Safety Reset Hi Michael,
We have recently completed a global safety standdown, as the company I work for is located on every continent. The initiative was lead from our overseas head office with members from every department scheduled to set sessions (to promote pan-department discussions), and ensure that everyone got a chance to attend without totally stopping the business for the day. At each session, everyone was divided in tables of 8, with a manager at each to 'hear' their concerns and keep them on task.
The discussions were good and robust, with the usual extra vocal individuals coming up against their match from other departments, and where the quiet ones had confidence speak because they were not in their familiar teams.
Each table was also asked to write down their concerns or the things they liked and what they wanted to see more of (sort of stop,start,continue but only from what was recognizable only from the discussions) the issues/concerns/output was recorded a 1 pager in bullet points, and collated with other tables/sessions.
Later, every individual was independently surveyed about their experience, and what if anything they might like to further add/change given they had some additional time to digest the discussions post event. Again an opportunity to allow input.
While the results are still being collated and yet to be released, anecdotally from feedback it was a success.
Note, this was not about gaining commitment from the workers to be better at safety as individuals. It was about "how as an organization could we do better for them?". Headoffice will publish the results and subsequent approach in due course.
So based on my observations of this event I liked it, I think the level of participation and richness in the discussions was a good indicator, plus workers are still talking about it in day to day conversations.