– by Ainsley Lawrence

– Ainsley Lawrence is a freelance writer with an interest in the way business, technology, and education intersect with the personal. She loves traveling to beautiful places and is frequently lost in a good book.

Keeping a safe workplace is more than just a legal requirement. It’s also a question of ethics. By making all efforts to protect your workforce, you’re showing you take your duty of care seriously. You’ll also find that demonstrating a clear commitment to worker well-being affects recruitment, retention, and ongoing engagement.

There are various approaches you can take to boost the safety and engagement of your workforce. One of the most impactful — and quite fascinating — is to leverage a range of visual tools. With well-informed design choices, you can keep your workforce protected and connected.

Making Safety More Accessible

Inclusion is a vital aspect of your company culture. When your business is welcoming to all workers, they’re more likely to engage meaningfully. An important part of this is making your safety measures more accessible for everyone through visual tools.

Some of the ways you can approach this include:

• Utilizing high-contrast colors in your text and backgrounds. This makes it easier for staff members living with color blindness or dyslexia to read your warning signs and other visual tools. This shouldn’t just relate to physical objects. Also, make certain your digital tools use high contrast for accessible safety warnings.
• Pairing text with images that explain concepts. Some people simply don’t find it easy to grasp concepts purely from text. Place simple and clear instructional images on your materials as well.
• Make certain that signs are visible. This may seem basic, but too many businesses still put warning signs in areas that aren’t well-lit or can be obscured by other items. If possible, use backlit signs that staff can see even in dark rooms.

When it comes to accessibility, it’s always important to be informed by your staff. Yes, basic general steps are important. However, your employees may have nuanced needs and challenges. Reach out to them regularly. Ask them what they find useful about your visual safety materials and what they think you can improve. This not only helps to meet specific needs but also engages them in your efforts.

Tapping Into Visual Psychology

Any old visual tool isn’t enough to enhance safety. When making your choices about these materials, you need to be mindful of how people might respond to them. You want your staff to quickly get the message and take action. Therefore, it’s wise to explore and tap into the psychological components that optimize your visual safety elements.

Colors

Color psychology relates to how colors can influence how people think, feel, and behave. It’s long been recognized that different hues and shades provoke strong emotions and prompt choices. For instance, red is associated with energy and a sense of immediacy. Yellow can improve concentration levels. When designing the visual tools that promote safety and engagement, make color choices that reflect the way you would like your staff to react to them.

TrustSignals

A sign, training video, or digital alert isn’t effective if your staff doesn’t trust the source. It may not be enough for them that the advice is coming from your company alone. This is particularly problematic in our current landscape, which is filled with misinformation on health matters. Therefore, include trust signals in your visual tools. These may be logos of recognized health agencies or training videos led by recognized authorities on the subject.

Simplicity

Overly complex visual tools are likely to minimize how effective they are in encouraging safety and engagement. This also keys into Hick’s law, which tells us it takes people longer to make a decision when they have too many or complex options available. You want your staff to be decisive and sure of themselves. Therefore, keep your signage and other visual materials simple.

Disrupting Biases

Try as we might, biases are a part of the way people think and behave. These are often unconscious and therefore difficult to address. Optimism bias can be particularly problematic when it comes to safety. This is where employees don’t feel a risk is particularly prevalent, contrary to reality. They might also have overconfidence in their abilities, which leads to carelessness.

The good news is that warning signs can help combat optimism bias. Some of the principles you should apply to your visual components include:

• Using multiple warnings. A single sign about an issue can be easily missed or give the impression that the risk isn’t particularly prevalent. Repetition in the form of multiple warning signs reinforces the idea that this is an issue they must pay attention to. Utilize multiple materials, too. Creating a package of signs, fact sheets, and videos can all promote the seriousness of an issue.
• Keep messaging consistent. If you want your staff to take a warning sign seriously, you need to be consistent. Make sure you use the same tone of language and terms on all materials. Keep the colors and images the same. This is less likely to leave the impression that some warnings are less serious than others.

There may be other biases that you need to disrupt that affect employee engagement and safety. Racial or other cultural biases may lead to treating other staff with discrimination or compromising their safety.

Be thorough about assessing these and working with your human resources (HR) department to create the most impactful materials. In some instances, it’s wise to initially trial workers to get a better idea of how their unconscious perspectives influence their decision-making. Our contract-to-hire recruitment services can enable you to get to know workers better before making them a full-time part of your business.

Maintain a Safe and Supportive Culture

Utilizing visual tools can directly impact how engaged and safe your employees are. Take the time to make informed choices about design psychology. Optimize how these tools help boost inclusion and combat dangerous biases. Remember, though, that a genuinely safe and supportive culture requires buy-in from your staff. Find ways to keep them involved with influencing and even leading your safety and engagement efforts.