Storytelling is a powerful educational tool. Narratives help people remember important information, grounding facts and advice in reality. Stories often feel more impactful than fact sheets and out-of-context rules. When safety is concerned, storytelling allows for vicarious learning, allowing listeners to learn lessons from someone else’s close calls and incidents without having to suffer the direct consequences. Every safety story shared is a free lesson that can help someone recognize hazards, avoid mistakes or make better decisions in the future. But that’s not the only thing they’re good for. The act of telling and listening to stories can also strengthen trust and support open communication between workers and safety professionals.
Every employee comes to work with their own personal ambitions, priorities, responsibilities and motivations. And those things that make everyone unique can also make it tough to understand what each individual finds important. With four different generations making up the current labor force—baby boomers, Gen Xers, millennials and Generation Z—those personal aspirations and expectations make up a wide spectrum of experiences. With that said, learning what makes someone tick can be one of the most reliable ways to appeal to their heart and mind when it comes to safety.
Sharing safety stories from outside the workplace can provide a glimpse into the activities, responsibilities and concerns that shape workers’ daily lives; the goals they’re working towards, the hobbies that keep them busy, their family situation and its demands. Through active listening, safety professionals can discover what motivates folks to stay safe. They can also learn what long-term personal success looks like from each individual’s perspective—whether they’re supporting a family, saving for a home or for school, paying down debt, pursuing a demanding hobby, advancing in their career or planning an active retirement.
Stories about off-the-job safety can also reveal practical information that could influence workplace performance. A story about helping a child learn to ride a bicycle may provide insight into a worker’s family situation. A discussion about a long commute can highlight transportation challenges and seasonal fatigue risks for your workforce. Stories about home improvement projects, recreational activities or volunteer work can reveal the human factors that workers encounter most often, whether it’s time pressure, distraction, complacency or exhaustion.
Over time, these conversations can help safety professionals better understand both the short-term and long-term goals that influence workers’ decisions and behaviors. And those insights can help when setting goals, motivating workers, and fine-tuning safety training so that it makes the most sense to the people receiving it.
Of course, the first step is always the most difficult when it comes to developing a culture of safety. An excellent kick-off point is simply encouraging conversations about safety at home and on the road:
- Ask workers for safety stories after weekends, holidays or time off. In addition to sharing what they do in their personal time, this tactic gets folks thinking about safety in their everyday lives.
- Invite discussion about driving experiences, near misses on the road or lessons they learned during travel. Driving is one of the most dangerous activities most people do on a regular basis. Stories that take place in transit illustrate what a worker’s morning or evening routine is like, and they also keep them alert to road risks.
- Encourage stories involving family members, roommates and friends. Whether it’s teaching children about safety, caring for aging parents, helping loved ones avoid injuries or navigating shared living conditions, getting folks talking about how the people in their lives navigate risk can help clarify their role in their community’s safety and reinforce important 24/7 safety messages.
By prompting these specific types of conversations at work, safety professionals can create meaningful connections while getting to know workers better and reinforcing safety principles. That’s a lot of benefits from one strategy. So the next time you’re talking about safety, use stories from outside the workplace as an opportunity to get to know your people better. The insights you gain can strengthen relationships, improve communication and make your safety efforts more relevant and effective.