How to cultivate a safety-first culture

Safe and healthy work environments are essential for our wellbeing. When we feel physically and psychologically safe at work, we are more likely to feel engaged, motivated and can thrive in our roles.

To maintain a safe workplace, businesses need to ensure that employees always keep health & safety guidance front of mind. Yet it can be difficult to ensure that more educational, safety-focused messaging cuts through the noise of other internal comms, especially across large organisations.

It’s also important that health & safety communications are inclusive to ensure that the message reaches every person in the organisation. Businesses need to use plain, accessible language that is easy to understand, but still be able to engage the audience.

To understand how to strike the balance in your safety comms, here’s how we approached our award-winning health & safety campaign for DHL Supply Chain.

Case study: Motivating DHL Supply Chain employees to put safety first

Located across 60 countries with diverse languages and cultures, DHL Supply Chain were keen to elevate and standardise health & safety across their business – to make sure it was as important as other key initiatives.

They wanted to find a way to foster safe behaviours, responsibility and adherence to best practices across all countries, cultures, and languages.

We were tasked with refreshing their messaging around health & safety, emphasising that safety is a collective responsibility involving all employees. They needed a global standardized framework, messaging and toolkit for communications, to better support their safety-first culture.

So, how did we motivate employees to put safety first for themselves and each other?

1. Kept it simple

To work across 60 countries, we needed an idea that was simple, memorable, culturally appropriate and easy to understand.

2. Got hands on

We developed “Our Safety is in Our Hands” to convey that all employees are accountable for their own safety and that of their colleagues.

3. World Safety Day launch

We created reference pocket guides, a concise explainer video, warehouse posters, and assets for an internal app to spread the message across the workforce.

4. Monthly focus

To fully embed the message, we rolled out a 12-month campaign focusing on a different health & safety element each month – including topics such as wellbeing and mental health, personal safety, and transport safety.

As a result of the campaign, DHL Supply Chain observed a significant cultural shift which has led to improved health & safety practices right across their business.

Let’s talk about elevating health & safety comms and putting wellbeing first at your workplace.