HSE Assessment Sessions at Russian Railways (RZD)
Employee engagement and commitment can be called the foundation without which it is difficult to imagine the development of a safety culture within a company. And when we talk about employees, we mean everyone: from the CEO to the frontline staff.
We consider middle managers to be the key link influencing occupational safety; it is their example, competence, and interaction with employees that determine the level of safety culture in a particular team. Therefore, at Russian Railways (RZD), the process of forming a "safety mindset" began specifically with middle management.
We understood that to create something we had never done before, it was necessary to introduce new approaches, and we supplemented traditional forms of training with modern ones.
The first thing that needed to be done was to "shake up" the employees, moving them from being passive trainees to active learners — people responsible for the results of their own education. To this end, active forms of interaction were introduced, such as:
- discussions,
- business games,
- idea generation,
- simulations of production situations,
- case studies.
During these exercises, employees immerse themselves in safety issues, interact with one another, and find solutions for practical application in production.
The following tools are used to assess the level of employee preparation during the training:
- Testing (before and after training)
- Expert assessment (questionnaires filled out by experts during the training)
- Feedback (provided during the training by the moderator and other participants, as well as self-assessment in a workbook)
This form of training has been named the HSE assessment session for middle managers. In the future, the range of participants may be expanded.
To conduct assessment sessions, moderators are trained from among HSE specialists who are personally interested in promoting modern training methods and building a safety culture in the workplace.
A separate training program was developed to prepare moderators, including aspects of organizing and conducting the educational process. The training takes place in both face-to-face and remote formats.
Currently, more than 14,000 middle managers have completed the assessment sessions, and approximately 800 specialists have been trained as moderators.