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In this article, we share an example of a team that successfully designed and implemented a change that affects the daily work of hundreds of employees. A number of key factors contributed to the success of this team:

* Members with a ‘stake’ in the issue
* Clear mandate
* Members provided training and coaching
* Strong team leader
* Willingness to learn

The Situation

In this organization, employees were required to formally assess safety hazards prior to starting any work involving two or more workers. This assessment was required of both low (e.g. unloading plywood from a pick up truck) and high (e.g. working on a ladder or scaffold) hazard jobs. However, field observations revealed numerous instances where assessments were not properly completed prior to the start of work.

The existing process was viewed by employees as flawed because it was based on the number of workers required to do the job, not on the severity of the hazards involved in doing the work. Management realized that the process needed to be revised and that any changes had to be adopted by employees if they were to ‘stick’ over the long term.

The Team

A team comprised of employees representing the range of trade groups and a small number of management representatives was pulled together. The team was quite diverse – however, they all shared a vested interest or ‘stake’ in the problem they were brought together to solve. The employees were also pulled from their existing jobs so that they could concentrate their full attention on the problem and team’s activities.

The Task

The team was given a clear mandate to develop a new process and tools for ensuring that the assessment of safety hazards and the selection of effective barriers to mitigate the hazards were fully integrated with the planning of the work.

The team members were assigned two additional responsibilities that proved critical to their success:

* Train employees on how to use the new process and tools
* Provide peer coaching to support the application and adoption of the changes

The team was also provided with a strong team leader who was respected for both his technical knowledge and his ability to build a cohesive team. A capable internal facilitator was assigned to provide the team with a process to follow and to support the team in applying the process. Navigo’s role was to provide overall guidance to the team leader and internal facilitator.

Designing the Change

Although the team was familiar with the flaws in the existing process, they didn’t have an understanding of successful practices being used in other organizations. To facilitate peer to peer learning, employees from an organization with an excellent reputation for job safety planning were invited to share their processes and tools.

The team combined this information with their own experience to develop a vision of the desired future process. The team then identified the gaps between the current and future states. Between team meetings, the members returned to their work locations across the province, to report on their progress and to seek input from their peers. This sequence of communicating progress and obtaining input from peers was repeated a number of times at key points in the design phase. The team also checked in with key members of the management team numerous times to build their commitment to the revised process and tool. This openness and willingness to learn from peers and colleagues was critical to the success of the project.

Implementing the Change

The team took an active role in developing the training required to enable employees to use the new process and tools. To reduce implementation risks, the team pilot tested the process and tools in a small number of locations to confirm the improvements in practice and to build employee support. Three success measures were used to evaluate the effectiveness of the pilot tests:

* Speed of adoption: percentage of employees trained in a defined period of time
* Utilization: percentage of employees using the process and tools in their daily work
* Proficiency: percentage of employees using the process and tools correctly

Team members delivered training at the test sites, in partnership with local management. The training was combined with on the job coaching to support their peers in effectively applying the process and tools. The pilot training was valuable as employee feedback surfaced a number of issues that, if left unaddressed, would have severely impacted the success of the change.

Based on the results of the first pilot test, the process, tools and training were all revised. The pilot test was repeated to confirm that the revisions had addressed the concerns of both employees and management. The second time around, employee reactions were very positive, which resulted in a number of the non-pilot test locations asking for the implementation schedule to be speeded up so that they could get access to the process and tools. The success measures were utilized to collect data on the effectiveness of the implementation.

Sustaining the Change

Today, team members continue to provide coaching to their field peers, on an as required basis, to ensure that the change is sustained. The team also meets virtually to report on progress, identify potential improvements for the next revision of the process/tools and to provide support to one another.

The success achieved by this team is an excellent example of the results that can be accomplished through effective employee engagement.