Complacency is the enemy of engagement. When we become used to safety messaging in our lives, important information tends to go unnoticed and we slip into autopilot mode. We look but don’t see. We act without thinking. We let our comfort with our daily routine obscure hazards and invite other human factors into our work. 

Complacency is a dangerous state to be in because it’s difficult to detect and even harder to dispel, requiring purposeful habit building to tamp down. Thankfully, in a recent SafeStart Lunch and Learn presentation, SNF Chemtall’s Safety and Training Supervisor Devron Kelso demonstrated some techniques borrowed from the world of guerilla marketing that he’s used to supercharge engagement at his facility and achieve encouraging safety results.

In his presentation, Kelso defines guerilla marketing as “an advertising strategy using surprise and/or unconventional interactions to promote something.” Using examples of corporate street art that advertises fast food and paper towels, he shows how introducing variation into familiar routines can force people to notice things they normally take for granted.

The techniques he devised are creative twists on familiar things—riffs on safety posters, instructional videos and storytelling—and they had massive effects on his workforce. The department where Kelso works saw a significant drop in total incidents in regard to both safety and quality. Operator participation, meanwhile, shot up significantly, with near-miss reporting accelerating in the wake of Kelso’s creative initiatives.

“Not only did operator participation increase,” he said, “but trust in the safety department—trust in things getting fixed—increased as well, which helped cultivate a good safety climate.”

And here’s the best news: you can follow Kelso’s example. Safety is a collective project. If you see something working for someone like Kelso, and he’s showing you how he got those results, then you can do what he did. Here are some guerilla marketing safety techniques you can use in your workplace to increase engagement, improve participation and address human factors.

Dynamic signage

Signage is prone to complacency: the ‘set it and forget it’ aspect of labeling can be a little too literal. For example, Kelso’s facility had Simpsons-themed safety posters that, while fun and entertaining, became so familiar that they were more like old wallpaper than helpful safety signage. As safety industry thought leader Ray Prest put it when discussing complacency in HazCom: “Once safety labels have become visual white noise, it’s up to frontline leaders to find new ways to keep every worker thinking about their HazCom training.” The same can be said of any safety bulletin.

Kelso cut through that white noise and managed to find a safety signal by taking a page from street team music promoters and graffiti artists. His solution was to create and distribute magnetized signs that workers could place in locations around the facility where they noticed the risk of a critical error. If an employee encountered a door that potentially opened into the line of fire of a lift truck, they would slap a magnet on the door warning: “Line of fire.” If they almost had a fall, they would place a sign in view of the hazard saying: “BTG potential” for balance, traction, and grip risks.

These magnetic notes are a simple concept with great promise when it comes to fighting complacency. Their dynamic placement keeps workers aware of their familiar surroundings and they require workers who encounter them to reflect on risks they see. As Kelso puts it, “We were integrating them with the stories people were telling.”

When workers told stories about their near misses and then got to participate in making the workplace safer with this dynamic signage, they started to feel like they were playing a role in keeping others safe. By channeling his guerilla marketing philosophy, Kelso managed to turn safety labeling into an engaging form of workplace communication.

Popular language

We often highlight the importance of a common language in safety. But common languages draw from more than just shared terminology about hazards, safeguards and human factors. One of the biggest influences on the ways we talk to one another is entertainment media. Music, film and TV constantly introduce new words and usages into our conversations, and media of all types provide common touchstones for workers to relate to one another. Entertainment can provide popular models through which we understand our own experiences. At SNF Chemtall, Kelso turned this common cultural language to his advantage.

In Kelso’s Lunch and Learn video, he explains: “I said, ‘I want to get a little crazy. I want to explore my creativity a little bit and see if they’ll let me get away with some stuff.’ So I asked my boss if I could borrow the camera from marketing. I wanted to make a SafeStart music video.”

Parodying Coolio’s 1995 Grammy Award-winning “Gangsta’s Paradise,” Kelso rapped over elaborate scenarios acted out by workers on his site. The video showed SNF employees experiencing human factors, illustrating how they led to critical errors, near misses and incidents, as well as how to reduce the risks being shown. The result was immediately successful. He went on to spoof Rober Zemeckis’ Back to the Future films in order to promote t-shirt giveaways, which he used as touch points to engage workers in safety discussions that reinforced key human factors management concepts. His sense of humor and clear enthusiasm for safety is infectious in these videos, so it’s no surprise folks at SNF are demanding more. And even better: the video production process made safety personal for the employees who participated as actors.

You don’t have to put yourself through film school to follow in Kelso’s footsteps. There are multiple ways to discuss safety that can make it as engaging as the rest of our lives, which are saturated with entertainment media. By using the common language of humor and familiar references, Kelso isn’t just communicating important safety messages, he’s telling everyone that safety is just as much a part of our lives as our favorite music videos. And it’s not just a work thing, safety is 24/7.

Taking it home

That last point is crucial and worth repeating: safety is 24/7. At work, on the road, at home—anywhere you interact with the world and are subject to human factors, you will also experience some level of risk. In 2022, 86% of medically consulted injuries suffered by workers happened off the job. Worker deaths, meanwhile, occurred off the job more frequently by a factor of 24, accounting for 95% of fatalities. Most of that misfortune—55% of off-the-job injuries and deaths—happened at home. For a safety leader, this is a conundrum; how do you keep employees safe in environments where you have zero direct influence?

Kelso found a way to extend his engaged safety culture to the hazardous home environment by introducing the aptly named “Take it Home” Program. This initiative encouraged employees to get family members to tell safety stories. Initially, this was facilitated through in-person events like a department picnic, but now the stories are shared on video and uploaded to the company’s online portal, SNF Connect. Folks with exemplary safety stories are given recognition and rewarded with prizes.

Rules and regulations play an important role on worksites, but with so many incidents happening at home, the challenge of keeping workers safe after the whistle blows comes down to engagement. Storytelling is one of the best ways to share safety knowledge and reflect on the role dangerous human factors play in our lives. By incentivizing non-employees to participate in work safety initiatives like “Take it Home,” Kelso is not only building a safer community but also putting SNF Chemtall workers in safer environments once they clock out. If a worker’s family is taking safety seriously then their home is seriously safe.

Keeping it real

While Kelso’s definition of guerilla marketing runs on surprise and unconventional interactions, there is a third element that is immediately apparent when watching his presentation: enthusiasm. The initiatives he introduced to SNF Chemtall all required a significant personal investment of creative energy, and he admits it hasn’t always been easy. By stoking engagement through his entertaining programs he set a high benchmark for himself that he had to continually meet. 

As he said, “It was my job to motivate people in safety, but it’s no one’s job to motivate me.”

For Kelso, motivation comes from the positive feedback he sees in the increasing levels of engagement. He is energized by “playing Santa Claus” and seeing the smiles on workers’ faces when he delivers prizes for their participation in safety initiatives. But most of all he is motivated by his family.

“My job is to keep everyone else safe. If everyone else is safe, that means they’re safe around me. Which means I get to go home safe,” he says.

And that’s a great reminder for those who would follow Kelso’s example. Engagement begets engagement. Safety builds safety. Take these ideas and make them your own, in ways that are genuine to you. Your authenticity will shine through in your efforts, bringing out the best in your workers and motivating you to keep up with this effective long-term strategy that can keep folks safe on the job and at home.

For more inspiration, and to dive a bit deeper into Devron Kelso’s uniquely effective philosophy of safety communications, be sure to watch the full Lunch and Learn video.