Who are we really designing worker safety communication for?

Imagine you’re standing in a field in rural South Africa. It’s hot, you’ve been working since early morning, and your phone has an intermittent connection. Someone hands you a safety manual.

It’s professionally written and carefully designed. Perhaps it’s available as a PDF or as a training video.

The problem isn’t the quality of the information. It’s whether the information fits the reality of the people it’s meant for.

Many safety communication strategies still assume that once information has been published, it will somehow find its audience. In practice, that assumption often breaks down.

The last mile is a communication problem

People work in different languages. They have different levels of literacy. Mobile data can be expensive, and long videos are often impractical in the field. Even where training has taken place, workers may need a reminder weeks or months later, at exactly the moment they are about to use a product.

The issue isn’t that companies fail to create information. On the contrary, most organizations already have manuals, safety guidelines and training materials.

The real challenge begins afterwards.

Can people actually access that information when they need it? Can they understand it? And can they act on it with confidence?

A different way of thinking

A recent project with BASF South Africa brought this question into focus once again.

The task wasn’t to write new safety advice. BASF already had the content. Our role was to rethink how that information could reach women working in agriculture under real-world conditions.

Instead of another document, we created a short illustrated audio story that opens directly from a QR code. Workers can listen in their own language, replay individual sections and share the content with colleagues.

The technology isn’t really the point.

The communication was designed around the realities of the audience rather than the assumptions of the organisation. That’s a surprisingly uncommon way of thinking about worker safety communication.

Beyond agriculture

Although this project focused on agriculture, the same pattern appears in many sectors.

Whether we’re talking about worker safety, product stewardship, public health or customer onboarding, organisations often invest heavily in producing information. Much less attention is paid to how that information is actually experienced by the people it is meant for.

That’s where communication succeeds or fails.

Designing for understanding

We’re very good at creating information.

We’re much less good at designing for understanding.

Those are not the same thing.

If we want communication to change behaviour, improve safety or support better decisions, we have to start with the realities of the people we’re trying to reach, not with the formats we’re used to producing.

Because information only creates impact when people can use it.