TeamEverest Safety

Achieving a World Class Safety Culture through Employee Involvement

A series of workshops offering a unique approach to transforming workplace safety culture

TeamEverest Safety developed out of thirty years’ experience in adult experiential learning, changing behaviour in organizations, boosting organizational effectiveness. We had a client who found that traditional approaches to safety performance were no longer having any meaningful effect – they asked us for an experiential approach. The result was TeamEverest Safety, unique in the field – and we are finding it is addressing an industry-wide challenge: so many companies finding that injury incident rates stubbornly refuse to shift.

Objective: A Paradigm Shift in Improving Safety Performance

From: focusing solely on engineering or operator/worker error

To: focusing on the culture and management systems that influence safety behavior; using the position of leadership to empower employees

TeamEverest Safety is designed for safety leaders who advocate for employee-led safety efforts in their organizations. They will be equipped with tools for coaching others in their organization to achieve breakthrough safety performance through employee-led safety culture change.

Goals:

• Introduce culture-based approach to safety management
• Clarify leadership’s role in the culture change process
• Define why it is important to make these changes
• Steps towards the desired safety culture
• Tools to help Leaders lead the change

Unique: TeamEverest Safety Focuses On:

• polarity – finding a compelling vision in the face of core dilemmas
• existing safety culture – awareness of formal (visible) and informal (invisible) cultural norms
• beliefs, assumptions and attitudes
• the role of each individual as safety leader
• individual risk propensity/profile
• trust and integrity – the cycle of mistrust
• leadership style – transactional to transformative
• the myth of resistance – engaging “resistance” in a collaborative effort between the people working for change and those who are called upon to change

Strong Experiential Component

TeamEverest Safety offers a dynamic and engaging learning environment that immerses leaders in the polarities inherent in pursuing demanding organizational objectives while maintaining the highest standards of quality and safety. To facilitate this process our leading edge digital media simulation uses Jim Elzinga’s stories from Mount Everest as metaphors for these real-world challenges.

“The whole Everest story came alive – the energy in the room was electric as everyone started seeing the connections to our work in our industry.” J. S.,Safety Manager

Create It-Embrace It-Believe It-Live It

TeamEverest Safety is an opportunity for participants to work through our Create It-Embrace It-Believe It-Live It process as they make their own progress towards the summit.

General format of each module:

• first participants are introduced to a metaphor or learning theme from the Everest story, which is linked to building safety culture;
• then this theme is related to What is happening within our own organization or for me as a leader;
• finally participants drill down into application of constructs to a forward-looking exploration of What could be.