Tom Harrison
In my recent former incarnation as the Chief Operating Officer for a leading global construction consultancy, I was responsible for the management and mitigation of all the risks that threatened the performance, growth and profitablity of an organisation employing over 4,000 people based in over 80 offices scattered all over the world.
One of the most important risks both to our company and to the many clients we worked for was Health and Safety, and it was to communicate Health, Safety and Wellbeing risks to our own staff that I originally came up with the idea of creating a pack of HSW playing cards. It gave me the perfect platform to highlight 52 different messages, all neatly packaged in a handy, durable format that could be used anywhere we needed to remind people how to keep themselves and their colleagues healthy, safe and well.
My design team, Matt Smalley and Ken Frame, suggested that the best way to get all my messages across was with cartoons, and the best man for this job was David Haldane. They were right, and so was David.
The HSW cards we created together captured all the key HSW risks our people faced on site and in the office, travelling, working and at home. They reminded people of the old, recurring risks, and highlighted emerging concerns about new ones such as mental health and work/life balance.
The cartoons worked because they made people laugh rather then yawn, or duck for cover, and they definitely proved the truth of that old saying that a picture is worth a thousand words.
They also demonstrated to our own people and to our clients that we were seriously committed to raising awareness and performance in this area of compliance and business improvement.
I have worked on some of the largest construction projects and supported many of the largest companies and organisations in the world, in every sector of business, industry and government. Some of the risks they face are common to all organisations, but every sector and every organisation has its own unique risks and priorities, and of course its own unique objectives, strategies and identity.
But in every case there is a common denominator: People. Any organisation or business, in any sector, is only as good as its people, and any strategy for managing risk and improving your performance will only work if you can communicate it effectively to your people. And the more engaging you make your message, the more receptive your people are likely to be.
" In my thirty-five years in business, I have never come across a better way of making key messages clearly understood, accepted, adopted and retained by every individual, at every level, than with a seriously funny cartoon... "
Matt Smalley
Over the past 10 years, helping clients to raise awareness of the personal and business risks of failure in areas such as Health and Safety, Quality or Service has become one of the biggest challenges in my 30 years in design and communications.
It's particularly challenging because decades of uninspired communication have made issues like Health and Safety and Quality boring or even irritating. A bad joke. And that creates a major barrier for organisations that need to achieve higher standards of compliance, or those that recognise that persuading their people to understand and manage risks better is critical to improving their business performance.
So the $64,000 question is: How do you present your vital messages in a way that your people will respect and accept?
How do you present that tired, boring guidance in an engaging new light?
In our experience, the best way is to turn a bad joke into a good one. Turn risk into opportunity. Raise a smile, not a groan, raise awareness and raise standards.
Presenting serious messages with a smile will make your people think more positively about the messages and the messenger.
Be serious and be funny at the same time. It works.
David Haldane
David has drawn thousands of award-winning cartoons for The Times (many featuring on the front page) the Sunday Express, the Guardian, the Telegraph, the Funday Times, the Daily Mail, Punch and Private Eye.
As a writer he contributed short sketches to the Spitting Image television series.
His genius for illustrating complex messages has been harnessed in communication and advertising campaigns for Thomas Pink, Cable & Wireless, the Post Office and Boots among many others.