Behavioural Science for Leadership in Safety
Worcestershire County Council Case Study
WCC delivers a wide range of services for the residents and businesses of Worcestershire – including schools and libraries, care for vulnerable adults, children and older residents, road maintenance and large infrastructure schemes, and supporting economic and social development across the County.
Our internal Strategic Leadership team and our Political Leadership are committed to improving the wellbeing of our employees and resident in Worcestershire.
Communication and engagement are two specific areas we want to excel.
We’ve launched our Workforce Strategy and drafted our Health and Safety strategy (which we have to finish and go out to full consultation with internal stakeholders) which are both aligned to many of the Behavioural Science principles.
We really enjoyed working with Gary and WCC as they had achieved compliance in the areas of safety, health and wellbeing and wanted to become even better still, that’s exactly what we designed this program for.
Interview with Gary Monaghan
– Team Manager
We’re totally committed to embedding excellence right across our organisation, which is why we’ve chosen the Behavioural Science program.
We recognise that the way our own people engage with each other, and with our wider community, will play a significant part in our success.
The program also forms part of our HR and Health and Safety strategy which is why we’re putting one hundred employees through it, starting Spring 2020.
As the in-house health and safety lead, I’m delivering this blend of online and face-to-face learning to our internal people. I’ve also spent time with Darren on a very adaptable and practical Train the Trainer program to help me prepare.
There are lots of good things happening across the organisation right now, however we want to become even better. One of the challenges with a large County Council like ours, is that we have a lot of departments within the organisation and provide a wide geographical footprint. Since the pandemic, the way we work has changed dramatically in that most of our services are delivered from many locations because of remote working – apart from our front-line services, such as care homes, social workers, and highways.
What Worcestershire County Council Said About The Programme
Gary Monaghan, CFIOSH, MSc Behaviour Change:
We have a broad mix of teams who must liaise with statutory bodies, such as the police, third sector, NHS, fire service, Department for Education, UK Health Security Agency, the Highways Agency and so on.
This program will help us to embed local excellence by giving our attention to lessons learned ‘when things go right’, instead of when things go wrong. So, it’s very much about sharing best practice with each other, because when we
focus on excellence, behaviours change – and that’s when compliance follows.
I’ve reviewed a lot of Behavioural Science programs. This one is ahead of any others I’ve seen by a country mile. The content is a good combination of theory and practice and the videos, case studies, academic reach and supporting journal are excellent in creating motivation for completing each module.
We want to embed conversations on what people and teams are doing right – ‘why have they done something a particular way’ and ‘what output have they had’. We want to get them thinking in positive ways.
Our Perspective
Gary Monaghan had shown an active interest in our IOSH Certificated Behavioural Science and Performance Psychology programs since their launch in December 2020. He attended some of our IOSH Branch seminars during Covid Lockdown and then engaged with us discussing ways of how he could o”er this program to his colleagues within Worcestershire County Council.
From the outset we were impressed with Gary’s due diligence and his determination to find the very best way to roll this program out within his organisation. He completed both programs personally before working very closely with us developing a bespoke Train the Trainer program for his team.
Gary is now starting to deliver this program internally in bite sized sessions to 100 of his fellow leaders, managers and supervisors.
We’ve enjoyed working with him and admire his commitment, self-belief and vision in finding new ways of improving performance within his organisation.
Darren Sutton, Behavioural Safety Services Training
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