RSSB. Optimising safe and satisfied passengers
Ensuring confidence and competence at the front line
RED and Right Track, our dedicated resources for the front line, help your teams optimise safety and satisfaction for passengers every day.
Greg MorseRHSS Editor and Operational Feedback Lead, RSSB
When we started Right Track, our award-winning RED safety briefing videos were well established and doing great work in helping companies share the latest safety concerns and good practice tips. That was in 2012, when the media was full of the Olympic Games.
Back then, the railway collaborated to get people to the Velodrome in Newham, to water sports in Weymouth, to wherever they wanted to be. ‘Let’s work together’, someone said, so we did. And everything worked brilliantly.
The recognition that the railway extended beyond our own boundary fence was key to the creation of Right Track magazine that April.
Just 4 months before, industry feedback had said a new outlet was needed to aid front line involvement. We were given this task as part of the Learning from Accidents workstream we had flowing at the time.
Key safety messages were already being briefed in formal sessions, while our RED videos prompted open discussion and reflection. That still happens today, but there was a call for something that created a sense of belonging to a wider safety culture—a trusted space that gave people the chance to share stories and experiences. Something that didn’t talk down to anyone.
Right Track was the result—a quarterly, eye-catching magazine to be picked up in the messroom or downloaded and read in a spare moment back home.
One of the magazine’s strengths has been to tell stories that maybe other safety channels couldn’t, such as what the challenges are really like at the platform-train interface. Or being more open and conversational about suicide prevention. Or talking plainly about how wider societal issues jeopardise safety—whether that’s drug use, sexism, or bullying.
None of this would’ve been possible without the cross-industry editorial board having and building ideas, while sharing views, opinions, and initiatives.
Sharing is what it’s all about. What could happen in Aberdeen could also happen in St Austell, after all, but only if they know about it. And if they know about it, their thinking and understanding will be broadened.
To put it more plainly, if the front line gathers more knowledge—and that includes lessons industry learnt in the past—then not only does it add competence to compliance, but it also helps build confidence. If you have a confident, competent front line, you create an attitude of safety that’s almost endemic.
But safety isn’t just about the front line audience, the leadership audience, this audience, or that one. It’s about all of us. The railway is a family. If that terminology isn’t for you, think of it as a system, in which each section plays its part to ensure passenger safety and satisfaction.
You can help drive this process. As a key stakeholder in the railway’s success, we know your priority is to build competent teams—and to do the best for your passengers. Signposting to our dedicated front line resources can help you on this central mission. So, why not prompt your management, comms, and front line teams to have a look at RED and Right Track?
Our award-winning RED videos explore a range of operational safety issues.Watch nowRight Track, meanwhile, promotes safety initiatives from across the industry. Check out the latest issue
