4 Easy Steps to Running an Effective Health & Safety Campaign

Are you often overwhelmed with how you can raise the profile of health and safety in your business? It may be time for you to organise an awareness- raising event so that you can reach the maximum amount of people in the shortest time frame.

The great news is, health and safety campaigns do not have to cost much or be time consuming. Below we walk you through 4 easy steps to running an effective health and safety campaign.

Step 1. What will your campaign be?

When running a health and safety campaign, you should focus on a specific issue so make sure you are selective about the subject you want to cover. What is it you want to focus on? Ensure that it is relevant to your workplace and to your employees.

How should you select your topic of choice?

• Do you want to be proactive when it comes to health and safety matters? The enforcing authorities often run awareness and enforcement campaigns. Could you choose a topic that aligns with their safety campaigns? If you suddenly receive an enforcement visit, you will be more than prepared. These national campaigns run due to there being a nationally identified problem and are often a great place to start.
• The enforcing authorities’ campaigns are usually promoted through trade bodies and associations. This means that national campaigns often come with promotional material which could prove to be extremely useful in helping reinforce the key messages to your workforce.
• Alternatively, you could choose a topic which relates to a specific problem which may have been identified within your individual workplace. This could be an accident, near-miss, or feedback from any recent inspections. You can then review the data which is relevant to this.
• Why not partner up with another business and combine your campaign with them? You can also involve any contractors too.

When you have your topic, think about a title for your campaign. Make it catchy and memorable. 

Step 2. Planning your campaign

Ensure that you have a clear objective for your campaign. Don’t forget, objectives should be SMART and should be based on your hoped outcome.

When you are planning your campaign, make sure the theme of it is clear and consistent throughout with your messaging. You should also plan ahead when it comes to resources- what will you need and require? Try to get these organised in advance.

Step 3. The delivery of your campaign

As with any campaign, it is essential that your workforce engages with it. Keep your campaign interesting by offering a variety of delivery methods.

You should also think about how long you want to run it for and when the best time will be for engagement. In order to prevent as much disruption from the working day as possible, time the training events.

• Make posters- these are easy and quick to produce and can help to reinforce any messages
• Health and Safety newsletters- these are more engaging than posters but will take more time to produce. Keep them quick and easy to read and distribute to your entire workforce. You can use the newsletter to list accidents, common hazards and proactive actions which your workforce can take. Other ideas could be a cartoon in which they have to spot the hazard, or a quiz.
• Conduct workplace inspections- use high-profile inspections to support the objectives. Senior staff could conduct the inspection, which will help them to connect with the work environment and practises.
• Audits- use these alongside inspections.
• Surveys- This should be used at the planning stage so that you can flag up potential problems.
• Exhibitions- Do you want a strong visual impact? Do you wish to discuss the topics? Set allocated times for employees to stop work and attend. Hand out plenty of HSE leaflets and visual materials and ensure it is staffed, so that questions can be asked.
• Training sessions- this provides face-to-face communication on the topic.
• Get the safety representatives on board- Give them plenty of support and ensure that they have been full trained and briefed on the topic.
• Walking the ‘shop floor’- Encourage senior management to walk the ‘shop floor’ and discuss the campaign.
• Review risk assessments- combine the campaign with a formal risk assessment review.
• Quizzes and competitions- make the campaign fun for your workforce.

Step 4. Evaluate your campaign

Once the campaign has concluded, evaluate the effectiveness of it. This will help you with future campaigns. What worked? What did people not engage with so well? Use both quantitative and qualitative data. With this background knowledge, your campaigns will go from strength to strength and soon become second nature to plan!

If you would like to discuss a health and safety campaign with us, then get in touch today.