Company Profile
The people at RyderMarsh OCAID have been at the forefront of behavioural safety and Cultural Safety® for many years.
Cultural Safety® is a systematic approach which develops the organisational safety culture from being simply system and compliance focused to a proactive, people-focused culture.
Under the OCAID banner we have developed a refreshing approach, integrating our Cultural Safety® model, with a wider goal of improving not just the safety culture and safety leadership of our clients, but also harnessing the impact of improved engagement on all areas of the business.
Our Genesis
Using our systematic approach, Cultural Safety®, to make good safety performance easier and more natural with several leading clients we noticed wider improvements. As well as making good safety performance easier and more natural, they develop their organisational culture from simply ad hoc, system & compliance focused to being proactive and people-centred. We saw better engagement, productivity and wellbeing as a result of the work we were doing together.
We realised that the way forward to optimum performance was Resilient People in Resilient Organisations. This twin focus led us to create the OCAID Group. OCAID is an Acronym for Organisational Culture and Individual Development.
The group currently consists of RyderMarsh OCAID Limited (this site) and OCAID Wellbeing Limited (www.ocaidwb.com). RyderMarsh OCAID focuses on Safety Culture development through people using Cultural Safety®. OCAID Wellbeing Limited focuses on employee wellbeing through organisational development using Cultural Wellbeing™.
Obviously the disciplines overlap, the advantage this gives the customer is that either company can lead on a particular programme, depending on focus, whilst seamlessly integrating with the resources and expertise from the other.
We have subject matter specialists to help in Risk, Leadership, Human Factors, Incident Investigation, Engagement and Wellbeing. Some advise at government level here & overseas.
Safety is so last century – The Cultural Safety® Journey
Evolution: Our thought leaders, having been at the forefront of Behavioural Safety and then Cultural Safety® for many years with RyderMarsh Safety, are now once again leading the market through a wider approach to Organisational Culture & Individual Development with RyderMarsh OCAID Limited.
From Classic Safety to Behaviour
When RyderMarsh Safety was established in 1997 behavioural safety was in its infancy and the most commonly asked question was “What is Behavioural Safety?” The answer – after about 150 years of “Classic” Health & Safety dating back to the industrial revolution, it was still only possible to see two clear phases, initially reliance on PPE & engineering solutions and only since the 1950s the emergence of Modern Safety Management systems. Behavioural Safety was the third wave.
From Individuals to Organisation. From Avoiding Accidents to Creating Safety
Nearly twenty years on and with a wealth of experience in implementing Behavioural Safety worldwide we knew that a focus solely on an Individual’s Safety Behaviours was far too narrow to get the maximum possible gains for the organisation, it was necessary to look wider at the things about an organisation that invoked typical behaviours. From this we evolved a more holistic approach which we called Cultural Safety®.
Much of classic Safety has been focussed on avoiding accidents. Whilst this is a step in the right direction it still hints at a reactive mindset. Thinking proactively about what can we do, deliberately and positively, to make things intrinsically safer by looking at ALL aspects of the work environment, tangible and also intangible, can give a step-change in performance.
From Safety to Resilience
However, several leading clients noticed an improvement not just in safety, but also in engagement, productivity and wellbeing as a result of the work we were doing together. All this creates long term sustainability, both of performance levels and the organisation itself. So we came to the conclusion that Safety on its own was not enough. Necessary, of course, but not sufficient. We have therefore developed a refreshing approach, integrating our Cultural Safety ® model, into a wider goal of improving not just the safety culture and safety leadership of our clients but also providing the impact of improved engagement on all areas of the business.
So our focus is now Creating Resilience by OCAID™. OCAID stands for Organisational Culture And Individual Development, the twin pillars of a truly resilient and fit for purpose operation.
The OCAID Approach
We take organisations beyond being primarily system and compliance focussed by showing how to engineer a culture that is more productive, safety orientated and fit for the 21st Century. We do that with a multi-disciplinary approach, combining, applying and embedding techniques from areas of science such as Psychology, Anthropology, Sociology and Business Process Reengineering. This achieves a high-degree of understanding and collaboration between functional areas such as Safety, HR, Learning & Development, Organisational Development, R&D, Environment, Quality, Operational line management and, most importantly, the frontline staff. With this approach we make good safety performance easier and more sustainable.
Expertise
As the thought leaders in this area we have welcomed some high level Specialist Consultants into the organisation to cover areas such as Risk, Engagement, Human Factors, Wellbeing and Sustainability and their impact on safety and cultures worldwide. Most of our Specialist Consultants have worked with or advised at government level so we can offer you some serious INSIGHT into all of these areas.
It doesn’t matter where you are on your safety improvement journey, we can support that journey at any stage.
Whether that’s considering Behaviour Based Safety (BBS) or moving from BBS to our unique approach – Cultural Safety®, where engaging with your staff and becoming proactive, transforms the safety culture in the organisation, then we can help. Engagement, led by ‘real caring’ leadership, at every level of the organisation, not only improves Safety performance but also wellbeing and Business Performance in general such as productivity, quality, retention and recruitment, innovation and discretionary effort.
Imagine what a journey that might be!
