Helping to promote a culture of safety

To mark the World Day for Safety and Health at Work on the 28th of April, we’re looking back at some of the ways we have helped encourage safe behaviour among colleagues at multinational waste-to-product organisation, Renewi.

As an organisation that processes waste in a huge variety of ways, keeping colleagues safe is hugely important to Renewi. Many of the machines they use in their work have the potential to cause injury, or even fatalities. Accordingly, the importance of communicating safety messaging clearly is something we are acutely aware of when working on the organisation’s internal communications magazine, Renews.

Here are the some of the ways we have helped share safety messaging over the years.

Clear messaging

When Renewi set out its company values, safety came first. Their Safe value was summed up succinctly: “We work safely, or not at all.” Colleagues were encouraged to stick to the rules, promote safe behaviour and empowered to confront unsafe behaviour.

This safety-first approach has been reinforced over the years with clear priorities, helping Renewi’s colleagues to take immediate action. These have included safety priorities for the year and life-saving rules for colleagues to follow every day. We have helped to create clear and concise ways to share these messages within the pages of Renews, allowing busy colleagues to absorb key information quickly.

 

 

Engaging content

Of course, simply sharing the message is not enough. It has also been important to encourage colleagues to actively think about their behaviour in interesting or challenging ways. One of our most effective pieces of content on this front was a Where’s Wally-style poster that challenged colleagues to identify a number of safety hazards on an illustration of the site. These included hazards colleagues might encounter when processing waste, while driving in Renewi’s fleet or while working within one of their offices. While it was certainly a fun way to remind colleagues of the importance of safety, it also challenged them to look out for similar hazards in their day-to-day work at Renewi.

Examples of action

Once you have shared your safety messages, it is important to celebrate success. We have used the Renews platform to share and celebrate successes from around the company. We’ve featured pieces on a team member who helped implement solar-powered speedometers on sit to reduce speeding, large-scale practices of firefighting procedures and on Renewi’s annual safety awards. By sharing success stories, colleagues are more likely to keep safe behaviour up.

To learn more about how Wardour can help with your internal communications, pop us an email at hello@wardour.co.uk – we’d love to have a chat with you.