Case study – Safety training in first half of 2020

The Project

During Q1 and Q2 of 2020 we carried out a number of free safety webinars which were centred on the theme ‘Major Accident Awareness.’ Whilst people were working from home, we took the opportunity to host these virtual webinars with the dual purpose of increasing awareness and providing informative sessions on how bowtie diagrams can support risk assessment.

The Challenge

We had to encourage people to take time out of their busy schedules – in many cases juggling work with home-schooling – to join our webinars. Furthermore, we also had to overcome the perception that safety-related subjects can be on the dull and dry side.

The Solution

We limited the training sessions to just 30 minutes, making it easier for busy people to fit into their day.

We also used our experience of delivering in-house training to keep the content engaging whilst still covering the crucial process safety topics. It can be tricky to sustain interest during a remote webinar, so we introduced fun and stimulating activities, such as our dinosaur park challenge.

The Result

The webinars were attended by over 500 people, with many signing up based on a recommendation by a friend or colleague.

After our sessions attendees provided us with great feedback and in turn, we made new connections. We reviewed the feedback to ascertain where there were gaps in people’s awareness of major accident prevention, which will inform our future training sessions.

The success of these sessions raised our profile among professional organisations, and we have since been invited to carry out webinars and training for the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) and the Institute of Chemical Engineering (IChemE).

Here’s a small selection of the feedback from our webinars:

“Highly recommended training. Delivered in a highly professional, informative and engaging manner.”

“I liked the simplicity of taking it back to a task easily understood by all. Love the animations – beats death by boring power point!”

“I enjoyed the unique example! Really helps with understanding the principle, rather going into autopilot for things we usually spot as consequences, threats and barriers in familiar processes.”

 “A first-class presentation.”

 “Great session, worthwhile attending. It gave me a better understanding of bowties to assess risk in a very short period of time.”

 “This was a very captivating way in getting the audience to understand risk management.“