Reaching Every Employee: An Industrial Safety Communication Program

It is hard to imagine today's world without many different forms of communication: radio and TV, advertising posters and billboards, massive banners, promoters with flyers, various open seminars, smartphones, the internet, and much more.

Most often, these tools are used by marketers to promote products or ideas. In safety, however, the most familiar form of communication is various safety signs, prohibitory or warning plates, and various posters on "safety techniques." But communication to promote safety as a Value is much less common.

2023 was declared the Year of Safety at OTEKO. Under this aegis, we launched a communication program.

I will tell you about some of the areas of the communication program that we have implemented and continue to actively develop.

First, about the visual program. During safety audits, we often noticed that while visualization of safety rules was in order, there was no systematic visualization to promote safety as a Value — only initiatives from department heads, such as their own versions of info boards, various posters with slogans from the internet, and other images. We decided to take a systematic approach — on the one hand, to develop a unified format for safety stands, and on the other, to install a series of thematic safety billboards. With the information stands, everything was quite simple — having previous experience in implementing similar solutions, we already knew what we needed to see on these boards. Together with the structural units, we determined the installation locations and quantities and put them into operation. To keep the information up to date, we created a special electronic resource where information is posted by category. Thus, the manager or the person responsible for filling the stand always has fresh information for each of the "categories" on the board.

But with billboards, everything was not so simple. In addition to catchy slogans, we had to answer the question — how to make the image on the billboard leave an emotional mark on every employee? We did not want to resort to "negative" messages — with accident victims, various injuries, etc. We decided to combine safety with the most precious thing in many people's lives — children. Our employees, together with their children, participated in thematic photo shoots. We sewed work clothes for the kids and selected PPE. The banners were placed on the Company's territory.

The second, no less interesting form of communication and engagement that we began practicing in 2023 and continue to this day is conducting various contests and competitions: a Safety Contact contest, a children's creativity contest on the theme "My parents follow the cardinal rules," a "Best in Industrial Safety" contest, etc.

The thematic game relay "Safe Port" gained particular popularity and mass participation. In 2023, we held this event for the first time, with more than 100 employees participating. A team of participants was formed from each function. The teams completed timed quest stations: hazard identification, behavioral audit, victim evacuation and first aid, waste sorting, incident investigation puzzles, use of primary fire extinguishing equipment, etc.

Based on the results of the relay, the winners are awarded cups, medals, and valuable prizes; they are written about in the corporate newspaper (which, by the way, is also a form of communication) and shown on corporate TV.

But we, of course, do not limit ourselves to these areas only. In tandem with the internal communications department, we work on information support for all important safety events. For example, a series of interviews and videos on the Cardinal Safety Rules, which I wrote about earlier, thematic videos on behavioral audits, video stories in the format of lessons learned from incidents, and much more. In the near future, we plan to create a series of programs in an interview format with accident victims, but more on that in future articles.