Why Make Safety Fun?

. . . because it is a powerful key to getting employees involved in your safety program.

It’s a shame that safety programs, particularly the training and communication elements are notoriously boring. There’s no need for it, because humans have a deep and powerful drive to remain safe. They will pay attention to safety and health promotions in all their forms provided they are pleasing to the senses. Go one step further and make your safety program fun and not only will they pay attention but your employees will want to get involved!  I’ve seen it happen dozens of times.

As a professional speaker who specializes in making safety programs fun and helping people attack stress I’ve worked with dozens of companies—most with good to spectacular safety programs (a company will a poor program will rarely be willing to pay for a motivational safety speaker because they don’t put the time and money in to their program to make it decent) and I’ve found there are three common characteristics to spectacular safety programs:

1. The leaders in the organization are committed to spending the resources necessary to continually improve their safety program.

2. Safety is an intrinsic part of all work processes and

3. New and innovative ways are used to get and keep safety and health into the minds of every employee. Which means making safety fun! (Fun isn’t the same as play. The word fun means “energetic enjoyment.”)

When you make your safety meetings, training sessions, annual safety days, etc. fun you’ll get spectacular results.  Here are three tips:

1. Always lead with benefits. People don’t care about company rules or statistics nearly as much as they care about themselves. Everyone wants to know what’s in it for him or her. Early on in your safety messages and sessions tell why this is going to benefit your audience.

2. Appeal to the senses. How do the big promotional firms get us to buy things? Not with logic. They use emotional hooks. That’s what you should do too, because it works. Too often safety promotion is no more than long strings of logical (and boring) ideas.

3. Find out what other companies do. Only don’t limit your search to your own industry.  You may have run out ideas on how to spice up your safety program but I promise you there are thousands of new tactics out there.

Making safety fun not only helps get your employees involved in your safety program, but it will improve your profits by reducing accidents—always a good thing.