THE CHALLENGE

Due to the hazardous nature of activities in Weir facilities, safety is essential. Aiming to mitigate workplace accidents, Weir developed 12 'Life Saving Behaviours', based on the highest-risk activities faced by its employees.

To be effective, these reminders would need to target employees immediately before they come into contact with the high-risk activity.

But across Weir’s facilities, there was no consistency in safety messaging: and it was unclear where the most critical information sat. Each facility had adopted their own individual method of communication.

Weir needed a consistent yet flexible approach to communicate the Life Saving Behaviours to employees across the globe.

THE APPROACH

We created an overarching visual and verbal language that would stand out in the busy facility environment. This pulled colours from the existing corporate colour palette and features common to safety in the wider world, so would be instantly recognisable as safety-related communication.

'Think Safety First' was already one of Weir’s five values so it seemed appropriate for this to feature as a sign-off. This was connected to the 'We are Weir' identity, currently used on internal communications, to create a logo lock-up that could begin to act as the internal safety brand for the business.

Our site visits highlighted that Weir’s facilities differ widely in processes, machinery, scale and specialisms.

No single application would fit every facility, so we created a large suite of flexible environmental and printed applications that facilities could ‘pick’ from. It was vital that none of the safety messages became a hazard or a distraction in themselves, and to this end, we worked closely with site managers.

The suite of applications took advantage of all the touchpoints along a Weir employee’s journey: from the car park to changing room, to work activities and home at the end of the day.