Awarded best agency 9 years running
Anglo American
Creating an employee engagement strategy that literally saves lives
The challenge
As one of the world’s largest mining companies, building a culture of safety has always been a key priority for Anglo American. That’s why their annual safety and change-communication programme for all their employees is a major component of their internal strategy. With their employees spread far and wide and tackling an unprecedented period of transformation, they wanted to make sure that the importance of safety leadership still remained at the forefront of everyone’s minds – in order to bring them all one step closer to their goal of Zero Harm.
Making it happen
The focus of this project was literally to save lives. The biggest challenge was how to create a programme that was relevant for 87,000 employees, spread across seven continents, with varying literacy levels.
We kept it simple by building the communications around a distinct visual motif, with a text-light ‘big picture’ map and a simple strategic narrative developed in partnership with the programme leaders.
The headline message was made simple and direct too: ‘Controls protect us. Critical controls keep us alive’. Visible Felt Leadership (VFL) techniques were employed.
Leaders were supported and equipped to demonstrate positive behaviours to create a tangible link between employees and the senior leadership team.
And since behavioural change was the ultimate desired outcome of the programme, there was a strong focus on ‘the how’ throughout – emphasised through a succinct visual animation, experiential learning activities, and interactive worksheets, quizzes and scenario-based challenges, which tested knowledge and deepened awareness.
The Outcome
Following the programme, there was a much better understanding across the board of what constitutes a critical control:
