Safety leadership training – guiding a culture change

'INSPIRE' is a flagship leadership safety development programme developed by the Aditya Birla Group Sustainability Cell to strengthen the culture of safety and inspire safety thinking amongst all employees

The safety culture in any organisation is strongly influenced by the beliefs and values shared by the top leadership. To support and drive the Group’s safety culture, the Group Sustainability Cell developed a flagship leadership safety development programme called ‘INSPIRE’. It is based on the fundamental principal that a strong safety culture comes from the combination of management systems and leadership commitment.

INSPIRE aims to strengthen the current management systems and make them capable of achieving quality, delivery and cost control, while preventing environmental impact, damage to assets and negative impact to people’s health and safety.

Coaching the leaders

To enhance leadership skills, INSPIRE engages colleagues at different managerial levels by exposing them to bespoke programmes. A one-day summary training has been developed for the top leadership team. Middle-management  participates in a three-day theoretical programme and executives and supervisors sit for a five-day detailed theoretical training session with hands-on practical exercises.

Leaders are coached to improve competency and lead behavioural changes required for the effective implementation of management systems. They are encouraged to hone their skills in:

• Leading cultural change
• Using a risk based strategy to make informed business decisions
• Understanding the requirement to integrate processes, people and assets into capable management systems
• Creating responsibility and accountability within their teams
• Improving their team’s overall competency through training and motivation

These training modules equip leaders with tools and benchmarked best practices to ensure consistency across operations, and thus enable the Group to move towards its Zero Harm target. To further embed the safety culture in the organisation, the INSPIRE programme has introduced a train-the-trainers element as well.