Using Design Thinking to improve worker safety in manufacturing
Co-Speaker
18 Minute Keynote
Improving workforce safety is a priority for all responsible organizations, even as they often struggle to balance safety and productivity demands. While process improvements and state of art infrastructure would help reduce accidents, these interventions were not enough. We, Pensaar Design, wanted to know whether new approaches to workplace safety and worker training may be able to help keep more workers safe. What emerged was the need to better understand worker and manager attitudes and behaviors toward safety. The hope was that the human-centered ethos of design thinking could help reframe this problem in ways that regular process improvements alone could not. This wasn’t a small endeavor. Design thinking is an in-depth process of research, ideation, and experimentation. It requires patience and time to see improvement. Applying it to an issue as important as worker safety required careful planning and the participation of many individuals, which adds to the effort’s costs. But we found that by better understanding worker assumptions and engaging in rapid experimentation, this kind of behavioral work can be a potent tool to make improvements to worker safety.
About The Speaker
Alisha is a Director of Strategy & Design at Pensaar Design a Design Strategy and Innovation Consulting firm. Alisha blends her education in psychology & communication and her passion for design to conceptualize new experiences, evolve existing solutions, and transform org culture. Alisha, over the last 10+ years, has done a broad range of work that cuts across domains of healthcare, FMCG, retail, education, finance, manufacturing, etc. Working on projects across a diverse range of industries has allowed her to mine, map, and understand underlying patterns in human behaviors that drive customers to interact with brands and businesses the way they do. She is most passionate about delivering experiences and solutions that are meaningful and solve a gnarly problem, solutions that create positive impact and transformation.