Health and safety is serious business – but that doesn’t mean your training has to feel like a punishment. The messages that really work are the ones people notice, understand and remember at the exact moment it counts. This blog looks at three tools worth having in your kit – humour, visuals and short-form video – and how to use each one well, without falling foul of the law or your own good judgement.

Get the legal bit right first

Whichever format you choose, the starting point never changes. You have to inform, instruct and train your people so they can spot risks and follow the controls that keep them safe. The law doesn’t care whether your tone is deadly serious or a bit cheeky – it cares whether the message is clear, relevant and actually works.

Best practice looks like this:

• keep messages accurate, relevant and pitched at the right level for your workforce
• deliver information in whatever format helps it land – humour, visuals and video are all fair game if they help people understand
• never let the creative wrapping trivialise a serious risk or bury a critical instruction

In short: get creative, by all means. Just make sure the creativity is working for the safety message, not against it.

Humour: your secret weapon (used carefully)

Used well, humour is genuinely powerful. It breaks the ice, grabs attention and makes content stick. The trick is knowing where it belongs. It works well as an icebreaker before you get into the serious detail of a high-risk topic, and on posters or slides reinforcing rules everyone already half-knows – think PPE reminders. What it shouldn’t do is introduce a complex or life-critical procedure for the first time, or turn the consequences of unsafe behaviour into something that looks like it’s mocking injury or death.

Get it right and humour boosts attention and engagement, makes training feel less like a lecture (especially for a sceptical crowd), and helps messages stick by tying them to an emotional response.

Where the joke goes too far

Humour tips over into a problem the moment it buries the actual instruction inside a long joke or cartoon, so people can’t tell at a glance what they’re meant to do. Too much light-heartedness across too many messages leaves workers unsure which rule actually applies and, as above, risks making a genuine threat of serious injury or death look like “just a joke”. There’s a language and culture trap too: jokes that lean on cultural references or strong English skills will leave part of your workforce out in the cold.

Get this wrong and regulators or courts may well treat the humour as evidence that you failed in your duty to inform and instruct properly.

The ground rules for using humour

• keep mandatory wording and pictograms front and centre – any humour should clearly play second fiddle
• use plain, unambiguous language (“do not”, “must”) wherever a rule really matters
• test the material on a genuine cross-section of your workforce, to check the safety message lands and isn’t just taken as entertainment
• keep an eye on incident and near-miss data – if there’s any hint the humour is breeding complacency or confusion, pull it or redesign it

Humour should back up your safety message, not compete with it for attention.

Make visuals your default, not an afterthought

We still lean heavily on text – emails, sprawling procedures, slide decks – even though our brains are built to respond far better to images. Research suggests we process images dramatically faster than text, by some estimates up to 60,000 times faster. There are three good reasons visuals beat words: (1) the picture superiority effect – images are stored both visually and verbally, so they’re more memorable than words alone; (2) lower cognitive load – a picture lands all at once, while text has to be decoded letter by letter; and (3) emotion and tone – images convey feeling and context in a way text, which depends entirely on the reader’s interpretation, struggles to match.

The upshot: text-only safety messages are more likely to be ignored, forgotten or misread – especially with a workforce that’s already drowning in information.

Practical tips for visual safety communication

• show the behaviour you want. Real people demonstrating correct PPE use or a safe technique beats a generic symbol every time
• tell the story in sequence. For anything complex, use a storyboard, comic strip or before-and-after image to show cause and effect instead of a wall of instructions
• pair the image with a short caption. Aim for under 15 words so you get the clarity without the cognitive fatigue
• make it human. Real faces, real expressions and a bit of empathy create an emotional connection that sticks
• use your own workplace photos. Real sites feel more credible than stock photography – and workers notice the difference
• design for a two-second read. One focal point, one message. Cut the clutter, the extra colours and anything that needs “decoding”

More visuals is not automatically better communication. Clarity and simplicity still do the heavy lifting.

Embracing short-form video

Safety communication needs to catch up with how people actually consume information now. In a world of endless scrolling, expecting anyone to sit through a forty-slide deck or a half-hour training film is wishful thinking. Short, sharp clips – reels, shorts, TikToks, GIF-style animations – fit how attention actually works today, particularly for younger workers who already expect learning to be visual, quick and easy to access. Done well, short-form content grabs attention fast in an information-saturated world, delivers one message in 15–60 seconds (perfect for reminders, key rules or seasonal risks), and mixes visuals, audio, text and motion – often with a bit of humour – into something genuinely memorable. It also fits neatly with microlearning: small chunks delivered regularly beat a big info-dump once a year.

A few examples:

• a 30-second clip showing correct manual handling
• a quick reel flagging a common hazard before a shift starts
• a short animation summarising the lessons learned from a recent incident

Use short-form as a supplement, not a substitute

None of this replaces proper training. Workers still need structured learning, hands-on practice and formal assessment of competence. But as a complement to those foundations, short-form content is hard to beat. Used well, it turns safety from a once-a-year event into a regular, bite-sized presence in the working day – and that’s really where behaviour starts to change.

Short videos shouldn’t stand in for detailed training on complex topics, legal and procedural requirements, or competency-based assessment and supervised practice. Best practice is to use them as a supplement – for refreshers and toolbox talks, awareness campaigns (winter driving, heat stress and so on), and behavioural safety initiatives that reinforce one behaviour at a time.

Always give people a way to go deeper – a QR code, a link, or a reference to the full procedure or e-learning module.

Practical tips for creating effective safety reels

• hook people immediately – open with a striking question, statistic or image
• front-load the message – state the critical rule early, in case people don’t watch to the end
• stick to one message – don’t cram several topics into a single reel
• use real visuals – actual sites, tasks and PPE beat stock footage
• keep it tight – cut anything that doesn’t directly support the point
• end with a clear next step – tell people exactly what to do, where to go, or what to check right now

Bringing it all together

Best practice isn’t about picking a side – humour versus seriousness, text versus visuals, classroom versus video. It’s about layering methods so they reach your workforce consistently. Try: (1) formal training, in the classroom or online, covering legal duties, procedures and competence in a clear, serious tone; (2) visual aids – posters, storyboards, real workplace photos – reinforcing the key steps from that training; (3) short-form video in briefings, on screens or via internal platforms, reminding people of one point at a time; and (4) targeted humour, used sparingly in posters or slides to hold attention, never to soften a genuine warning.

And finally – know your audience

Knowing your audience is what makes any of this actually work. People arrive with different levels of knowledge, experience and education, and tailoring content so it’s neither patronising nor baffling is what drives comprehension and retention. New starters may need the fundamentals of workplace hazards spelled out; experienced staff are often better served by scenario-based updates or meatier risk assessments.

The same goes for language. Technical jargon that lands fine with engineers will lose administrative staff completely. Relatable scenarios and plain language keep everyone engaged – and engagement is what drives real behaviour change.

Age, cultural background, language proficiency and learning preferences all shape how training lands. Factoring them in makes training genuinely inclusive – and cuts down on the misunderstandings that creep in on diverse or international teams.

And don’t forget: the point of health and safety training was never just to convey information. It’s to change behaviour. Knowing your audience means you can tie safety principles directly to their daily work, which is what makes training feel relevant – and what actually strengthens compliance and safety culture.

Serious outcomes, creative methods

Ultimately, the goal of health and safety communication was never to prove you sent an email or delivered a PowerPoint. It’s to change behaviour and prevent harm. Combine humour, visuals and short-form video within a structured, legally sound strategy, and you speak to people’s heads and hearts – making it far more likely the right action happens at the right moment.

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