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How to Design your next Safety Campaign

Written on October 14, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in designing a safety campaign, health and safety messages, how to communicate workplace safety messages, improving workplace communication, workplace safety communication
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Be careful of those stairs!

Now that you have worked out your topic for your next routine workplace safety campaign, it’s time to sit down and start writing.  Here are some tips that have been designed for routine workplace communication initiatives (and not for large safety communication programs that require a lot of change, for large scale initiatives go to “14 Tips to Launch a New Safety Initiative”).

1. Work out your main communication objective and your audience.  Keep yourself focused on what your are communicating about and who to.  Work out your key goals and keep these in your mind while designing your campaign (check your safety figures to see what issues you might be having that needs to be addressed).  Get out a picture or a photo of the person who represents your target audience.  Master communicators find it very useful and inspiring to look at these photos, while trying to come up with the right wording.  You can even label them and refer to them affectionately, as “Cam the Construction Man” or “Patty the Packer”.

2. Research your topic – Find as much information as you can about the topic and look for interesting facts and figures.  What can you say that topic that’s unexpected or different?  How can you break a pattern and get people’s attention?  Use this information to write your headline.  But make sure you develop one core message.  Often, it’s tempting to believe we have lots to say and we feel that we need to talk about everything around that topic to communicate safety.  Yet, research has proven that too many messages confuse people.  Write your communication with one clear message in mind.  Every time you add content question whether it is part of your core message.  Remember, simple clear messages are easy for people to understand and recall.  Steve Jobs was a master of the core message in each of his famous Apple presentations.  Think “1000 songs in your pocket” for the iPod.

3. Keep your writing short – Once the brain has to work hard at what communication is trying to say, it begins to lose interest.  Always ensure your communication is clear and people don’t need to work at deciphering the information.  Use short words (5 characters or less), sentences (17 words or less) and even paragraphs.  Be friends with white space avoiding cramming lots of text into your communication.  Write at the reading level of a high school student.  And use positive language.

4. Write the announcement – Now that you’ve done some research and you’ve honed your writing skills, it’s time to get writing.  Remember, how can you make the headline interesting?  What can you say that is counter-intuitive to the message?  Common sense will not get you noticed.  What interesting facts do you have about the safety focus that will grab people’s attention?  Use the funnel method of writing where you explain your core message in your first paragraph (what, when, why, how where) and then write your medium important information in the next paragraph, followed by the third important information etc.  Avoid giving lots of details in the first paragraph.  Instead, make the first paragraph interesting, so that it draws people into the detailed information (but not necessarily the most important information).

Here’s an example in relation to slips, trips and falls:

 

Falling Down Stairs kills more people than Sharks

Did you know that you’re more likely to injure yourself by falling down stairs than by being attacked by a shark?  Stairs represent a serious injury risk and are one of the most common causes of injury at the workplace.

And here at XYZ, they represent our most common form of injury.  You can avoid falling down the stairs by:

  • Always having three points of contact
  • Avoiding talking or texting while going up or down the stairs
  • Ensuring that stairs are clear and are not used for storage of items.


5. Use lots of visuals – Humans recall and understand visual information much faster than words.  And they grab our attention.  Always include a photo or picture that best represents your information.  Where possible, use human faces, as we are very drawn to looking at other people.  Emotional imagery also is more likely to get people to change.  Always consider including different colours, video, diagrams and pictures whenever you need to create high impact communication materials.

6. Repeat your message in many different ways – Advertisers know that for humans to even recall a television ad they need to see it at least six times.  And the more they are exposed to the ad in different formats such as radio, bus posters and magazine ads, the better the results.  With any campaign you create, you will also need to create a calendar of communication events.  Ideally, you must plot out a different communication activity every week for the next 2 months with the same consistent message.  Include posters, toolbox meetings, video content, personal letters from the General Manager, email newsletters, stickers and staff stories.  Remember, frequency is key and using a variety of communication formats.  Make sure all of the communication has the same consistent core message with matching visuals.

Writing safety communication information generally isn’t the most favourite job of a safety professional.  Rather than approach safety communication in the usual fashion and producing mediocre results, use these tips to engage your staff and make communication fun.

 

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14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Written on September 26, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in CEO workplace safety speech, getting workers to accept a new safety initiative, launching a new safety initiative, launching a new safety message
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Announcing: 14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Promoting a new safety campaign to workers can often be difficult.  This new presentation provides the key communication tips you need to undertake to make sure your new initiative is easily accepted by every-one in your company.

Melbourne, Australia (26 September, 2011) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new presentation “14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative” to help senior leaders and safety professionals get better traction with their safety campaigns.

Humans are wired to resist change, but with the right techniques you can convince nay-sayers about the need to embrace a new safety program.

This visually appealing presentation addresses the need to plan your communication and provides details on how to prepare for your safety initiative launch.  The report looks at:

  • Who you need to get involved before launch
  • What techniques to use during the launch to get buy-in
  • How you need to track your safety initiative post launch.

Change can be overwhelming to staff.  Make the transition easier by having clear instructions on what staff need to do and how.  And pretty soon, you’ll be able to introduce new safety initiatives with little resistance.

For a complete copy of the presentation, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/launching-new-safety-initiative/

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos and workplace training packages. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos.  For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross
Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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How to avoid decision paralysis among your staff

Written on September 22, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in CEO workplace safety speech, communicating OHS messages, creating workplace change, decision paralysis, getting staff to accept change
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Too many choices makes us exhausted. Photo credit: Flickr, Ohdarling

It sounds counter intuitive but the more options you give staff, the harder it is for them to make a decision.

Multiple choices actually make us more likely to freeze in action and retreat to the status quo.

According to Chip and Dan Heath in the book, Switch, numerous choices induces Decision Paralysis.  Choices can be deadly for change – because the most familiar path is always the status quo.

In fact, lots of choices can be exhausting.  Ever spent a day shopping and felt exhausted at the end?  It wasn’t just from all that walking.  All of those choices literally makes your head spin.  When it comes to company change, what often looks like laziness is actually, just exhaustion.  Change is hard for people as it wears them out.

Leaders may pride themselves on setting high-level direction believing that they can state the goals and actions.  However, big picture hands off leadership isn’t likely to lead in a change situation.

Change can be paralyzing because of all the details.  Staff need to be directed into what they need to do.  Called “scripting the critical moves”, leaders need to think of what behaviour changes are required and document these.  For best impact, the new changes need to become part of a routine.

In “Switch”, the example was given of General Motors concerning new safety behaviour:

  1. Everyone is required to wear hard side shields and safety glasses.
  2. No-one can expose any bare skin (no shorts or short-sleeve shirts).

While in the book, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they said that to make ideas sticky, you need to work out the core.  Too many messages, can be paralyzing for decision-making.  In fact, psychologists have discovered that when there is too much complexity or uncertainty, people will make irrational decisions.

Having a core message reminds people of what’s important.  For example at South West airlines, staff make all of their decisions based on the line “We are the low cost airline”.  This helps employees make better decisions about what is right for customers and South West.

When trying to get your messages down into one core message, think of a proverb – it’s compact and core.  One short sentence can pack tremendous wisdom.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

To err is human (To forgive divine)

So the bottom line here is that when creating a training program, marketing a new product or even selling an idea – you need to distill your message into one core message.  The shorter the better.  Because the more messages you have, the more confused people will get and they’ll end up resisting what you say.

 

 

 

 

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Delivering the CEO Safety Message – An Interview with Stuart Jacquet, Managing Director, Lafarge

Written on May 3, 2011 by Marie-Claire Ross in CEO safety messages, CEO workplace safety speech, workplace safety communication, workplace safety messages
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Stuart Jaquet, MD, Lafarge Plasterboard Australia addressing members of the Gypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA)

In this post, I interviewed Stuart Jacquet the Managing Director of Lafarge Plasterboard Australia about his experience with writing and delivering safety speeches.

Lafarge currently operates two plasterboard production facilities (Matraville in NSW and Altona in Vic) and has over 220 employees in Australia.

1. In your experience, what you would you say is the most important information to convey during a safety speech?

Stuart: The most important, and also the most difficult, sentiment to convey to your personnel when giving a speech on safety, is the degree of personal commitment that you have towards safety. Credibility as a leader on this topic is clearly a prerequisite for giving a good safety speech. It is not easy to convince people that you value excellence in safety performance ahead of financial, sales or or even manufacturing performance. And so when speaking about safety, it only makes sense that you speak about what safety means to you, what it looks like to you and what you are doing about it at a very personal level and be clear on how you measure the performance.

Safety performance improves when you are actively working on it.  Everyone in an organisation has to practise identifying hazards, reporting on them and working together to eliminate them. Everyone has to practise good safety behaviour, complying with rules, watching others, helping identify poor behaviour and doing something about changing it.

As a leader, there has to be personal conviction to be deeply involved in the activities that you speak about. I like to speak about safety every time I address teams within the organisation.  Even when I provide information on the performance of the business overall, I will also speak about how we are progressing with our safety program. This means highlighting recent events, successes and failures, to make the subject come alive. I will also speak about how the particular team is performing within the program.

A vital part of a safety speech is to acknowledge the work that is done by people in the organisation as they work on safety. Recognition programs are an important part of the safety program as it helps to maintain the engagement of employees.

2. When giving a safety speech, what have you found that works?  What doesn’t?

Stuart: Like any speech, it is important to plan what you will say. Keep it simple and don’t try to cover too much .  This helps to ensure that the messages are clear. What is most important with safety, as it is with many other topics, is that the message has to be consistent over time. Set some goals for the year, speak about what is to be done to achieve the goals and then you have a blue print for communication for the rest of the year. I would say that speaking about what has been achieved and recognising people for the achievement is often more powerful than speaking about what will be done in the future.

Callout Title
“Employees accept statistics regarding sales, price, quality and profit, but when it comes to safety no one wants to feel like a being a statistic. Safety should be a very personal matter”. Stuart Jacquet
What does not work so well is speaking about the need  to improve safety performance, the need to achieve a corporate vision, or the need to change the culture in general terms and having no practical actions that can be followed, no timetable and no performance indicators. Of course, you have to speak about the lagging indicators such as the number of Lost time injuries, Medical Treatment and First Aid Treatment incidents and Near Misses.  But it is important to interpret results, and relate them to the safety program initiatives otherwise, there is a risk of conveying the wrong message to individuals. Employees accept statistics regarding sales, price, quality and profit but when it comes to safety no one wants to feel like a being a statistic. Safety should be a very personal matter.

3. How would you describe your safety presentation style?

Stuart: I like to have an open style on safety, not professing to be an expert, but strongly encouraging people to engage on taking personal responsibility for their actions and to help others. One of the safety challenges we have today is to move organisations from good safety performance to excellent performance. Of course, much can be done to improve the working environment, but that is only half the story.  Unless we can connect at a personal level with every individual to improve personal behaviour, then we cannot expect to achieve excellence in safety.

This is not an easy job to move people who have never been injured at the workplace and feel quite safe. It is this big population of employees we have to connect with, lift their commitment and improve their safety behaviours. I communicate very regularly both in a formal way, but just as often informally. One discipline that I do work hard on is to stay on the message, as this just helps to get things done and not over complicate matters.  Stick to the facts and show the same performance measures every time for better or for worse.

Of course, the leaders role in safety management goes far beyond the safety speech.  It is the follow up that really moves a safety culture. Working with teams on safety projects, repeating the safety messages. Chairing the organisation safety committee, personally following up on ever safety incident with local safety teams and quite frankly, being visible in the organisation working on the topic. Organisations respond to what they see the leader doing. If you want results on safety then you have to spend time on it.

Thanks to Stuart for his honest feedback on his safety speech style.

Based on social psychology research, when a leader publicly espouses a particular view, they become much more likely to behave consistently with that point of view even if they did not previously feel that way.  It is interesting that Stuart feels the need to let people know of his personal conviction for safety and uses lots of different methods to communicate.   This includes a constant reference to safety in both informal and formal meetings and his commitment to safety in action, not just words.  Together,  all of these methods will be communicating to his staff his sincerity on safety and thereby, making his staff believe that safety is important to Lafarge.

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Do you make these mistakes in your workplace safety communications?

Written on October 4, 2010 by Marie-Claire Ross in communicating OHS messages, health and safety messages, how to communicate workplace safety messages, improving consistency in workplace, induction videos, OHS safety messages, safety communications in workplace safety, safety messages, standardizing your safety message, training videos, workplace mistakes, workplace performance, workplace safety communication, workplace safety messages
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This safety poster has helpful manual handling tips but fails by showing the wrong behaviour. Only show the behaviour you want.

Effective communication is vital to get staff and contractors aligned and working towards a positive safety culture.

Yet, just providing training to work safely is not always enough.   How we communicate about safety influences whether or not people will accept or reject our safety messages.

A lot of companies produce training about a particular safety topic or  communicate awareness with lacklustre results.

We have found that the following issues often let safety communication down:

  1. Infrequent safety message reminders – Multiple message placements are the key to getting staff to remember new safety messages.  Try and get workers to engage in your safety messages in different formats (such as watching it, hearing it and reading it).  People learn in a variety of ways, so an effective safety campaign needs to use a variety of communication methods.  Messages need to be distributed in multiple ways and multiple times. Workers will need six or more separate exposures to your message to remember.  Use video, newsletters, posters, meetings, events and training sessions.  The more the better.
  2. Messages aren’t credible - Senior management play an integral leadership role in establishing the culture of a company including safety.  Effective safety leadership needs to be led and driven from the top.  Staff look at senior leaders actions to see whether new safety messages are being taken seriously.  Are your senior leaders really supporting the new messages or are they just playing lip service?
  3. Messages aren’t consistent – Good safety communication campaigns have alignment with all departments who are all working towards the same outcome.  This means working with all departments before you launch your safety messages and ensure that they will work with you and not against you.  A common example is that the production manager will push for speed, while the safety manager will tell people to work safely and cautiously.
  4. Overuse of negative language – When writing your safety messages, it is important that positive language is used that focuses on the behaviour you want and not the behaviour you want to avoid.  It also needs to communicate the issue in friendly language rather than rule-based or blame-centric writing.  You will get little traction of your message if you blame workers for the current state of affairs.
  5. Lack of consequences – It is important to introduce the new safety initiative by first explaining to everyone what the current problem is and the issues it is causing.  Then, managers need to explain the new rules of the game and the expectations.  It is also really important to let workers know of the consequences of not following the new guidelines.  This means letting staff really understand that poor safety behaviour not only puts themselves at risk, but the safety of other workers.  Let them know the effect this will have on their personal life and their family.

Of course, there are a lot more mistakes, but these are the main ones.

What can you do to improve your safety communication?


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How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages Campaign (Part 2)

Written on August 30, 2010 by Marie-Claire Ross in communicating OHS messages, company induction training, corporate videos, customer training videos, health and safety messages, how to communicate workplace safety messages, OHS safety messages, OHS videos, safety communications in workplace safety, safety messages, workplace performance, workplace safety communication, workplace safety messages
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As mentioned in ” How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages  Campaign” Part 1, marketing is the key to getting your safety messages heard and understood.

But how does the ordinary safety professional instigate a marketing campaign to educate staff about safety initiatives?

Let’s do some Marketing 101 lessons, to look at the steps you need to undertake to deliver your marketing (oops, safety) strategy.

  1. Who is your audience? You need to work out who your target audience is and their demographics.  Are they mainly males 35 – 55 years?  Or a combination of both males and females, but aged 15 – 25 years?  By working out exactly who your audience is, you can better work out the types of communication they are more likely to watch, read and hear.
  2. What are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve?  How can you measure the success of the communication program?  What data can you measure both before and after the launch of the new safety campaign?
  3. What is your message? What is it that you want to say?  If it is to raise awareness about safe forklift driving, why do you need to let people know about this.  Ensure that you let people  know what the safety initiative is and why it is important.  How can you ensure all departments have the same consistent message?
  4. What communication methods can you use? Ideally, use multiple types of communication and deliver it multiple times.  Put together a strategy as to how you can communicate the same safety messages daily, weekly or monthly.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Gypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA) needed a manual handling training program to train 3,000 workers from five different companies on how to handle plasterboard safely.  In the plasterboard industry, manual handling injuries are the most common of injuries.

The training program was treated as a marketing exercise.  An iconic plasterboard man was designed who featured on all of the communication.  A slogan was also created “Move it – The GBMA Way”.  Both the iconic man and the slogan were a way of reminding workers on a daily basis about the training they had received.  Training centred around a 20 minute training video that also included medical animations to show how the back works.  A trainer’s manual, PowerPoint Slides and employee handbook were used for training.  The employee handbook was A6 size to encourage workers to keep in pockets or lockers for easy reference.  Posters were also designed with the same theme as a daily reminder.

Callout Title
“The training material components were key in engaging roles such as Team Leaders to deliver the training to their teams effectively.   One of the keys to getting engagement with the safety messages on a daily basis has been the handbooks and posters to prompt training information.”.  Gerard Crosswell, GIB NZ
Effective safety communication needs to be very specific to your organisation and tailored to your workplace demographics and culture.

It must integrate with a company’s day to day activities and be of value to the workers watching it.  Slick communication materials are not the answer.
Care needs to be taken so that communication materials are credible and easy to understand.
But more importantly, any safety communication needs to provide daily reminders to staff while they work, for the best results.
How can you best communicate your new safety initiatives?
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How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages Campaign (Part 1)

Written on August 23, 2010 by Marie-Claire Ross in communicating OHS messages, company induction training, health and safety messages, how to communicate workplace safety messages, improving safety standards, OHS safety messages, OHS videos, safety communications in workplace safety, safety messages, safety videos, staff induction videos, staff training videos, training videos, workplace safety communication, workplace safety messages
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The main objective of any safety communication is to change behaviour.

But how does a safety or human resources professional change attitudes towards safety or improve the way people undertake procedures?

How can the safety manager deliver a message that motivates employees, supervisors and administrators to think and act safely?

Advertise your message

The secret – marketing. You need to advertise your messages.

According to Wikipedia, advertising is a form of communication intended to persuade an audience  to purchase or take some action upon products, ideals, or services.  Advertising can change the values, attitudes, and actions of those who see or hear the message.

Think television commercials.  Advertising is a billion dollar industry focused on changing consumers’ habits and beliefs.   And while it is true that television might not be as effective as it used to be, this is only because fewer people are watching it now.  Nevertheless, Government organisations like WorkSafe and VicRoads have used television commercials to successfully change our behaviours and attitudes towards workplace safety and road safety respectively.

Advertising informs and reinforces the need for safe practices.  But advertisers know that you just can’t say your product is the best.  Likewise with safety, you can’t say your company believes in safety and leave it at that.

Cutting through the Clutter

Through the course of a day, people are constantly bombarded with marketing messages.  Estimates vary from around 150 – 5,000 messages per day (personally, I believe it is realistically around 1,000).

Successful ad campaigns have to compete with many other goods and service to grab the attention of people.  In advertising speak, it’s important to “cut through the clutter” and get what is known as “top of mind” awareness.  If you think soft drink and your first thought is Coca Cola, then Coca Cola is top of mind for you when it comes to soft drink.

Your safety messages also need to cut through the clutter and be top of mind.  As a safety professional, your communication messages compete with messages from the production manager pushing for better productivity and co-workers fooling around.   And then there are messages from home that you have to compete with such as family issues, money problems, Facebook and other advertising .

In order to market safety messages, it’s time that safety professionals started to think like marketers.  And this might be hard, as let’s face it, they are a strange group to more linear thinkers like engineers.  However, let’s put on our marketing caps and find out how they try to get into our brain.

Key advertising tactics to consider for marketing safety are:

  • Consistent, clear messaging (includes branding) – Always promote the same standarized safety message and ensure that all departments are aligned with the message and do not send out conflicting information (eg: safety officer tells people to work safely and cautiously, but production manager pushes for speed).
  • Consequences of poor safety – One of they key messages is to get employees really understand that poor safety behaviour puts their health and safety at risk, but also other employees, contractors and customers.  Let them know what effect this will have on the personal life and how it will effect their family.
  • Multiple message placement – This means you have a consistent safety message or theme and you repeat it in multiple places.  It is like the glue that holds these tactics together and is essential in successful advertising.  In advertising campaigns, it is believed that people need to be exposed to a television ad six times before they will absorb the message.  This is why frequency of message equals success in the advertising campaign.

Most safety training programs fall short when it comes to frequency of message. Yet, there are many simple and cost effective ways to do this.

By getting workers to engage in your safety message in different ways (watching it, hearing it, reading it), supervisors can better ensure that more workers receive it.  Different communication methods include a training video that is supplemented with matching posters, email newsletter campaigns, key rings, employee handbooks and toolbox talks.

But how do you develop workplace safety communication?  Read How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages Campaign (Part 2)

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