Hi Tittensor26376,
This is a cut and paste from a book I wrote which may help with your situation, sorry if im teaching you to suck eggs-
Communicating the safety message is no easy task, but crucial to creating a safe and healthy place to work. Your safety message will have the power to help prevent injuries and illness, so I am sure you would agree that it is something that needs to be taken seriously.
Like any other part of the business, health and safety deserves the time and effort required to ensure that the message is clear, engaging, positive and informative. Failure to communicate about health and safety makes it become a subject that employees think they don’t need to be concerned about. Poor communication will have a negative effect on health and safety:
You may find this hard to believe (tongue in cheek) but not many people find health and safety interesting. You know the type, you’re at a party and someone says-
“What do you do for a living?”
“I’m a health and safety manager”
And they politely change the subject. Could be worse though, you could say you’re an estate agent.
It’s much the same at work, if you let it stay that way. So it’s important that you understand your audience, how to get them engaged and how to keep them engaged. Communication is a two-way thing so you need to listen as well as talk. It can be a real pain at times, you know, the guy your afraid to walk past because he or she always has a problem but, it’s important to listen to their concerns no matter how small.
Knowledge is power as someone once said. Health and safety is a serious business, but coming across all serious all the time is only going to get you so far and you will become a bore and we have enough of those in health and safety. Try to communicate positively in a language that the particular target understands. It’s no-good quoting bits of the Health and Safety Act to someone who has no knowledge of the subject and has no need to know. So it is important to be aware of any barriers that may prevent or hinder your health and safety message. While you may be used to the safety jargon and legislation, bear in mind that most employees won’t be. Employees will only be able to absorb so much, so make sure you prioritise your messages and even better, put a plan in place on what you are going to communicate.
I was carrying out a survey on a company and the health and safety manager tried to blind me and others around me by quoting section after section of the H&S Act and regulation after regulation. As I told him, people don’t want to know all that, they just want to know how to work safely, it’s like buying a TV licence, you know you have to have one but you don’t need to know what Act requires you to have one.
Try to communicate the good things that have been done along with future goals and use “we” instead of “I”. Make it real for them and give them examples and don’t forget, a little bit of humour goes a long way. Be very clear with your communication. If your message lacks clarity and is confusing, an employee may not actually hear what you had intended them to hear and your message will have been wasted. If expectations are not clearly defined, then you may have the opposite result to your message. Be sure to express clearly what result you expect. Employees who confide in you with their concerns deserve to be listened to and not just “heard”. If you communicate a safety message without having listened to employees, then the communication is incomplete and will not be successful.
The following are a few examples on how to communicate the safety massage-
- Send a monthly newsletter via email – if your employees have an email address, this is a great way of popping into their inbox once a month to keep them up to date on what’s happening in the world of health and safety. Keep it short, interesting and fun.
I loved compiling monthly newsletters and always received positive comments. If I ever missed a month or was late publishing I always got asked “Where’s the Newsletter?”
Put some health and safety notice boards, up in prominent positions. When I say health and safety, keep them to just that, don’t let them be taken over by other information.
Put up the biggest notice-boards practicable, the bigger the better, and in the right places, on the shop floor, in the canteen, in the foyer, where visitors can see them. Fill them with information but, keep it, in the main, light hearted and interesting. Use posters, cartoons and photos.
Make some spelling mistakes in some of the information. When someone tells you that you have made a mistake, and they will, you will know they have read the information.
If you have nothing new to put on the board, change the information around and make sure people see you doing this. Give it a couple of minutes and a small crowd will gather to see what’s new; nothing but they won’t know that.
-Toolbox talks – these off the cuff, non-formal meetings can work really well in the workplace. Try and make it a routine talk, covering a different but relevant topic each week/month. Keep them short but again interesting.
-Share case studies or incident reports. It’s important for employees to understand the reality of what happens when safety goes wrong. When you share information about real events and real happenings, employees are more likely to take notice.
Be careful on the graphics, I once had an employee faint when I posted a picture, obtained from the internet, of a guy who had nailed one of his testicles to a roof truss when using a nail gun.
-Take pictures of safe actions. While it might be tempting to highlight the unsafe actions, safe actions are important too and it’s nice to promote the positive actions that employees are taking every day to stay safe. A picture is worth a thousand words. You could include these in your newsletter.
The most important thing is to remember the potential and the power of good communication. Don’t underestimate this power. Safety is not just another part of your business; it’s about showing you care for the people and showing them they are worth it. If you want employees to buy into health and safety, get good at communicating the safety message, it will pay dividends.