tasks among team
members. The coaching question, which stimulates the
dialog, is the following: Which person of the team takes
care of which subject until which dead line? Out-comes of
wider interest can also be used to sponsor the continuous
improvement process of the company. A typical outcome
of an ICP session is illustrated in fig. 3.
Proceedings of the WCRT2011
Etter et al. Interactive communication platforms as tool for a cultural change in safety behavior

2.12 Controlling the progress of the ICP process This figure shows the concept of the top down process as well

We have decided to monitor the snowball effect of the
ICP process and not the outcomes of the ICP sessions.
The argument for this choice is: The participation to this
workshop campaign is mandatory; the quality of the
outcome of the ICP session is in the responsibility of the
team. For this purpose we have created an intranet-
based formula, which is supposed to be filled out by the
ICP coach after having performed an ICP session. This
step literally allows us to monitor the snowball effect
which rolls down the hierarchical pathway. To facilitate
the access to this intranet platform, the address of the
web side was added to each coaching card as shown in
fig 4.
as the horizontal process of the ICP implementation process. The
top down process moves along the hierarchical pathway like an
avalanche. It will work his way through the strategically layer,
getting to the middle management and will finish at the level of
operations. The horizontal process should guarantee certain
sustainability. Each team is supposed to perform an ICP session
four times in a time period of 12 months.
Top Management

3 Discussions & Conclusion Middle Management

To the time present, we have produced 1000 toolboxes

Operative
in German, 500 toolboxes in French and 100 toolboxes in
Management
Italian. In this ongoing process, 2386 workshops were
performed (reference date 22.12.2010). The board of
directors of the company and the management boards of 1 2 3 4
our four divisions (cargo / infrastructure / passenger
transportation as well as real estate), are part of the Horizontal process
process. Corporate safety target in 2009 showed a 26%
improvement over the previous year and the number of
incidences on the SBB network decreased [1]. This
encouraging result could be maintained in 2010. The
acceptance of the program among the employees is
encouraging as shown by the annual employee’s
satisfaction survey. The safety culture was rated top three
in popularity. This result indicates that the mobilization
has been successful. We strongly believe that our
program has contributed in a significant way to the very
encouraging results in safety.
Our learning’s:
Defining safety as one of the three top cooperate
management targets has been to us a unique window of
opportunity. Fig. 1 Top down process
The high management attention and the active
participation of all top management teams were of prime
importance for the success of our campaign. This figure shows side A of the poster, which is part of the
The very economic use of management resources toolbox: It shows the success story describing the diminution of
contributed to the acceptance of the procedure.
Being first participant before becoming coach work-based accidents by 66% while raising the pro capita
enhanced the self-security of managers in the new role of productivity by 80%. It also shows the cultural evolution, which
being a coach. the company considers to realize, as well as the three pillars of
The collaboration of the professionals in safety (safety
coaches) was important for the promotion of the the safety culture.
workshops.
Proposing hands on tools helped to give further
security to the managers in this new role.
Structuring the coaching dialog through the specific 1
order of the coaching cards has been proven to be very
helpful.
2 3
We recommend to using corporate identity standards
for all documents. This facilitates the sense of legitimacy.
We recommend organizing learning settings for the
responsible staff of the campaign to exchange on a
regular basic best practice.
We recommend asking always this final question: How
can we contribute to the success of our managers in the
topic of safety.

April 6th – 8th, 2011, Madrid,Spain Proceedings of the WCRT2011

Etter et al. Interactive communication platforms as tool for a cultural change in safety behavior

This figure shows the concept of the coaching card side B.

This side is dedicated to the coach to make coaching easy. It
contains the relevant coaching question in reference to the actual
coaching step. It contains possible answers to the questions, to
stimulate the coaching dialogue. It includes a system, which
allows an easy handling and organization of the numerous
coaching cards.

Fig. 2 Coaching tool: Poster - Side A

This figure shows side B of the poster. It contains the

structure of the step-by-step process, allows visualizing the
coaching outcome as well as the visualization of the action plan.

Fig.4 Coaching tool: Coaching card - Concept side B

This figure shows the concept of side A of a given coaching

card, which is shown to the team. Side turned to the coach is
shown in Fig. 4. The intention of this side is to enforce the
thinking process and to enhance the pertinence of the coaching
question by a visual key. Intentionally we used drawings and not
photographs with the goal to create a world of pictures associated
with the safety culture.

Fig. 3 Coaching tool: Poster - Side B

April 6th – 8th, 2011, Madrid,Spain Proceedings of the WCRT2011

Etter et al. Interactive communication platforms as tool for a cultural change in safety behavior

Fig. 5 Coaching tool: Coaching card - Concept side A

Acknowledgement
Hugo Halbeisen
Remo Kurt
Simone Zuber Blättler
Reinhold Dänzer
Ardian Hassani
Bernhard Imhof
Yves Karlern
Othmar Ling
Linda Zimmermann
Nuria Grütter
Adrian Amann

References
[1] SBB Annual report website. http://sbb-
gb2009.mxm.ch/_pdf/SBB_d_mit_ug_gesamt.pdf pp 21.
2009.
[2] J.P. Cotter, leading change, Harvard Business
School Press 1996.
[3] C. Maleh, M. zur Bonsen, Appreciative Inquiry (AI):
Der Weg zur Spitzenleistung: Eine Anwendung für
Anwender, Entscheider und Berater, Beltz Verlag 2001.
[4] S. Denniay, the leaderʼs guide to storytelling, Jossey-
Bass A Wiley Imprint 2005.
[5] P.G. Zimbardo, K. Westhof : Lehrbuch der
Psychologie. Eine Einführung für Studenten der
Psychologie, Medizin und Pädagogik, S. 366, Springer
Verlag Berlin 1974.

April 6th – 8th, 2011, Madrid,Spain Proceedings of the WCRT2011