Name: Improving Communication for Frontline Safety
Uploaded: 2024-08-21
Duration: 1:37
Channel: Mark McDermott
Description: Communication teams often imagine how work is done rather than understanding actual frontline reality. This creates a gap—like health and safety messaging that doesn't account for practical constraints workers face. Giving local managers autonomy over messaging helps, as they see work as it's actually done, not as it's imagined from HQ. Their messages resonate far more effectively.

Communication teams often imagine how work is done rather than understanding actual frontline reality. This creates a gap—like health and safety messaging that doesn't account for practical constraints workers face. Giving local managers autonomy over messaging helps, as they see work as it's actually done, not as it's imagined from HQ. Their messages resonate far more effectively.

Improving Communication for Frontline Safety

One of the big communication challenges that we all have is that the people who are responsible for doing the communication are often not actually on the front line doing the work themselves. So when they are considering a message, let's say a health and safety message, they are imagining how that work is being done and then pushing a health and safety message against it. So this is known as workers imagined versus workers done. On the front line, you may realize that actually having these big bulky gloves and visor on might make it difficult to do the task and to do the task on time. So people will take shortcuts by either adjusting the equipment or removing the equipment to actually get the work done and therefore making it less safe and having that accident. You've got this kind of broken loop, which is we're saying people don't do this or do this instead, but it's not actually being understood exactly what that task involves. If we had a greater understanding of what was really going on on the front line, we could adjust that messaging. And when it comes to screens, this is why I like the idea of giving local managers some autonomy on the messages that they're sending because those local people will see work as done, not how it's imagined to be in their environment. So the messaging that they might be able to come up with about why not taking that shortcut or an alternative would resonate harder than someone back in HQ who's having to imagine what's going on, which is no simple task, but their message is not going to land anywhere near as strongly.

Video

Improving Communication for Frontline Safety

Key Takeaways