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Presentation of the video campaign “first of all: safety” Safety procedures are effective only when all people involved understand them clearly. In order to promote better awareness of the correct procedures and standards, it is crucial to have a clear understanding of the actual dynamics of workplace accidents. The problem I focused on: Most of the accidents reported to Siram Veolia are not related to specific operational procedures, but they can be attributable mainly to careless mistakes, inattention, or oversight. One of the most frequent examples is forgetting to use the basic PPE in routine maintenance, when there is not an immediate perception of the risk. As safety managers, we need to find solutions to spread safety awareness together with a better understanding of the consequences of these kinds of inattentive behaviours on workplaces, which are probably the most difficult to correct. In doing this we also need to be aware that it’s necessary to reach all workers on the field. Just to make an example, the Business Unit I manage - North-West Italy - has more than 300 workers handling 600 different contracts in an area of 3 different Regions. This configuration should be taken into account when planning the dissemination of any initiative related to safety on the workplace. Solutions: This problem, like any other related to workplace safety, has been and should be approached from different points of view, offering training and information on different levels. Being present and active: health and safety management walks, prevention and protection service site inspections, talks with workers and their representatives; Teaching: training courses, meetings on specific topics, safety and team meetings; On spot campaigns: like the ones promoted during the Veolia Health and Safety Week Together with all these essential and standing activities, we should start thinking about the possibility to open new channels to interact with workers on the field. Moving from the simple consideration that nowadays a vast amount of information is delivered through videos, and considering also that since April 2021 all workers on the field have been equipped with smartphones, I decided to start a video-based safety campaign. Videos: I decided to create a set of 10 animated videos with a simple and amusing style focusing on careless mistakes. The selection of which topics to represent was driven mainly by two considerations: the chosen topics are among Veolia’s top 10 High Risk Standards, which were actually reported in the recent past of Siram Veolia the accidents represented are the kind of accidents that occur because workers are focused on the solution of the problem and therefore they forget to take care of what are perceived as minor safety precautions. I worked together with some external communication designers, in order to have a fresh look into the subject, because I realized that the majority of the communication from the management to the workers on the field tends to be way too paternalistic, and somehow too tied to regulations. Although safety directives are very important, sometimes they are written in a language that is too distant from everyday communication. First of all I shifted the point of view of the campaign, compared to the ones made by Siram Veolia in the past: these videos don’t show wrong behaviors of the workers and condemn them, but the main character of the campaign is a worker who, in each video, realizes that he is forgetting something important related to safety and corrects his behavior in advance. The “negative” element in each video is represented by the risk itself. This narrative choice was also made in order to strip any judgment and to ideally put management and workers on the same side, together against risk. At the end of each video, the comic relief element is a character with funny and almost non-human traits who ended up in bad situations because he didn’t follow any of the safety rules. The presence of the clumsy character who pays the consequences of his unsafe behavior also helps to convey a sense of coolness in being “on the safe side” of working, because nobody wants to be like him. Secondly I decided to use a simple, positive and plain language The claim for the campaign is: “first of all: safety” In each video this claim is then modified in relation to the specific topic, like for example: “first of all: wear goggles” Third, I wanted the videos to be short, in order to ensure a high level of attention from the viewer. For this reason they could not be exhaustive with respect to the topic they show. To compensate for this, at the end of each video there is a short checklist of things to take care of when facing the represented situation. Utilization: The main idea is to disseminate the videos by sending them to workers’ company phones, eliminating the challenge of reaching everyone, and we will send one every week in order to create a long-lasting campaign, which is something that has never been done before, because usually safety initiatives are related to one specific event, limited in time. These videos can be shown during on-line and in-person training as complements to introduce specific topics about safety on the workplace. Possible developments: Since they are short and have a simple structure and since I made all the illustrations for them, it is possible to create on-spot videos on new topics in little time and on a small budget. We can imagine to create campaigns on new subjects, also involving the workers, in order to better understand which topics should receive more attention from us. Use the same visual language to create ancillary material, like for example: user-friendly, exhaustive documents explaining safety procedures, with an engaging and consistent design, which could help workers to easily run through the rules. an app-based collection of checklists, that workers can use as a tool to better understand whether they are applying all the safety procedures in relation to the situation they are dealing with. Thank you! On a small side note: safety procedures are something that should concern not only workers on the field, but anybody from Veolia visiting workplaces. Don’t forget to be a good example of the correct behavior in those situations!