Case Study - Dean & Dyball

Having used live theatre and audience involvement to train 9,000 employees in the construction industry over the last three years, Dramanon is now looking to extend its health and safety workshops into other high risk occupations including engineering, agriculture and manufacturing.

Construction company Dean & Dyball employed Dramanon to run its Health and Safety workshops earlier this year. Olav Lawrence, Group HS&E Manager, says: “Our feedback procedure indicated that of a total of 970 people who attended, 97% state that attending was a good use of their time, and 98% would recommend the course to a colleague. Furthermore, in the six months following training, there has been a 50% drop in reportable incidents.

In 2005/6 HSE figures show that 212 worked were killed at work and many thousands (146,076 under RIDDOR and 328,000 according to the Labour Force Survey 2004/5) were injured.

Mr Brough argues: “Employers have a moral duty to engage employees in the health and safety issue but it also makes commercial sense. Potential litigation, site disruption and sick leave result in lost working time, a drop in productivity (and potentially with that penalty payments) and wasted management effort. Training which is powerful and memorable, even fun, can really take the chore out of health and safety instruction and ensure staff comply willingly with the legal and company requirements."

“To date we have focused our training in construction and council (in- and off-site workers) work but now we feel that other sectors could benefit from our half day courses and employer bodies from our two hour conference sessions.”     

 

“Dramatising real life situations, which can be tailored to specific site situations, is a powerful way of educating and changing attitudes and habits,” says managing director Steve Brough. “It is like holding up a mirror to a group of people. By discussing outcomes from, or airing opinions about, the drama as it unfolds delegates are left with a very powerful image. They will often talk about characters or events after training, even two years later.”