Safety is a priority for countless industries, none more so than rail. However, it remains a weak spot for many organisations, and the challenge boils down to human behaviour. Every workforce is a mix of motivations, skills, values, team dynamics, and behaviours, and it’s this human complexity that makes safety both essential and fragile.
Software firm MyPeople offers behavioural talent intelligence solutions that transform how organisations hire, develop, and manage high-performing teams. The company is currently lending its expertise to the rail industry, with which it is working to improve safety culture across the network.
Chief Executive Officer Christian Hughes sat down with RailStaff to discuss the challenge facing the industry and the solution his company provides. He began by explaining how his previous role in sports psychology informs his current work.
“With a background in psychology and data, the first 10 years of my career were spent working in elite sport with teams from British Olympic Cycling, Saracens, and England Rugby.
“The work that we were doing was about understanding the dynamics of teams and how teams influence an individual’s performance. We wanted to understand this from the performance perspective of elite cyclists, examining our development processes and training programmes to assess their effectiveness in improving athlete performance. We found many marginal gains that contributed to a very successful period – not just for British Cycling, but for all of these teams.
In 2014, after working in the business world and with private equity firms on productivity measures, Christian and his team developed their MyPeople software product. The crux of the company’s work is to help large organisations understand the effectiveness of their training and development programmes, and to address behavioural and hiring challenges.
“The MyPeople platform enables businesses to select and profile individuals and, fundamentally, it tells them whether particular candidates will be able to work within their team safely and effectively.
“Over the last two years, we’ve expanded our approach to model the behavioural safety of teams and we now work in many safety-critical industries with customers like Network Rail, where we help them understand how specific behaviours contribute to safe and effective team actions on the railway.
Measuring competence
In the past, says Christian, much like in sport, competence was defined as having the right skills and therefore, it became something of a ‘tick box’ exercise. What we have found is that behaviours of individuals and teams underpin safe performance and so need to be measured and evaluated too. Most accident reports list human factors like communication and situational awareness as contributing factors to incidents.
That said, Christian is quick to praise the rail industry’s work around safety. Indeed, today’s employees are encouraged to speak out and report any safety incidents they might experience or witness. However, this can lead to an increase in incident reports and, at times, new processes being put in place that don’t address the core challenge.
“Our hypothesis is this is a behavioural issue,” says Christian. “For example, we’ve found that how people speak up about incidents and whether they take action is nuanced by individual personality and the working culture of particular teams. Interestingly, we’ve also found that there are different patterns of safety-related behaviour in different rail regions.
“For example, you may see differences between attitudes to problem solving, confidence in skills, rule adherence, and willingness to act that vary by role and by region. These differences influence how safety briefings are delivered and how on-site safety is managed.”
These regional differences highlight why a one-size-fits-all approach to behavioural safety is limited – which is where MyPeople’s profiling tools come in.
Vital insights
To help the industry meet this challenge, MyPeople has developed a suite of three core safety profiling products.
“The first is our Safety Culture Evaluation tool, which measures the interplay between people, values, and workplace environments to foster a strong, sustainable safety culture.
“By applying behavioural safety insights and cultural transformation strategies, we help organisations to embed safety as a core organisational value. Our data-driven approach helps businesses to make evidence-based decisions, creating safer and more resilient workplaces.
“Our Safety Hiring tool enables organisations to recruit individuals with the right safety mindset and behaviours. By integrating predictive analytics with behavioural insights, we help businesses identify candidates whose values and risk awareness align with a strong safety culture.
“Finally, our Safety Development product helps individuals and teams build the habits, accountability, and mindset needed for continuous safety performance. The tool provides group-level analysis to balance team strengths, clear coaching actions to support change, and tracks behavioural progress over time to sustain improvement.”
The advantages of MyPeople’s approach are evident. Organisations gain vital insight into their behavioural risk profile, allowing them to deliver training that builds a common understanding of safe working practices and, ultimately, a safer workforce.
For job candidates, it provides clarity on the behaviours expected of them and highlights any personal biases they may need to manage. On site, the same data can guide targeted interventions and shape more meaningful safety briefings.
Shifting cultures
Safety in rail has always been about more than processes, checklists, and technical competence. It is shaped by people and their behaviours, values, and decisions under pressure. MyPeople’s behavioural intelligence tools shine a light on this human dimension, helping organisations such as Network Rail better understand the factors that drive safety outcomes.
By embedding behavioural insights into hiring, training, and everyday practice, rail companies can move beyond compliance to build a culture where safe behaviour becomes second nature.
In a sector where even the smallest oversight can have far-reaching consequences, that cultural shift could prove to be one of the most important safeguards of all.
Image credit: MyPeople Group
