Hey there ๐,
Who is the audience for your safety work?
- The workers? ๐ทโโ๏ธ
- The boss? ๐
- The board? ๐ข
Letโs zoom in on the workers youโre helping keep safe. What do you know about them?
- What are their ages? ๐ง๐ถ
- What languages do they speak? ๐ฃ๏ธ๐
- Do they have kids? ๐จโ๐ฉโ๐งโ๐ฆ
- How long have they been at the company? โณ
These are just a handful of insights about your audience that you can use to make the work you do in safety as effective as possible.
I see so many well-intended safety campaigns that have had an enormous amount of effort, money, and energy put into them that arenโt going to change anyoneโs behaviour because theyโre boring, too academic, or arenโt designed in a way to be easily understood by the audience.
Next time youโre planning your safety work, spend some time really exploring โwho is this for?โ Your safety efforts will be better for it. ๐
Need some help knowing exactly who your safety audience is? Weโd love to help. ๐
Libby & the SafetySocial team.
This Week’s Best of…
Podcasts
Safety Labs:ย The Safety Professionโs Disconnect Between Process and Purpose
Despite this boring title, this is a great interview Greg Smith, workplace lawyer, and author of “Paper Safe“.
He discusses the complexities of safety management, describing it as a “wicked problem” with no definitive solutions. He emphasises the disconnect between process and purpose in safety frameworks and the unintended consequences of well-intentioned initiatives.
“…if you are trying to get someone to do something when they are under huge amounts of pressure, don’t have wishful thinking about that. Think about the real people in the world…it’s really easy for us to be blinded by the idealistic.
We’ve designed the perfect rule, the perfect control, and we’re just going to implement a job done. Think about things from their perspectives, and think about, don’t [be] wishful. There’s no place for wishful thinking, particularly a safety critical industry.
So think not about what we would like people to do, but what they’re likely to do, and then we can design around the realities of the world, rather than some sort of fictional, idealised, stylised version of it….”
Safety in The Wild
Spotted a fantastic example of innovation in Melbourne that is a great example of understanding your audience.
As we all navigate our busy streets, often glued to our smartphones, Melbourne has cleverly installed walk indicators right in our line of sight.
This ingenious move ensures safety and convenience intersect exactly where we need them most.
Video here.
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