Biffa is a household name in the UK waste and recycling industry.
With over 100 years of experience and an 11,000-strong team, they deliver essential services nationwide 365 days a year.
As the business expanded and workloads increased, the safety culture was becoming more reactive than proactive; with incidents being examined after the fact, rather than prevented in the first place.
Seeking an imaginative and innovative way to connect with colleagues, Biffa’s Health & Safety Director came to us to bring their newly established Safer Together Essentials to life.
Covering an ultra-wide range of services, from commercial and domestic collections to large-scale engineering and renewable energy projects, to fleet maintenance, retail locations and more, Biffa teams face unique risks and challenges in their day-to-day operations.
To unite this large, diverse, multilingual, multicultural audience around the Safer Together Essentials, we developed the Safer Together Digital Toolkit.
This ‘one-stop-shop’ resource boils safety culture down to its essence:
At the heart of the toolkit are four flagship scenario-based films.
Using insights and anecdotes gathered during discovery, we crafted people-focused storylines to keep viewers gripped, regardless of their unique operational context.
Shot on live operational sites across the UK, each film focused on one Safer Together Essential. With strong performances from a carefully selected cast, realistic scenarios are brought to life in an authentic environment as we follow colleagues’ actions and reactions throughout their day. The emphasis: making the right choice, the safe choice, every single day.
More than just a home for the films, the digital toolkit is a practical and interactive hands-on resource designed to drive real behaviour change. Developed for line managers, it equips them to lead independent sessions and spark meaningful safety conversations with confidence.
With dedicated guidance pages, team exercises and discussion prompts, the toolkit ensures key messages don’t just land, they stick!
To sustain momentum beyond launch, we created a supporting suite of ambient comms: posters, PowerPoint templates, screensavers, intranet banners, and email signatures. This multi-channel approach kept safety front and centre across the business during rollout and to date.
The films bring Biffa’s health & safety mission to life.
They show how reducing the likelihood of workplace harm is achieved through everyday choices and shared responsibilities. Hard-hitting and purposefully uncomfortable, they highlight daily dangers and show how quickly and easily worst-case scenarios can become reality.
The project marked a clear shift from passive, box-ticking training to a bold, immersive, discussion-driven experience. With genuine decisions shown in high definition for colleagues to see, discuss, accept, reject, argue over, agree on, and adopt.
Praised business-wide, the Safer Together Toolkit is now integral to Biffa’s onboarding and induction process. Since initial launch, Biffa has returned to us for two more seasons of films and accompanying comms aimed at Supervisors and Managers – proving that this is more than a one-off campaign, but a movement towards long-term behaviour change.
Our combined efforts have earned industry recognition, winning awards from the Institute of Internal Communications (IoIC) and Communicate Magazine (ICE) in 2024.
Transforming the way people work, live and thrive, our culture change services are designed to create a lasting impact.
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