You’ve got to take a RISK with your safety communications❗ 👈

I am not a #safetyprofessional but I have worked on many #healthandsafety projects for numerous companies, across many different industries. So, I have a bit of experience dealing with the challenges of communicating safety.

And I believe one of the main challenges is keeping safety relevant and being able to communicate in an effective, engaging, and productive style.

If YOU share this viewpoint, then you have TWO options:

1) You can do as you’ve always done and get similar results.

Or,

2) You can take a RISK, do something different, and see what the effects are.

Now, advocating for #safety people to take risks may not be the best plan, but hear me out…

When I made ‘Where’s Barry?’ for Toyota I took a RISK.

I decided I would work for free so the budget could be used to create a piece of work that would be used to showcase my filmmaking capabilities. Using high-end video production and elaborate storytelling techniques to communicate safety was not unique, but it wasn’t the norm.

Safety videos did not have a good reputation. They still don’t.

But I believed (and still do!) that engaging and entertaining a safety audience is key to creating effective safety messages. So, I worked on the Toyota job for free to prove it.

That could be considered a risk. But it was a calculated risk.
And I didn’t ask anyone else to shoulder that risk. ↩

· Every person who worked on ‘Where’s Barry?’ was paid their full day rate and expenses. 💰 🍕
· The film was designed to achieve the client’s goals and work in conjunction with a live training event. 🚘 📈
· I had a proven track record of creating drama productions, so I had the skills to pull it off. 📽 🖥

Now, could it have gone wrong?

Yeah, but not catastrophically. An outcome no more likely than any other video production.

If ‘Where’s Barry?’ hadn’t been as good as it was, everyone involved would still have been paid and the client would still have communicated their safety messages, just less effectively. Personally, I would have been devastated that I wasn’t as capable as I thought, but everyone else would have moved on.

Business as usual.

But it did work.
I proved my theory.
The results exceeded the client’s expectations.
And led to more opportunities to create ground-breaking safety videos.

Everybody won.

The calculated risk paid off.
In my experience, they normally do.
Because calculated risks aren’t that risky.
They’re just a different approach based on a belief that there’s another way.

So, if you struggle to engage your workforce with safety, or think your safety culture need invigorating, take that risk.

Do it differently.

Whatever the outcome, you’ll have learnt something.

And if you need some help risk-assessing your approach, you know where to find me!

#safetyculture #safetytraining #safetyfirst #healthandsafety #corporatefilm #corporatevideo