(24a) Using Gamification to Develop Process Safety Culture at Vale

The Brazilian mining industry was recently marked by some of the most severe incidents registered in the history of the mining industry. In 2019, 270 people died as a result of Vale’s Brumadinho dam collapse, becoming Brazil's largest workplace accident in terms of loss of human life and the second largest industrial disaster of the century. In 2015, one of Vale’s subsidiaries – Samarco – had also been held accountable for the Mariana dam collapse, the industrial disaster that caused the greatest environmental impact in Brazilian history and the largest in the world involving tailings dams, with a total volume dumped of 62 million cubic meters to the environment.

As a response for both events, Vale started in 2019 the largest cultural shift on the company’s history, reviewing its purpose as company, the core values, key behaviors, levers and its ambition. The learnings from both incidents highlighted the need to review and establish clear Process Safety and Risk Management policies at the company, in a moment in a time when Process Safety was barely known to the Brazilian mining industry.

However, a healthy process safety culture cannot be successfully established by edict or by enforcement. It requires convincing employees that a healthy process safety culture benefits them and the organization. It also does not happen overnight. It requires the right conditioning, applied patiently over time by the leaders. It can take some time to build workers’ trust and to convince them that the intended culture change is not a temporary fad.

Considering that process safety is a technical subject and understanding it is crucial for building a sound process safety culture, leaders and overall employees need to be prepared to understand what they need to do to achieve this goal. Meanwhile, developing technical competence in leadership and permeating this knowledge throughout the organization is one of the great challenges facing all large organizations.

Within this context, Vale has chosen to apply gamification type learning to overcome these challenges. Games can be used as a support tool to complement traditional teaching methods to improve the learning experience of the learners while also teaching other skills such as following rules, adaptation, problem solving, interaction, critical thinking skills, creativity, cooperation and teamwork. Additionally, for that student who has resistance to learning a concept, making it a game is a great way to relieve some of that pressure and make the process of learning more enjoyable to take part in.

Rather than lecturing students, or having them read about it from a book, actually playing through the scenario provides them with a much more complex and nuanced understanding and connect them to the real situations they face on their jobs.

Considering that results come from Processes and People, it would be essential to develop personnel to properly execute Process Safety activities across the organization, leveraging the vision related to the importance of the theme, practical application and impacts on the company's Safety performance. It would then be necessary to design training that would address the challenge in search of results, leveraging the performance connected to the theme.

Based on this premise, Vale created an initiative to develop introductory training in Process Safety using games. To create the training, a committee was set up to develop an educational solution to train Vale employees and leaders in the subject. The committee was composed by the learning development area and the specialized technical area with the support of a supplier specializing in instructional design. Over the course of 7 months, a game entitled “Introduction to Risk Management and Process Safety” was developed using a Learning Map methodology.

The choice of a learning solution focused on a game was made because of the possibility of using a situation made up of elements belonging to Vale's reality, encouraging decision-making and the consequences of that decision-making, leveraging learning and discussions among the participants. This dynamic encourages Learning Together, which we recognize as an effective form of learning in organizations.

This training introduces participants to the basic concepts of risk management and process safety management through a dynamic hybrid of a role-playing game and a board game, based on a map depicting scenes and activities typical of day-to-day operations. The session is led by two facilitators selected considering their operational experience and knowledge of PSM and Risk Management. Each participant plays a role in a story told through a simulation that is very close to the company's reality, with typical scenes and dilemmas experienced in the participants' routine. At the start of the session, the group has no knowledge of the training script and, just like reality, the surprise factor and the novelty of the scenario in which the game takes place challenge the participants and challenge previously established concepts and ideas.

Interspersing the development of the central story with small missions in the format of small board games, the group answers questions about Risk Management and Process Safety Management. The dynamics are designed to stimulate debate among the participants and gradually build up their knowledge of the subject, the connections with the company's management system and the operational routine.

The development of the game's story gradually introduces the elements of PSM and presents not only concepts, but the rationale behind the content of the company's norms, standards, policies and procedures, which leads to an expansion of the participants' awareness of their role, responsibility and the importance of Process Safety Management for the success of the business.

Training through games was chosen as a strategy because it is based on the science of fun with technical applicability to the subject of safety. This methodological learning strategy creates greater adherence from participants due to the engagement it gives employees. From the moment we come into contact with an external stimulus, the brain starts working intensely to respond. This experience also facilitates insights and records of learning that can be transferred to the organizational world. The feedback provided during the Game opens up opportunities for the expert Instructor to introduce concepts associated with the topic of Safety, aligning the participants in the same desired direction.

Since the implementation of training using the gamification strategy in 2023, 3 multiplier training classes have been held, totaling more than 20 training multipliers, and 20 training classes, totaling more than 210 people trained. According to the planning of the classes expected to be executed in 2024, we expect to have more than 250 people trained in the methodology by the end of the year.

Most of the participants had come into contact with Process Safety Management for the first time, although many of the elements were present in the company's management system. Many of the leaders who took part in the Learning Map reported a significant change in their view of Risk Management, stating that their position would have been different if they had taken part in the session earlier, as their systemic vision was broadened by the experience. The impact generated was so positive that the number of sessions held in 2024 was almost double that planned due to the organic demand that arose from feedback from participants to other teams and colleagues who had not yet signed up for the training.