Eat Your (Safety) Greens!

In a recent discussion, the topic came up of how to make the transition of having a written Risk Management Plan and other safety documentation, and actually putting it into practice in larger organisations. Here’s an analogy that came to my mind.

Consider encouraging children to eat more vegetables.

Saying “You must eat your greens, because they are healthy and good for you!” might have the desired result, but not because of some inner motivation and more for wanting to avoid the consequences of not doing so. But the moment nobody is watching, it’s all french fries and chocolate milkshake again…

In other words, it doesn’t really work.

What does work is preparing the vegetables nicely and with care, so they actually taste nice and are a joy to eat, to the point that the kids come back for seconds.

It is essentially the same with safety documentation.

A poorly written document, that reads like overcooked, bland string beans with no flavor, essentially signals to the reader that the author did not care enough to prepare it well. And so the reader won’t care about the content either. Sure, people will read the documentation because it is requried, but not because they want to or see how it provides them with any useful information.

They won’t identify with the message.

Instead, documentation that is deemed so important we want staff members to sign off on having read it, must be a joy to read. It needs to show respect to the reader by giving them the information they need in a well structured, easily understood way. It should be accessible, and so useful that people will want to keep it with them for quick reference in the field.

Writing good documentation is not easy. It takes time, experience, and expertise. None of this comes for free, and it may be advisable to look for external advice.

But it is worth the effort, because it sets the tone for how we approach safety. It shows we care.

And so our readers will care, and strive to put our words into their practice.