Interactive performance on safety standards
Social initiative award nominee 2007
Valorec Services AG employs 300 people, and its business activities - the supply and management of energy-carrying fluids, industrial waste collection and treatment, solvent recycling and incineration and water management - involve permanent exposure to hazards. The safety of its employees is therefore a constant concern.
Who took this initiative?
Working alongside the HRD, the company's Health, Safety & Environment department brought in a professional theatre company to develop a program to remind employees of key safety practices.
Why
Performed on the company's annual environmental awareness and safety training day, this entertaining event provided an opportunity to revisit and extend safety rules and procedures.
For whom
80% of the company's workforce (the 245 employees involved in technical and production tasks) took part in this event.
Implementation
A professional drama company performed a series of sketches based on aspects of working life that pose a significant risk of injury. The aim was to make employees think carefully about how people's behavior can cause accidents.
Comment
Each scenario was performed twice:
- the first time to introduce the hazardous situations and the kind of behavior that can lead to accidents;
- and the second time to revisit the same situations, with the audience invited and encouraged to respond and come on stage to correct the unwise behavior or action that caused the accident.
The show is interactive and dynamic, with participants taking on the role of the "wrongdoer" and suggesting solutions.
Outcome
Very well-received by employees, this entertaining training session has succeeded in pointing out risks and drawing attention to habits and practices that threaten safety, and has done so with humor and subtlety.
The use of playacting also underlined the important role fulfilled by internal communication in preventing and resolving risks.
Problems & solutions
To ensure credibility, the drama company spoke to employees in the workplace to identify risk situations that the audience would perceive as reflecting real life.
Coordinating the performance of such a show around the constraints imposed by production and maintenance schedules, and finding a space large enough and quiet enough for the performance, also proved to be complex tasks.
Extending the initiative
The use of interactive drama is certainly an excellent way to remind people of safety rules in units exposed to signifi cant risk.
It is also an effective way of strengthening the employee/employee relationship.
