Reflection – Storytelling

Challenge  I’m currently working in a factory of an international company. As a process engineer my main  task is to implement manufacturing processes ensuring both the performance and the quality  of new products without compromising the safety of any employee. However, during the last  weeks the number of accidents has increased in some manufacturing lines. The staff is highly  qualified and most of them have been in the plant for more than three years. Besides that,  the corporation has a strong focus on safety aiming for zero accidents in all its facilities. Due  to the recent events, the company started an investigation, nevertheless, this only made the  situation worse. The workers were reluctant to collaborate in the investigation leading to a  harsh working environment. I decided to take this as my own challenge since all of these  circumstances were affecting my job. I took advantage of my closeness to the staff using  storytelling to open up about my own experience dealing with safety.    Selection  Storytelling is a tool that allows both the speaker and the listener to extract meaning from a  message. If it's used correctly, storytelling can create a connection with the audience by  sharing a story that sparks an emotional bond. According to Andre Martin, Director at Mars  Inc., storytelling is a way to make a strategy accessible to people, it poses questions and gives  room for reflection. The reason why I selected this tool is because safety is something that is  frequently taken for granted. If I create a meaningful story, chances are that the staff feels  confident to talk more about the issue and cooperate to design a strategy that includes  relevant stakeholders in order to guarantee the safety of everyone.    Application  Firstly, I chose the manufacturing lines which reported the highest number of accidents during  the past two weeks and then, I identified the people who were the closest to me working in  those lines. I approached the individuals during lunch time to try to make it seem casual and  as an ice breaker I asked about their day and their life out of the company. I addressed the  issue about safety and how important it was for me, and I told them a story about another  occasion when I got injured in the laboratory while performing a test. During that time, I  immediately reported the accident to my manager, and I got all the support from her, besides  that, she asked the whole team to reevaluate the risks and deploy more means to avoid them.  I also shared that I was impressed since when I worked for previous companies, they barely  cared about the employees and safety wasn’t a priority.  My coworkers remained silent for some seconds but after a while they commented about how  stressful it was with all the changes in the organization, their boss was demanding to increase  the productivity and that created that sometimes they could not carefully look at the  instructions. Another person said that she was going through a tough time in her life (financial  crisis) and that made her almost impossible to focus at work. In addition, their “way of

working” was defined to attain “zero-mistakes”, they didn’t get enough time to adjust to the  changes, so they were afraid to lose their jobs leading to chaos. As a final remark, I made them  reflect about how important they are for their families and that their families wouldn’t like  them to have any accident, thus, I questioned them about what was more important if their  jobs or their own lives.    Insight and Approach  I got concerned after hearing the feedback from my coworkers. It was clearly both sides which  were not working in the right way. I talked to the Safety, Health and Environment Department  to share my insights and they immediately created a plan to be more engaging and to correct  all these actions. Consequently, this storytelling tool was very enlightening, it opened my mind  to think not only about the operational aspects while implementing new processes, but also  considering social routines which help to protect the humans behind the objects. Additionally,  I think it is also possible to use storytelling for processes such as continuous improvement,  where there is a lot about facts and numbers, but I am certain that we can incorporate the  stories behind those numbers.  I think my approach was correct at the beginning, but it would have been beneficial to have  someone else to provide more support while using my story. Furthermore, I think in the case  of the challenge and in terms of safety, storytelling can be strengthened by using visualization.  Combining both a good story and images or videos, can make the message more powerful by  representing further consequences when safety procedures are not followed. It would create  more reflection and the insights may be more tangible.

