Transforming safety leadership at Anglo American: a cultural approach to high performance
Anglo American
Mining
Global
At FidesOak®, we believe that High Performing Cultures start with High Performing Teams. When Anglo American sought to progress toward an injury- and fatality-free workplace, they recognised that real, sustainable change needed to go beyond compliance and systems. It required a shift in mindset, one that placed people at the centre.
With global operations and a richly diverse workforce, Anglo American faced a familiar yet complex challenge: how to advance safety performance across geographically and culturally varied teams.
Internal assessments revealed that most sites sat at level 2 on a five-stage safety culture maturity model, a point where traditional hierarchies and control-based approaches often plateau.
To reach level 5, their long-term aspiration, Anglo American needed to move away from ‘safety work’ as a box-ticking exercise and instead focus on the safety of work itself: how things were actually being done on the ground. That shift required a fundamental rethinking of leadership behaviours, team engagement, and the working environment.
FidesOak® partnered with Anglo American to deliver a global cultural transformation programme. At its core, the work focused on empowering people to become the solution, not the problem to be controlled.
Together, we addressed five critical levers:
- Change Management & Engagement Strategy: A robust and inclusive strategy to engage every level of the organisation in meaningful change.
- National Culture: Sensitivity to cultural nuances, ensuring the programme resonated authentically across all sites.
- On-site Coaching: Direct, in-the-field support to develop curiosity, psychological safety, and authentic leadership.
- Behavioural Measurement: Real-time behavioural analytics to assess progress and shape responsive interventions.
Safety performance had reached a plateau.
The risk of inaction was clear: continued incidents, disengaged employees, and missed opportunities to innovate. By focusing on how work was really being done, and by listening to the people doing it, Anglo American created the conditions for continuous improvement.
What made this programme different was the emphasis on leadership as an enabler, not a controller. Psychological safety became a driver of innovation. Engagement replaced enforcement. And across every layer of the organisation, capability was transferred, not outsourced, to ensure the change would endure.
This was not just a programme.
It was a cultural shift that embedded new ways of thinking and leading. By investing in people, Anglo American moved closer to their goal of an injury- and fatality-free workplace, and laid the foundations for long-term agility, adaptability, and high performance.
At FidesOak®, we do not deliver transformation from the outside in, we help teams engineer it from the inside out. If your organisation is ready to turn intent into action, we are here to support you every step of the way.
