Change takes a significant amount of energy, and involves sustained active thinking and conscious choices from a brain perspective. When we are involved in these types of thought processes, our brains consume approximately 25% of our body’s energy supply. We appear to be hard-wired to conserve energy, and change takes a significant amount of energy, so it would seem that we are somewhat hard-wired to avoid or dislike change.

This is the reason why people find it hard to make and sustain change, and why it’s important for any change project that you undertake, that you ensure it takes people through the five stages of change[2] being pre-contemplation, contemplation, preparation, action and maintenance.

ZIP Safety integrates the five stages of change in its process thereby ensuring the greatest chance of success for making the change stick.

Footnote: [2] Prochaska, J.O. & DiClemente, C.C. (1986). Toward a comprehensive model of change. In W. Miller and N. Heather (Eds.), Addictive behaviors: Processes of Change (pp. 3-28). New York: Plenum Press.

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ZIP Safety

ZIP Safety is a unique psychologically-based safety process developed by Sentis which focuses on planning, implementing and sustaining change at the individual, leadership and organisational level. It takes your entire organisation and its members through a change process which challenges existing attitudes towards safety and assists your organisation to achieve its safety goals.

ZIP Safety is not a program in "what" is safe, nor is it instructions on "how" to follow procedures. It's impossible to create policies and systems and provide equipment that would negate every possible risk in your business. What keeps a person safe most of the time is his/her skills, knowledge and attitudes towards safety. ZIP Safety focuses on the link between safety attitudes and safety performance.

At an individual level, ZIP Safety engages your employees in a change process that will provide an insight into the attitudes that drive safe behaviour and the psychology of safety.

ZIP Safety gives individuals the tools to help them to take control of their thoughts and feelings – and their personal safety, by empowering them to be more effective within the systems they work in. This proactively assists individuals to operate in a way that will support your organisation's performance and safety goals.

From our experience, the leadership of an organisation directly determines the nature of the safety culture and performance of a business. Therefore, the leadership component of ZIP Safety will provide your leaders with a foundation in the neuroscience of leadership, and a framework to directly influence the psychology and attitudes of the people they lead. It also provides leaders with practical tools to drive individual and organisational change that align with your organisation's safety goals and outcomes.

From an organisational perspective, ZIP Safety applies a framework for enhancing your organisation's safety systems using the latest neuroscience developments with the goal of:

  • increasing the level and quality of individual employee engagement with safety tools and practices, and reinforcing effective attitudes and personal responsibility for safety;
  • supporting leaders to directly improve safety performance in their team and enhancing the culture of leadership within your organisation;
  • creating and maintaining a cultural framework that supports ongoing improvement in safety and performance

Our research shows that clients who have integrated ZIP into their safety programs have achieved positive results across a number of important safety outcomes. This has typically been seen in a reduction in incident and injury rates and the associated costs incurred when someone is injured in the workplace.

This is often accompanied by a positive shift in employee safety attitudes and the safety culture of the organisation, as measured by our Safety Culture Survey and ZEROScale measurement tools. ZIP has also demonstrated positive well-being outcomes for a number of clients, in terms of improving the level of stress and psychological health reported by employees.

ZIP Safety is a complete solution which will be tailored to your individual organisational needs and goals. It consists of three distinct phases: preparation, implementation and maintenance.

Within each of these phases we undertake a thorough scoping and assessment of your organisation and culture, deliver highly interactive and motivating training programs, and continue to work together with you through our coaching and consulting range of services to embed and anchor the ZIP concepts into your business.

Furthermore, ZIP Safety includes the services of our highly experienced Sentis research team who are dedicated to assessing your organisation's safety culture before, after and during implementation, thus allowing you to track the impact of our services against the identified outcomes and goals of your organisation.