Video creates a public record of your safety meeting, aids investigations, removes ambiguity and makes a safety meeting rock solid.
Last week, while preparing to deliver a safety keynote presentation, I was testing the rented cordless lapel microphone at a community hall. My client was hosting their Safety Awards Banquet that night, and I had been chosen as the keynote speaker. The HSE Manager suggested that perhaps they should buy a microphone system like the one I was testing because it was so compact. It would allow them to have some flexibility in their safety meetings by not always having to seek out a vendor to rent A/V equipment from.
Video Can Help Safety Buy-in
I suggested that the microphone system could be used in another way that might help them build better safety buy-in from their employees. By simply placing a video camera at the back of the room and recording the safety meeting (using the cordless lapel microphone to connect directly to the camera’s audio inputs), they could have a safety meeting recorded to video to be used in an on-demand environment for:
- those absent from the meeting
- those who ducked out of the meeting
- as a record of the subject-matter discussed
- a hosted video on the company intranet as a refresher and record of everything discussed
- as a cover-your-ass record for any future investigations/inspections
A deck of PowerPoint slides may indicate that a subject may have planned to have been discussed in a safety meeting, but it does not give any evidence to what was specifically said or discussed in the room with employees/contractors present. There is also no record that the slide was ever discussed and may have been skipped over due to time constraints.
Video, however, is a permanent record of the subjects, exactly what was said, the spirit in which it was said, how well each point was stressed, and video removes any doubts and ambiguities about what may have been implied in a discussion. Video changes the way you do safety meetings.
People Are Changing How They Access Information
Did you know that last year, “news events” were the most searched term on YouTube four months out of 12? News events. People didn’t go to the newspaper to get their news, they went to YouTube.
It speaks to the power of video today:
- By 2015, two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic – traffic on cellular-enabled phones and tablets – 2/3 of everything we do will be to watch video. That means, 65% of the bandwidth on mobile phones and tablets will be to watch video – not to make cell phone calls or to read email. (Source: Cisco Systems)
- There will be 788 million mobile-only Internet users by 2015. These are people who won’t actually be connected to the Internet by a computer or laptop because they won’t own one. These are the people who will only connect by smart phone and tablets. (Source: Cisco Systems)
- By 2016, more people will actually access the Internet from mobile devices than from desktop computers. (Source: Cisco Systems)
Employees and workers information-gathering habits are changing. They are choosing video over the written word.
Video As An Engagement Tool
If your people are not engaging in their work because safety meetings are perceived as boring, then change the way you’re doing your safety meetings. Video, in small sections, is more engaging than the thought of sitting through a long boring session of safety discussions. Your people already go home and switch on a TV with 200 channels. How many channels are you offering your people who depend on video streams in their lives daily?
How we work is changing. People are working more remotely more often. Bringing people together into one room for a safety meeting is a heavy expense. So why not consider ways to bring the meeting to your people instead of trying to work ways to get all of your people assembled into one room at the same time to ensure they are all on the same page?
Create Easy Access To Safety
Safety meeting video-on-demand is the future of safety engagement and buy-in. It keeps your people informed and safety at their fingertips. It keeps everyone on the same page. And a public record of your safety meeting aids investigations, removes ambiguity and makes a safety meeting rock solid.
The future of engaging your workforce and communicating with them effectively is in video. And you’d better make that decision pretty soon.
Using video to record safety meetings is just one of the strategies in my free e-book, The Perfect Safety Meeting. And if you've got a stand-down, start-up or safety day coming up, I'd be glad to start a conversation with you about me speaking at your next safety event.
