The best way to keep workers apprised of your company’s safety policies is to schedule regular meetings in order to pass along the most relevant information.
However, let’s be honest: safety meetings can be dry and boring, which doesn’t do much to inspire your workers to pay attention. That’s why we have some surefire ways to make safety meetings fun and interesting for your employees.
Safety meetings are absolutely indispensable in reducing workplace accident and injury rates, but only if the message gets across. A lot of the problem is that delivering new safety protocols to workers can result in dry, boring, unengaging lecture-style meetings that have your employees struggling to stay awake through until the very end.
One way to fight back against boring safety meeting syndrome is to shake up your delivery of the information. Relying on a no-nonsense, just-the-facts approach might get you done quicker and back to business, but it’s certainly not engaging.
Altering your delivery to be more high energy will go a long way to spicing things up. Remember that the goal is for your workers to remember the details of the meeting, and nothing’s quite so memorable as a high energy delivery.
Safety policies and procedures and protocols are put in place to prevent accidents and injuries. Sometimes we lose sight of that, and that means they’re more of an abstraction than they should be. That’s why using storytelling during a safety management meeting to help get your point across can shake up your employees and get them to pay attention to what you’re trying to tell them.
It might be a bit on the gruesome side, but let’s not forget that most safety regulations are written in blood. They’re put in place usually after some sort of accident or incident, so sharing a few real-world stories behind the new safety rules you’re talking about can send the message home. We know this isn’t exactly “fun” to potentially give your employees anxiety, but it is a great way to drive home the very important point that they need to pay attention to these new protocols.
A typical workplace safety meeting is about as enjoyable as getting a cavity filled. Do whatever you can to inject some excitement into your safety presentations and you’ll see a difference in your workers.
Employees that pay attention to safety meetings are less likely to get hurt on the job, after all. Even if you have to scare them straight, it’s better than visiting an employee in the hospital after a bad accident — and that’s the bottom line!