Behavior has long been recognized as an important element in safety management. One of our clients, VolkerWessels, wanted to keep attention on this topic during the COVID-19 pandemic as well. Together, we created a series of short animations—illustrated by Martijn Cornelissen and narrated by Jeroen Kijk in de Vegte. This resulted in an initial series covering relevant behavioral themes in safety, such as conscious and unconscious behavior, autopilot, habituation to risk, the role of the leader, and team communication. These so-called “Kronkel animations” were made freely available online at the time, and many people will have come across them.
A few years later, follow-up questions emerged. One concerned translations of the animations. With an increasing number of non-native speakers working in the Netherlands—who are disproportionately involved in incidents—this led to 14 series in mainly Eastern and Southern European languages, as well as Arabic. The other question was whether we could facilitate team discussions by adding an extra layer around the animations. This is how the Toolbox sessions were created: a short introduction combined with scheduled pauses where a question appears on screen. This Toolbox series is now also available in multiple languages.
We thought the project was complete—but nothing could be further from the truth. That became clear when a client asked whether we could train team leaders to deliver the Toolbox sessions. To better understand the request, we joined a Toolbox session ourselves. There we discovered something unexpected. The team leader (a maintenance manager with a bachelor’s level education) explained that he found it quite intimidating to conduct these kinds of conversations with his team: “I wasn’t trained for this.” Further inquiry revealed that other team leaders—also at other organizations—experienced the same tension. This tension was specifically related to behavioral topics. Toolbox sessions on technical subjects posed no problem. Many felt hesitant to admit this. We ourselves had not anticipated this signal. We were blinded by our own psychological background and the assumption that every leader could do this. That turned out not to be the case.
We still firmly believe in the power of a good conversation on the work floor, and we also see that many people lack knowledge about safe work behavior. The content therefore remains valuable. What we had to learn ourselves is that offering Toolbox sessions involves more than creating well-designed animations with a discussion protocol around them. Since then, we have positioned the Toolbox sessions as a central element of our approach. In addition, within each organization we appoint a “safety expert”—a colleague who has both the skills and the time to prepare a Toolbox together with the team leader and, if desired, to be present during the session. In this way, we aim to lower the threshold and support leaders in a tailored manner when needed.
An example of such a Toolbox can be accessed via this link.
Juni Daalmans
Safety Psychologist