Meerkats

A lot of people in health and safety seem to be talking about meerkats these days. Here’s why

Rob Coyle, the head guy at Lattitude Productions and producer of many of their safety films, was watching a nature documentary one evening. It was about Meerkats. As he watched, a lightbulb appeared about his head. These fuzzy little fellows had themselves an interdependent safety culture.

Rob brought the footage to us to check it out. Sure enough, meerkats operate a safety culture that puts many prestigious companies (and the supposedly smarter humans who run them) to shame. So Rob made a film, using footage from the original BBC nature documentary, that shows how much we can learn from meerkat behaviour.

We’ve been using All for One – The Meerkat Way in our team safety training courses for a while now and people really seem to respond well. In fact, some organisations have started using a meerkat as the symbol of their safety programme. One company takes its staff to a safari park to see meerkats behaving safely in the flesh. This meerkat thing is really catching on.

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