Posters. Policies. Protocols. You’ve ticked every box, but are your people actually safer?

You’ve got the safety manual. You’ve got the PPE signage in the break room. You’ve briefed the shift supervisors and added “zero harm” to the mission statement.

But despite all this, incidents still happen. And often, the root cause isn’t a lack of rules, it’s a lack of connection.

For many organisations, safety messages fall into a pattern: formal, top-down, and designed more for compliance than comprehension. The result? People switch off. They scan the poster. Nod during the briefing. Tick the box on the e-learning module and then go back to what they were doing.

So, what’s going wrong?

1. The language is too formal

“Adherence to protocols is mandatory for the mitigation of identified risks” might sound fine in a boardroom setting, but on a factory floor or mine site, it’s noise.

Frontline employees respond better to clear, conversational language that respects their intelligence without drowning them in jargon.

2. The message is buried in noise

When every wall is covered in posters, and every week comes with a new alert, it’s easy for important safety messages to get lost in the noise.

Over-communication isn’t always better, especially when there’s no prioritisation or reinforcement.

What helps:

  • Highlight the one behaviour that matters most today.
  • Reinforce it consistently across channels like SMS, app alerts, and shift briefings.
  • Use repetition with variation: same message, said differently.

3. It’s not two-way

Safety communication is often a monologue. But the best safety cultures are built on dialogue where workers can raise concerns, suggest improvements, or flag near misses in real time.

Shift from telling to listening: Give employees an easy, confidential way to report risks or make suggestions via their mobile phone. You’ll get better insight and build more trust.

4. It doesn’t feel personal

People don’t act on policies. They act on stories. On things that hit close to home. A faceless message about “minimising risk” won’t move people. But a supervisor saying, “I don’t want to make that call to your family”, does.

Make it human:

  • Share real stories of close calls and lessons learnt.
  • Let peers speak. A voice note from a colleague hits harder than a laminated poster.
  • Show empathy, not just enforcement.5. It’s not reaching the people who need it most

5. It’s not reaching the people who need it most

If your safety messages rely on email or printed memos, your frontline teams may be missing them altogether.
Reach them where they are. Use mobile-first channels that don’t require email logins or desktop access. Make sure messages are readable on a basic feature phone, not just a smartphone.

At Wyzetalk, we help organisations bridge the gap between safety intention and safety action. Our platform enables real-time, two-way communication even in the most remote and high-risk environments.