Recent work · Transport
Behaviours beyond compliance on the railway.
A large rail operator where heavy investment in safety still left too many incidents.
What was in the way
Despite significant investment in safety policies, processes and training, the executive team still saw too many incidents, accidents and near misses, a sign the issue was cultural, not just procedural. It had to be tackled during COVID disruption and major industry reform, across a workforce spread from offices to stations to trackside.
What we did
We ran a bespoke culture and safety assessment, 65 listening sessions that produced over 7,600 insights, to find what was really driving behaviour. We designed three cultural principles, simplified the strategic priorities to four ambitions, and set lead-indicator metrics to track the journey. We embedded it with manager planning workbooks, a change roadmap, and leadership and frontline safety-behaviour programmes built around the principles.
What changed
Colleague engagement held stable through significant disruption. Teams now build and run their own cultural plans through continuous improvement forums, managers have a toolkit to grow culture in their teams, the employee lifecycle has been redesigned around the culture, and performance management now centres on the culture principles.