Re-thinking The Human Factor with Bruce Hallas Marmalade Box

Our guest, is Dr. Ben Evans. Ben is an aeronautical engineer, and he’s applying his understanding of the forces at play, to the seemingly insurmountable challenge of conquering the breaking a world record at the Bloodhound Land Speed Project.
Ben talks about the laws of science and engineering which help him to find the marginal opportunities for improvement which are helping the team towards breaking the world record. But, in this interview, it’s also clear to me, that success is a matter of teamwork often with colleagues with different and sometimes conflicting priorities.
Understanding the forces at play includes understanding science and nature, even when it comes to human awareness, behaviour and culture, but it’s also about understanding the forces at play across stakeholders, where often conflicting priorities and interests can arise. Getting the “Team” aspect right, you could argue is as important as the science which drives decision its self.

In this episode we look through the eyes and experiences of an education and awareness manager from Brazil. We explore the consistent challenges, no matter where you are or what your culture is, when it comes to employee awareness, behaviour and culture.

In this episode we delve into the world of branding with the out standing Geraldine Michel and explore possibilities for security professionals responsible for the human factor.
We draw on lessons from the world of fashion, by skirting through branding and how Brand Directors and Managers utilise this mammoth of the modern day commercial world to shape and influence behaviour and culture. 

Internal communications is a major stakeholder in employee awareness, behaviour and culture. We often defer to their skills and experience as the specialists in communication strategy for reaching out to internal staff. However, there's something a foot in the industry. Traditional ideas of what makes "good internal communications" are being challenged and our good friend "behavioural science" has been a great influence on the thought leaders in the field of communications. In this episode  I talk with one such thought leader.

In previous episodes of the podcast we have explored why human judgement and decision making, which drives our behaviour, is heavily influenced by the environment within which we make our decisions.
In this episode we take this one step further and ask how employee awareness, behaviour and culture pans out, after all of the theorising and planning, when the tranquil environment of corporate learning is replaced by the rawness of a major security crisis.

In this episode I am joined by my co-authors, Adrian, Ciaran and Jess, of the CyberSecurity ABC’s book for a long overdue catch up. We hadn’t been able to spend anytime chatting for a while and so it was fabulous to get us all together again to enjoy having a talk about security awareness, behaviour and culture.
We touch on not just the challenge of employee awareness, behaviour and culture but also about industry stakeholder’s roles in recognising the long overdue need for change.
We explore the role of the environment in people’s decision making through the way Covid 19 has shaped not just the world but highlighted the need for continually re-assessing employee education and awareness.
We tread the well-trodden path and saying that education and awareness doesn’t always deliver changes in behaviour and culture, and we ponder whether there needs to be a change in the language that industry uses to really break through the glass ceiling that’s been imposed on everyone responsible for employee education and awareness.
It’s a great episode, touching on so much, with some laughter rolled in and a dodgy rendition of the Thompson Twin’s Doctor, Doctor track as well.