Suggestions to Make Effective Safety Posters in the Workplace

Maintaining safety in the workplace is among the foremost tasks of an employer. A very useful means which help the employers to fulfill their responsibilities for workplace safety is to make use of safety posters. Safety posters are created to showcase as well as remind all the people at a specific workplace about safety guidelines, potential risks or dangers and even steps to solve problems in certain situations.

Because of their important role in a workplace, the posters will be highly evaluated if they can get the message across in a way that is attracting and easy to remember. If you are an employer and you want to create effective safety posters for your workplace, then the suggestions below will be helpful for you.

The first thing is you must understand clearly what to post. There are various types of safety posters; most businesses are expected to have the same State and Federal labor law posters but they are not mandated to adhere to all those rules. Because of this, the important thing is that you take time to consider about the conditions and potential hazards while working in your workplace to select the most suitable posters. If you worry that you may omit any essential posters, then you should start from the most general topics to smaller ones. For starter, you can choose the posters that most types of business will take initially such as fire protection and health. Then choose the posters that are most relevant to your kind of work. If you own a restaurant, then some posters like "First aid for Cuts" or "Food safety" will be necessary for the kitchen. If the workplace is a construction site, some posters like "Hard hats must be worn on this site" or "no admittance to unauthorized personnel" will be needed.

The second pointer to bear in mind to make an effective poster is that you should keep it easy to understand. A well designed poster should be condensed and direct to the message. Posters with lots of words and explanations should be avoided. The fewer words you use on posters, the easier for your employees to read as well as remember. Bear in mind that they will not take their precious working time just to read your long posters. Therefore, it is better if you use short but condensed words to convey the message in each poster.

Another suggestion is to use graphics and illustrations. You may have heard that a picture will be worth a thousand words. An employee who can not read will still understand the message of the posters just by looking at the pictures on them. Your messages would be strongly and effectively conveyed to the readers once you have used illustrations as well as graphics. Try to use clear and vivid pictures to illustrate what you write. Pictures can save you lots of lengthy words; they make the posters more vivid and eye-catching. For example, instead of writing a lengthy explanation like "Do not smoke because smoke can cause fires", you just need a no-smoking poster with a cigarette and a cross.

Last but not least, you should consider thoroughly about where to put up the posters. Concentrating on designing the posters is not enough; you need to think of the suitable locations to plaster them up as well. If you underestimate this, your posters can not be considered to be effective although you have put in them lots of time and effort designing. Employees are often not willing to spend their working time to find a poster and then read it. They need it to be put in the most visible place so that they can frequently see it. Some of the most suitable locations are break rooms, halls, restrooms as well as the places where there are highly potential risks.

Safety posters will protect the rights for the employer and bring the health and safety for the employees. Lacking of them in workplace will lead to heavy fines for the employer according to the labor law poster.