Stewart Player

Said the following about Peter Dempsey:

“Pete took over the Safety and Business brief (S&BB) three years ago and in that time he has made an exceptional impact on the entire process. It is almost hard to know where to start when trying to describe and summarise the changes he has implemented and how he has affected both those delivering and receiving the brief.

When he took over, the S&BB booklet and the safety day were seen as driver-centric, with some grades not receiving tailored content and many seeing the briefing as something that they had to get through. Over the last three years Pete has transformed the S&BB – every grade now receives a tailored package with content collated from Subject Matter Experts in the relevant fields, focussing on content that is relevant at the time. This fits into a wider three year plan that Pete has produced, whereby safety critical content is covered on a cyclic basis as determined by various SMS and the CMS.

For each cycle Pete not only collates and designs the content for the Safety Day, but edits a booklet which contains articles written by himself and others within the business relating to the safety day content and a huge variety of other topics; this booklet has received wide praise from various functions across the business and covers a huge scope of interesting and engaging content. In addition to creating the content and booklet, each cycle Pete runs an intense few weeks of 'Brief the Briefer' sessions, whereby he delivers the training package to groups of managers across the network – to trial the content and get any feedback, but also so the briefers know how the content is meant to be delivered.

Alongside these sessions Pete provides detailed session plans for the briefers, and is available for support throughout the cycle. Feedback and engagement from both briefers and colleagues has improved massively since Pete took over, and cycle upon cycle we receive feedback stating that the days keep improving.

One of the most inspiring things about Pete is that he is a constant source of ideas, and often will promote things that he believes in even when others do not initially buy in to them. Through the safety day Pete has essentially raised the profile and delivered training to thousands of colleagues on S&BB content that typically in the past would not have been touched up – this includes Dementia Awareness, Autism and most recently Mental Health. Pete's promotion of these topics, which move away from the traditional safety and business content have helped to promote the Safety Day as a place to provide training and information to colleagues to others in the business – to the point where there is almost too many ideas of what to cover!

In addition to expanding the remit of the safety day and what content to include, Pete has also looked at how the content is delivered – gone are the days of endless PowerPoints and instead the Safety Days are now interactive and engaging, with apps, group exercises, station "walk arounds", games and much more. Cycle on cycle Pete continues to push for ways to enhance and improve the S&BB process and content, and cycle on cycle he manages to do just that. It is this constant push to improve and look for new ways to work that makes him stand out as someone who is setting the highest standards, and making a noticeable and important impact on those he works with and for.

The S&BB feedback from the most recent safety day has, for the first time ever, included responses from every grade in the company (a first!) and the majority of general feedback comments are incredibly positive about the safety day. Some examples:

"Enjoyable and informative discussions"

"Well presented course very enjoyable"

"Very good brief…thank you!!"

"Kahoot! Is an excellent tool for encouraging group interaction" [Kahoot is an app Pete introduced this cycle]

"Business briefs getting better with more targeted relevant issues rather than just "company performance" statistics. I always learn something new."

"A really good session. Great information concerning mental health issues. Thank you including it in this Brief."

"Was a very good briefing. One of the best ones I’ve been to."

Further to this Pete has developed strong relationships with the charities that he worked with to provide the content on Autism and Dementia. This training in particular has resulted in a number of first hand experiences being reported back to us, both from colleagues and the families of those with dementia/autism, telling us either how the training helped them to deal with a specific scenario or how the behaviour of GWR colleagues has made an evidential difference to the experience of someone with dementia/autism.“