With October comes National Safe Work Month 2024 – that time of the year where regulators and organisations alike release new campaigns and initiatives to promote safe and healthy workplaces. In line with the theme this year, that ‘Safety at work is part of the everyday’, regulators including WHSQ are providing events and resources aimed at this target.
While these annual campaigns certainly have merit, sometimes there is a tendency to take and use easily accessible components without checking whether there is an alignment with the organisation’s workplace risks, operational context or, critically, whether the intended audience is able to identify and understand the campaign and its objectives.
As is the case with any safety improvement, safety change or promotion, it’s important to ensure that the communication is hitting the mark with the intended audience, that there are (ideally) no distracting voices undermining the message and, most importantly, that the communication is driving the desired change.
Management, workers and Safety professionals need to talk the same language, and this language needs to resonate with workers. The delivery must have some passion and enthusiasm, and it may need to be colourful, and it may need to draw off ‘war stories’ that grab attention to illustrate the concern. These are all key delivery strategies that need to be considered when thinking about the communication process.
With all of the campaigning and communications that we will hear regarding Safety Month, hopefully there will be elements that strike a chord with Managers and workers, providing them with the ‘penny-dropping’ realisations that they can utilise to drive improvements, either in their own practices or within their teams or workplaces.
Please contact QRMC for more information.
