We all know that poster.
It has been hanging next to the handwash basin for so long that nobody can remember who put it there. The corners are curling, the colours have faded, there’s a mysterious splash across the bottom, and the piece of Prestik holding up one corner deserves a long-service award.
At some point, people probably noticed it. They read it. They talked about it. It may even have reminded someone to change what they were doing.
Now?
It’s basically part of the wall.
And that’s a problem, because a food safety poster that nobody notices is really just decoration.
When the message becomes wallpaper
Posters are actually brilliant little food safety tools. They can reinforce an important behaviour, remind someone about a hazard and communicate a message in a few seconds without another meeting, procedure or 63-slide PowerPoint presentation.
But even a great message loses its impact when people have been staring at it for three years.
We become very good at filtering out things that are always there. Employees walk past the same poster every morning, stand next to it during conversations and probably look directly at it several times a day without consciously reading a single word.
You could replace “WASH YOUR HANDS” with “FREE BILTONG IN THE CANTEEN” and there’s a good chance it would take someone a while to notice.
Familiarity has officially won.
That doesn’t mean posters don’t work. It simply means they need a little attention too. Rotate them, replace damaged ones, change the message and occasionally give people something that makes them stop, smile and think.
Which brings us to five new food safety reminders for those walls that could use a little freshening up.
Take a look at your walls
The next time you walk through your workplace, look at your food safety posters with fresh eyes.
Are they still relevant? Are they clean and readable? Are they positioned where the message actually makes sense? Most importantly, are people still noticing them?
You don’t need to turn your production facility into Times Square. Nobody needs 47 posters fighting for attention on one noticeboard either.
Keep it fresh.
Rotate your messages. Replace the tired ones. Move posters around occasionally. Use humour where it works. Give people something new to notice and, hopefully, something worth talking about.
Food safety is serious business, but communicating about it doesn’t always have to sound like it was written by a committee sitting around a boardroom table.
So, we’ve created five new Food Safety at Work posters for you to download, print and put to work.
Just promise us one thing.
If you discover a faded food safety poster hanging behind a door that has been there since the Springboks won the 2019 Rugby World Cup, please take it down.
Shame man. It has served its country. 🇿🇦😂