Case study: Stadco

Sometimes it takes impossibly trying circumstances to bring about genuine change. For Stadco, the death of an employee at its Shrewsbury factory in 2010 proved a turning point from which the company has fundamentally revolutionised its approach to health and safety, with gratifying results.

The automotive supplier – which employs 875 people across four sites in Wales, Shropshire and the West Midlands and specialises in sheet metal components for major car brands – was cleared of any blame for the fatality, but it made the board reflect on its responsibilities. “A decision was made to do everything humanly possible to prevent that ever happening again… which was what initially triggered investment in people and processes,” says HR director Heath Cade.

Stadco’s Zero Harm strategy began with the traditional components of a health and safety initiative: policies, procedures and controls. Getting these everyday aspects of safety right brought results, which were carefully analysed. “When I sat and went through the reviews of safety I used to look at a report as thick as this,” says Cade, hoisting aloft a sheaf of paper as hefty as the average Argos catalogue. “It had every metric possible cut every way you could. I said ‘okay great, you have done all that, but what do we do next?’”

The answer was to move beyond following rules to altering behaviours. “For example, we have all the right personal protection equipment in place, but what makes someone want to wear it? What’s the interaction bit where we make people actually think about what they are doing? And how do we get people to challenge other people?” says Cade.

“If I go into the factory not wearing the proper clothing I want people to feel comfortable coming over to say ‘excuse me a minute, you’re going to injure yourself’. It’s not a case of ‘they’re the rules and you’re not following them’, it’s that I might injure myself and we don’t want that to happen.”

As if to illustrate that exact point, during a subsequent factory tour Cade and People Management’s journalist step into a boots-only area wearing regular office shoes. A worker on the other side of the factory downs tools to walk over and politely point out the transgression.

Changing people’s behaviour means affecting the heart more than the head, says Cade, which is one of the reasons he turned to a theatre and performance training company to further embed the message. Actors play out scenarios in front of an audience of staff, and the approach appears to deliver. “It motivates people, moves them and gets their emotions involved,” he says. “You see the scenario being acted out, you see the interactions between people and it makes you think ‘what would I do in that situation?’”

Trainers can stop the scenario, ask audience members what a character should do and then restart the play to show the results of that choice. Rather than explaining the ‘right way’, the audience is expected to think for itself – “just as a behavioural approach to safety requires people to bring their own judgment to bear,” says Cade.

Behaviour is changing, adds health and safety manager Simon Randall. “People are much more into raising near misses and having conversations about issues they find. Our near-miss rate has increased since starting the programme.” Some would assume a high near-miss figure is a bad thing, but Randall argues it’s much better to know about threats in time to do something about them.

The figures prove the approach is working: in 2011, Stadco suffered 235 accidents with 524 lost days of work. In the first six months of 2014, there have been 52 accidents and only five days lost.

Cade and Randall are now talking about how they’ll keep the momentum going. Advertising will be part of the answer, and they are also considering peer-to-peer observations, which could involve an employee from one factory watching how colleagues in another work and talking to them about their behaviour. The aim is to be up front and share learning rather than covertly audit staff. “We want to get away from that approach of people being told off for not being safe,” says Randall. “It’s about employees talking to each other and building on each others’ observations.”