How comms professionals should talk about safety
Every October, workplaces across Australia put on their high-vis commitment to “Safe Work Month.” Posters go up, toolbox talks get scheduled, and inboxes fill with reminders about procedures and policies, but for many workers, the messages feel predictable, repetitive and sometimes, irrelevant.
If the ultimate goal of safety communication is to change behaviour and prevent harm, then we have to ask: Is the way we’re talking about safety really working?
The statistics suggest otherwise. Between 2003 and 2022, over 3,700 Australians lost their lives at work. During the same period, more than 1.2 million people made a serious workers’ compensation claim. Behind each number is a family, a community, and a workplace forever changed.
How traditional comms fails to address safety
Walk into almost any workplace and you’ll find a wall covered in laminated safety alerts or policy updates. They’re often packed with technical language, colour-coded charts, and plenty of bold text in red. It’s the kind of communication that looks serious but rarely gets remembered.
Here’s why:
It speaks to compliance, not people.
Safety alerts are often written for auditors and legal teams rather than the people they’re supposed to protect.It assumes information equals action.
Just because you’ve told someone about a hazard doesn’t mean they’ll change their behaviour.It’s designed for one audience only.
In diverse workplaces, where literacy levels, language backgrounds, and on-the-job experience vary widely, one style of communication simply doesn’t cut it.
The result: workers tune out.
Plus, we’re not wired to read big bulletins
Neuroscience shows that we don’t retain lists of instructions or statistics very well. What we do remember are stories, emotions, and moments that made us laugh or feel something.
Think back to your own training experiences. Are you more likely to recall the technical slide deck with incident rates, or the personal story someone told about a near miss that changed how they approached their job? Chances are, it’s the story.
Humour works the same way. When we laugh, our brains release dopamine, which helps cement memories. A well-timed joke or relatable cartoon about a safety hazard can be far more effective than a stern warning.
Connection, not compliance
Reimagining safety communication doesn’t mean making light of serious issues. It means meeting people where they are. That could mean:
Writing alerts at an accessible reading level rather than in ‘legalese’ (aka, random legal jargon!)
Using visuals like cartoons, animations, or short videos instead of lengthy memos
Sharing historical examples of safety failures (‘On this day in safety’) to make the lessons stick
Involving branding and communications teams to create messages that look and feel engaging.
This shift requires courage, especially in organisations where the default is to “play it safe” with corporate templates. The truth is, safe doesn’t always mean effective. In fact, history is full of lessons we seem doomed to repeat. Mining disasters, transport accidents, industrial fires, all have common threads like ignored warnings, poor communication, or overconfidence in systems.
What leaders need to know
The biggest barrier to changing how we talk about safety is usually leadership. Leaders and legal teams worry that humour trivialises risk or that plain language won’t hold up in court, but safety communication isn’t an either/or choice between compliance and connection. It can and should be both, and strong governance frameworks can sit alongside engaging, memorable messaging. In fact, the two strengthen each other.
Workers don’t need more reminders that safety is important: they need communication that actually makes them stop, think, and act differently, because in the end, safety is about people going home at the end of the day. Every day.
