Achieving department-specific insights and a pathway to safety excellence.
Birmingham Airport
“The insights collated by Safe365 have given us a clear and detailed picture, not only of the Safety Culture across the airport but also within each of our key departments. The feedback from our colleagues was overwhelmingly positive. The fact that the airport has invested in this work, in itself, clearly demonstrates the airport’s commitment to safety.”
Gary Giles, Health and Safety Manager, Birmingham Airport
Watch Gary Giles share the story or read more here.
The Challenge
Excellence demands more than compliance.
Birmingham Airport — the UK’s seventh largest airport, handling 13+ million passengers annually across 150+ destinations — wanted to evolve beyond ISO compliance to drive cultural excellence across their airport operations.
Birmingham Airport had built their safety program with a 5-year strategy that focused on developing a positive safety culture. They had achieved positive results from ISO 45001 audits, which provided assurance of compliance, but they had yet to measure their safety culture work to date, a critical limitation recognised by their leadership team.
The risk: Without measurement and reporting, the ability to demonstrate impact and identify future improvement needs would be difficult.
The opportunity: Leading cultural transformation across the entire ecosystem to achieve a practice of continual improvement. Creating a common language and an approach to measurement and monitoring that everyone can engage in.
The Solution: Technology Enabled Strategy
Phase 1: Planning & Engagement
Stakeholder engagement and project planning
- Onboarding sessions for both the safety team and executive
- Communications planning
- Aligning key milestones and deliverables
Phase 2: Measurement
Engagement with operational teams: Leadership, Management, & Frontline Colleagues
- Nine face-to-face workshops segmented by department
- Director workshop conducted with senior leaders
- Anonymous survey organisation-wide
Phase 3: Insights
Analysis of both organisation-wide and by department data
- Organization-wide maturity profiling
- Benchmarking against industry standards
- Department-specific insight generation
Phase 4: Improve
Integrated portal for ongoing improvement
- Real-time access to insights
- Evidence-based improvement program development
- Continuous monitoring capabilities
The Results: Data Led Foundation for Safety Excellence
Engaged Stakeholders From C-Suite to Terminal Floor
“The feedback from our colleagues was overwhelmingly positive, the fact that the airport has invested in this work, in itself, clearly demonstrates the airports commitment to safety.” – Gary Giles, Health and Safety Manager
Department-Specific Strategic Insights
Instead of one-size-fits-all safety programs, Birmingham now has targeted strategies based on actual departmental culture data.
“An Airport has many stakeholders who operate on our site, this includes concessions, baggage, airline operators, contractors and other third-parties, each and every person has a part to play in our safety performance which we often refer to as the ‘Safety Ecosystem’. The safety profile can vary between these departments, what this initiative has enabled us to do is to create a clear and focused strategy for continual improvement for each.”
Ecosystem Leadership Positioning
Birmingham can now engage their supply partners in safety culture transformation across their entire airport ecosystem, by leading from the front.
“The surveys enable us to demonstrate safety leadership within this realm and we’ve now brought some of our supply partners into the program.”
“The ongoing support and accessibility of the Safe365 team has been really exceptional. We felt fully supported throughout the process — in the planning phase, implementation phase, and analytical stage.”
Gary Giles, Health and Safety Manager, Birmingham Airport
What this means for your organisation?
If You’re Managing Complex Stakeholder Environments:
Birmingham Airport proves you can effectively measure safety culture matuirty across diverse teams and operations. Using data and insights to inform strategic change.
If You’re Moving Beyond Compliance
The transition beyond ISO certification to cultural excellence is achievable with the right measurement, engagement, and improvement platform.
If You’re Building Long-term Competitive Advantage:
Safety culture leadership becomes a strategic differentiator that drives operational excellence, stakeholder confidence, and industry influence.
Ready to Transform Your Safety Culture?
Birmingham Airport’s journey from compliance to culture-led demonstrates what’s possible when you combine comprehensive measurement with deep workforce engagement and ongoing strategic support.
