Workplace policies and processes are important.
We know this.
But many businesses make one big mistake:
The documents are so unreadable that even your most diligent and safety-conscious employees aren’t reading them.
My client called me recently and asked for help with their workplace health and safety policy and associated documentation. They were concerned about the multitude of risks that their employees are exposed to on building sites, and they are even more concerned that all the documents they have spent hours creating, printing and replicating for each employee’s vehicles are not.being.read.
It’s not that their team don’t value safety. They are actually pretty safe workers. They just aren’t interested in spending their time reading pages and pages of documents that tell them how to safely operate a drill, how to climb a ladder without falling or that they shouldn’t hop on a roof – jobs they’ve done for most of their lives and understand how to do safely.
And if they’re not being read, they’re not being followed or maintained.
So many processes or ideas in our workplaces lose their impact or their effectiveness simply because they are too complicated, and we can’t be bothered. So here are three fast tips to make sure your documents are actually being read:
1. Keep it short. The shorter the better. No one wants to read a 200-page document on health and safety when they can get the same information in two pages.
2. Write it in plain English. No jargon, no fancy words, just simple language that everyone can understand.
3. Use visuals or even videos that feature your staff. We are more likely to watch something if our colleagues feature in it and a picture is worth a thousand words.
Are your policies being read and followed? I’d love to hear what’s worked or hasn’t.