What’s Really Going Wrong with Health & Safety Communications Today?

Let’s be honest, who wants to sit through endless health & safety slides that say nothing? Who knows what HOP, HAZOP, or any other jargon is and how that makes sense to the frontline?

We, Health & Safety professionals, love a good jargon, and making it even more complex. Maybe because we go deep into understanding leadership, organisations and what makes people care about safety?

With English being my second language, jargons just didn’t connect with me, and I chose to speak safety to the frontline in a much easier flow and way.

Another thing, the lack of visuals in safety has been something I struggled with because all communications, acts, codes of practice, manuals, etc. I would come across early on in my career lacked a serious visual component.

After years of testing ideas on what works and what doesn’t work in high-risk industries, I discovered that the 4 essentials to safety communications are:

1. Simple messages

One idea, one item at a time. Choose what’s most relevant to your site right now. Then put that in a visually engaging video, presentation, or game. Run it for a few weeks. Test and test it. Use humour with simplicity, gather feedback. Do it again on another subject.

2. Visual

Visuals! Our attention is shorter than ever, and we’re bombarded by content all day with our phones. So you need to make sure your team is part of the visuals. Grab their attention in a way that means something to them.

3. Relatable

As I said before, making it relatable and sharp for them is using key words they use. Not what we think should be used, but what matters to them. In high-risk industries, complexity is everywhere — so use their equipment, their site, and their company culture language. Test it and test it again. Health & Safety communication only works when it means something to your crew, staff, or leaders.

When it comes to Management, use what they care about: business outcomes. Make your health & safety message specific to your audience. I know we love to use one-size-fits-all because it’s easier and takes less time to create, but it doesn’t work. My question to you is: do you want to make an impact, or just go through the motions? Safety forces us to face this at every change, every incident, every touchpoint. It’s human to human.

4. Action-Oriented

Pack your Workplace Safety Messages with action-oriented items for your staff and frontline. What do they need to do? Use hazard communication with visuals and ensure you add the specific actions you need from them.

For example: when you’re creating corporate training videos, make sure hazards for their workplace are clearly defined, along with the current available controls and where they need to use those controls. It sounds logical, but many corporate training videos go on endlessly with robotic messages without getting to the point. At GotSafe Media, we get to the point and we repeat that message again at the end.

A key takeaway here is to use those four essentials and turn your health & safety messages into powerful animated videos that engage everyone from the frontline to leadership.

Run campaigns one subject at a time, and use safety videos with creative frontline visuals to bring your people to the centre. Don’t forget: our main job as Safety Professionals is to engage with and observe the challenges faced by frontline workers, then bring those insights to light through strong, human-centred communication.