Posted By Merv Newman Mick, A few points on safety posters. 1. they work for about 30 seconds, offering a reminder of a rule or a dangerous situation. After that they are like the new wall paper in your living room. How often do you actually look at it ? 2. Use them as PART of a H&S communication programme. They represent "passive" communication. people only look at them if they are attracted to them and if they want to look. They must be combined with more "active" communications, particularly face-to-face one-on-one (note the expert use of professional jargon there) or group/team discussions. 3. shift them around at least once a week and change the theme every month. 4. Look at internal resources. Do you have any one capable of producing relevant and interesting safety posters in-house ? Try running a competition with prizes and then nail ALL of them to the wall. Even the loosers.Get the kids/families involved. My wife used to do ours and got paid a fiver a time. Special recognition for any MANAGER who comes up with a good effort. (H&S person will serve, on the shop floor, winning manager with free coffee and biscuits for a whole week !) Merv

Posted By D H Mick - why not make your own? Take pics and put on notice board - small competition - spot the hazards with prizes for the best team efforts. This may also highlight teams that are not interested or not participating? Dave

Posted By Joe McCluskey Mick, I think we need to get off the pedestal a wee bit. I also work in construction and will use any method of getting the message across - be it funny or otherwise. Most people will concede safety is a serious issue to be taken seriously, but if they are at the "pointy end" they need a bit of reminding and if its an ironic statement below an image which stops someone being injured - "just Do It!" So, OK then - how many know where that iconic statement came from? No prizes tho' Joe

Posted By PMW I have seen on construction sites pictures of injuries included in H&S posters. Real life injuries specific to whatever the H&S current topic is. ie - eye protection, photo of an eye injury. Head protection, photo of a head injury. With any long term project, its keeping up the interest that is the problem. I find that workers pay attention to actual photos included in posters, rather than preprinted/preprepared posters. But as previous posts have commented, they only work for a short period of time.

Posted By Joe McCluskey "Just do It" was used by Nike Joe

Posted By Richard Altoft Good poster campaigns at the right time, supported and reinforced in other ways can be invaluable. Less than that and they are a waste of time. Being positive - I managed a very large construction site and our first aid post was staffed by a nurse at all times. She ran a campaign on meningitis (not that relevant to construction but important none the less). One morning a worker arrived with a massive bunch of flowers -- he took a lot of stick carrying them across the construction site -- he gave them to the nurse and walked away. After we found out he had rushed his little lad to A&E the night before instead of waiting to see his GP next morning when the lad seemed off colour. The lad deteriorated on the journey and as very ill when they got to the hospital. He knew enough not to delay taking action from a poster, the lad lived. Enough said R

Posted By C. Hartman Mick, These might appeal to your employees on a more topical level. Click on "12 Posters" on the 'Free Resoucres' page at www.safetybonus.co.uk Chris

Posted By GeoffB4 We carried out a survey during a H&S seminar by putting a 'work in progress no entry' sign up outside the lecture room door, and placed some steps and tools inside the room. It turned out only 20% noticed the sign and no one adhered to it or questioned it. In another case office workers completely ignored asbestos work signs whilst the work was in progress. Agree with Merv, most are a waste of time.

Posted By James K The company I work for usually employes the same contractors to complete work on site so 9 times out of 10 I am dealing with the same subbies from previous projects. I have taken photographs of sites and have turned them into posters and they seem to be working a treat. I have had one previous employee that worked on one of our sites over 12 months ago recently contact me wanting to use one of the posters that he had seen on site in an assignment. Either he has a good memory or the poster stuck in his head. I displayed the posters, not in the usual places such as notice boards etc, but on the rear of toilet doors, over the canteen table, onto the locker doors on site etc etc. I made it my business to change the posters around at least once a week so that everyone saw all posters, as much as they could anyway. So where I agree that the HSA / HSE made posters may not work all of the time, when the content of the poster can be related to be the individual, I think they have a better chance of working. Apologies for the typographical errors but it is Friday and the weekend is closing in. Jim