Here at Safety Stage, we understand how difficult it can be to keep your team engaged in your safety briefings! Yet, safety meetings are an essential part of our roles, so we’ve come up with funny safety moment ideas to help you engage more workers.
Below, we look at some fresh approaches to safety and inspiration for your next briefing.
Why Use Humor in Safety Messages?
In 2000, a Microsoft study on attention showed that the average person’s attention span was 12 seconds. When they repeated this study in 2015, it dipped to just 8 seconds. Studies have shown time and time again that our attention spans are depleting rapidly, and one of the best ways to keep staff engaged to counter short attention spans is with humor.
Research into learning and development has also shown that recall also improves when learners are engaged with the topic, which means that using humor not only makes the content itself more fun, but also leads to better learning outcomes and knowledge recall. Finally, there is a correlation between happy staff, higher productivity and employee engagement, meaning the benefits of using humor at work reach far beyond your safety talks: they create a happy workforce.
Remember that having a somber or dull attitude to safety not only bores your audience but can also give the impression that what you’re saying isn’t important. So keep your training upbeat, fun, and entertaining to make sure that everyone stays engaged!
Tips To Make Your Safety Talk Funny and Effective
Although the content can sometimes seem dry and repetitive, there are a few ways to keep your safety talk both funny and effective.
Try a game
There’s a tonne of workplace safety games for adults from quizzes and anagrams to scavenger hunts and interactive games. It’s been proven that gamified learning releases dopamine which creates a happy workforce and enjoyment. Games have been regularly shown to increase knowledge recall and engagement, making your safety briefing that much more effective!
Break it down into bite-sized topics
Breaking the content down into bite-sized pieces has a range of benefits for you and your colleagues. Short workplace safety topics encourage you to stick to only the most important information for each topic and they also keep learners engaged. Such talks more frequently complete each theme and move on to the next one, rather than learning about the same thing for hours on end. This, again, releases dopamine upon completion and means that they’ll be learning the most important aspects of each topic without the fluff and extras.
Keep it relevant to their roles
One of the best ways to keep your safety toolbox talks engaging and effective is by keeping them relevant to what workers do daily. People are much less likely to listen if they can’t see how what they’re learning applies to their day-to-day job, so make sure to include specific examples. If necessary, use video content or live role-plays to reinforce the message.
Don’t be afraid to look silly
Don’t be afraid to act a fool! One of the most engaging methods of delivering a briefing that highlights the importance of safety is by being entertaining.
By putting your energy into delivering your toolbox talk, you not only keep everyone engaged but you can emphasize the importance of what you’re saying, helping you to better get your point across. One perfect example of this is this flight attendant and pilot duo who give the safety briefing (that the passengers have heard plenty of times!) in a way that keeps the whole plane entertained. The fun aspect doesn’t take away from the severity and importance of what they’re saying, but by delivering it in a funny manner, everyone is listening!
Use memorable quotes, slogans, or rhymes
Another way to keep the learning effective beyond the safety meeting itself is to use memorable quotes and slogans. Our favorite memorable safety slogans include:
“A spill, a slip, a hospital trip.”
“When you gamble with safety, you bet your life.”
“Falling on objects can be brutal, wear your hard hat to protect your noodle.”
Feel free to make up an acronym, quote, or rhyme to keep the topic at the forefront of their minds.
To keep things relevant, try sharing a story or experience that you’ve had. Or, show a funny video to get your point across. Below, we explore 6 funny safety moment ideas to get you started!
Check our safety moment of the day examples for more information on how to structure your talk.
6 Funny Safety Moment Ideas
During our time delivering hardhat chats, we’ve stumbled across a few brilliant and effective safety moments. Take a look at the table below for a range of resources that you can use in your next briefing.
Theme | Format | Link | Notes |
Safety Charades | Charades | Get your team up and ‘attem with a game of Safety Charades! Create options on scraps of paper for teams to choose from, and have the team guess which rule they’re following or breaking! | |
Moment of the Day | Presentation, spoken, video, or official government documents | Perfect for quick briefings, choose a Safety Moment of the Day to highlight the importance of a particular topic or technique. This can highlight safety issues, dangerous hazards, or even a quick topic like ladder safety. | |
“Idiots At Work” | YouTube | Try using an “Idiots at Work” or “Bad Day at Work” search to demonstrate some funny and extreme examples of safety rule-breaking! | |
Safety Memes | Meme | If you’re presenting or creating worksheets, feel free to incorporate relevant memes to keep everyone entertained. | |
Online Safety Games | Online Game | Perfect for remote sessions, online safety games can get key messages across in a fun and engaging way! | |
Safety Equipment Race | In-Person | While more appropriate for some industries than others, split your group into teams and time them to see who can get into the correct PPE in the quickest time! Include boots, helmets, gloves, and anything else that’s needed. |
Bonus: Hilarious Workplace Safety Videos
If you’re looking for memorable video content to share, try the following short clips. These work as funny safety moment ideas, effective icebreakers, as well as (usually) getting one or two key messages across before the briefing itself starts.
Hilarious Workplace Safety Video Training
This 4-minute video is inspired by the classic Rolling Stone’s hit, Satisfaction. It covers a range of workplace hazards such as ladders, spills, poor footwear, and trips, and is a catchy song that will leave your team humming all day long!
Perfect as an opener, the ‘Wrong Way, Right Way’ video can be a fun introduction to your next safety meeting. You can also carry on the ‘Wrong Way, Right Way’ theme throughout the entirety of your briefing or course, which gives you a good opportunity to add humor to the ‘Wrong Way’ aspects of each topic.
A 3-minute animated video that highlights the effects of a poor night’s sleep on worker performance, safety, and their response to hazards. It covers a range of important statistics while sharing a range of real-world examples of sleep deprivation, including the impact on their lives both in and out of work.
The perfect icebreaker, this video from Australia perfectly highlights the typical safety briefing. However, a reaper turns up and shows the consequences of not listening in the toolbox chat! There’s nose-picking, a grim reaper, and plenty of chainsaw action to keep your team engaged!
Silly Workplace Videos For Reference
If you want some silly workplace videos without a specific message to break the ice, try some of the following:
This silly 30-second office clip shows the far-reaching effects of a rubber band! Sure to raise a laugh, there’s more to see each time you watch it!
Perfect ahead of a First Aid or CPR training piece, this classic clip from The Office U.S. highlights the shambles that office safety training can become! There are so many opportunities to laugh, and it really sets the tone for a great safety training session.
A 9-minute compilation of utter “fails”, more often than not caused by human error and a lack of safety procedures followed! The last clip, in particular, is a stark warning about the importance of always wearing proper protective equipment.
Conclusion
Hopefully, this article inspires you to keep your regular safety talks upbeat, funny, and engaging. By taking safety training seriously, you’ll keep your staff safer, more engaged, and improve the safety culture at your workplace.
Be sure to keep your training relevant by using short safety moments, video content, games, and day-to-day real-world examples. Don’t be afraid to break the ice by incorporating memes and silly videos into your toolbox talk, and you can refer to our funny safety moment ideas list on this page to help you do this.