Supporting Our Colleagues Through Better Safety Communication
At Shoreham Port, we know our safety culture is only as strong as our people. To turn our colleagues into true safety leaders, we have focused on communicating across a range of media and a key part of this are our rolling series of “Topic-Led Sessions.” These are run by our H&S team, but the real power comes from our collaboration with the Safety Improvement Team (SIT).
Our SIT represents every corner of the Port. By having these frontline champions co-facilitate, we ensure our safety conversations are practical, honest, and grounded in the reality of the Port. We don’t just talk at people; we tailor sessions to the audience—running separate field and office briefings where needed—to make sure the advice actually makes sense for the job at hand.
This keeps us agile. We use the monthly sessions to address live issues, like plant-pedestrian segregation or recent near-misses, while our quarterly sessions provide a look ahead. It’s how we live our values—“One Team,” “All In,” “Own It,” “Trusted Custodian,” and “Good Eggs”—while driving the continual improvement required by ISO 45001. We support these conversations with our online H&S Hub and easy to access video guides and inductions, making sure our non-desk-based colleagues can access information and safety updates anywhere, anytime. By focusing on quality communications and face-to-face, team-led conversation, we’ve made safety a shared responsibility that sticks. It’s simple, it’s effective, and it works because it’s built by our own people.
Why the project was needed
Historically, our safety communications followed a traditional top-down structure with memos, emails, and toolbox talks. We found that whilst these were effective at sharing information, they felt focused on specific tasks and did not create a shared responsibility. In a fast-paced, high-risk working environment, we needed to make sure that key information lands first time with every team. We wanted to shift towards a proactive, conversation-led culture where our colleagues feel empowered to voice concerns and suggestions that lead to improvements such as our hugely successful dunnage tool.
What happened?
Over the past couple of years, we have been reinvigorating our Safety Improvement Team (SIT) meetings, switching to a model of quarterly key updates and forward looks, and interspersing these with Topic-Led Sessions. Our SIT has representatives from across the entire port, and these volunteers actively support the running of topic-led sessions, which are reflective of key industry dates, such as No Falls Week and a session on working at height, and are agile enough to take account of any significant incidents that the Port has, such as drivers exiting cabs in live zones without permission.
We have moved away from sessions where the H&S team were on ‘send’ to much more interactive sessions which are tailored to the audience. For example, we often run two sessions—one focusing more on office-based colleagues and the other more on everyone else—to make sure that the information, messaging, and examples land with colleagues and feel relevant to them.
How we measure success
- Engagement and ownership: Success is evident in the shift from passive listening to active, frontline-led participation. The Safety Improvement Team has been key in promoting new ways of doing things, such as our QR codes for reporting safety observations and near misses. This saw over twice as many near misses reported in 2024 when it was launched compared with 2023, and this was sustained in 2025 due to support from the SIT team.
- Proactive Reporting Trends: Since 2022, we have tracked the reporting gap between accidents and near-misses. The trend line for near-misses is rising while accident reports are falling. This widening gap clearly demonstrates the growing ownership our colleagues are taking for their own and others’ safety.
- Quality of Feedback: Since the launch of these sessions, we have seen a qualitative improvement in the feedback we receive. Our colleagues are more comfortable flagging potential risks before they escalate. Because we have built these sessions around open, in-person dialogue, the “hidden” hazards that might never have been reported previously are now being brought to light and discussed openly.
- Consistency: While we track incident data, the true measure of success is the normalisation of the “safety conversation.” Safety is no longer something “the H&S team does.” It is now a recurring, expected, and respected part of the working week for every colleague. Ultimately, this focus has succeeded because we have moved from a place where the H&S team ‘does’ health and safety and towards a culture where safety really is a team effort and part of everyone’s day-to-day. By giving our colleagues the platform and the tools to own the conversation, we have built a safer, more vigilant, and more connected Port.
Since we started tracking the reporting numbers between accidents and near misses in 2022, we have seen a clear trend: the proactive reporting of near misses is increasing, while the trend line for reported accidents is falling. The widening gap between these two lines clearly demonstrates the ownership that our colleagues are taking for their own and others’ safety.
When we look at the detail, we can also see that when we have introduced interventions such as promoting openness around accident reporting, we saw an increase in even the most minor accidents being reported—such as in October 2024, when colleagues reported minor incidents like scratches, bruises, or getting caught on a retracting tape measure.
This data is the ultimate proof that our “Topic-Led Sessions” and open-door culture are working. By encouraging this level of transparency, we are ensuring that minor issues are brought to light, discussed, and corrected before they have the chance to become significant safety incidents. Our colleagues now understand that reporting is not about blame; it is the primary tool we use to keep each other safe.
