Creating a safety mindset and a culture of caring can be facilitated using the process of socio-biomimicry. Simply put, biomimicry is a way to solve engineering and other problems by looking to nature. The term was popularized in 1997 by Janine M. Benyus in her book, “Biomimicry: Innovation Inspired by Nature.”
Nature can also be used to inspire a fresh look at social systems and how other life groups manage safety. I developed the Safe-ari process of socio-biomimicry to solve a client’s problem of fading situational awareness. Fourteen learning points on situational awareness were distilled from safari photos – some of which we’ll take a look at in this article – and woven into employee meetings. In one representative session with a group of 48 people, using pre- and post-surveys with the Likert scale (1-7 rating) plus comments, the following results were delivered:
- 30% improvement in understanding what situational awareness means
- 90% improvement in listing three situational awareness concepts
- 40% improvement in helping other people think about their own awareness
- 50% improvement in comfort of leading a toolbox talk on situational awareness
- 90% improvement in generating a year’s worth of situational awareness topics
- 50% improvement in listing three ways people are not situationally aware
- 50% improvement in knowing how to incorporate situational awareness into daily actions
Results such as these suggest that socio-biomimicry is a successful methodology for raising safety consciousness and creating touch points for easy recall of safety messages.