01
Relevance is the most consistently raised theme.
Messages can reach people they do not apply to. One-size or national messages may be less effective unless tailored to site, role, geography and delivery mode.
The current-state evidence, the interim interview and survey findings, the architecture for the three workshops, and the immediate next steps. Scroll through, or jump straight to a section.
This Desktop Review assesses twenty real Australia Post safety communications against the six SIGNAL principles, mapped across a 27-channel ecosystem.
Most safety messages travel from sent, to read, not from sent, to acted on.
Read rate is the only quantified metric across the network. It tells you a message arrived, never that it worked. Closing that gap is the point of Project Signal.
Ten stakeholder interviews and nine pulse-survey responses, aggregated and de-identified. This is an interim read from a leadership-weighted sample: signals to test, not conclusions.
Messages can reach people they do not apply to. One-size or national messages may be less effective unless tailored to site, role, geography and delivery mode.
For customer-facing teams, abusive calls and aggression can be the biggest safety risk. Physical-safety framing may not carry it, and awareness may lack a clear call to action.
Delivery partners are contractors rather than employees, so directive language may not fit. Tone matters, while safety responsibility remains shared.
Plain, simple wording may be essential for people with English as a second language or limited digital confidence. Review can add complexity that must be re-simplified.
High message volume and several programs running at once, particularly heading into peak, may contribute to disengagement.
Protected days, a communications calendar and pushback on urgent same-day requests may reduce overload and protect attention.
Bite-size moments inside daily stand-ups may embed a message more effectively than adding a standalone scripted toolbox.
New initiatives can supersede existing ones before they land, limiting the chance for a message to take hold.
Content is spread across channels, buried in updates and sometimes superseded by outdated versions found in search.
Many workers lack company email or devices, making delivery dependent on leaders printing, posting and briefing messages verbally.
Communication confidence varies. A craft uplift in facilitation may be as important as the message itself.
Short scenarios, quizzes and rolling incident video may land better and can help confirm receipt and reveal understanding gaps.
Messages cascade through the hierarchy with relatively little travelling back up; peers and team leaders may carry more influence.
Teams lean on lag indicators and noisy engagement data, though early behavioural measures may offer a base to build on.
Overlapping programs collide, timing is not always coordinated and recurring safety content can lapse when it is not resourced.
Confronting footage cuts through, while frequent lower-visibility risks such as manual handling may receive less attention.
Even when people have the tools and steps, behaviour and habit can remain as important as message clarity.
Personal incident stories, local video, sustained single-theme campaigns, engaging delivery and empowerment messages appear to stick.
Messages are noticed when sent, though cut-through may fade under volume and fatigue. Dramatic risks may draw attention from frequent ones.
Clarity depends on the author. Formal content, overload and inconsistent wording across states may slow understanding.
The strongest interview theme. It now includes psychosocial risk for customer-facing teams that physical framing may miss.
Finding the current message is the softest point, with content spread across channels and no single source of truth.
Time and support score lower. Calls to action may be unclear and cascade can rest on uneven leader capability.
There may be no shared impact measure and reinforcement can vary, though some teams have behavioural measures to build on.
High-level directions participants and stakeholders flagged in the interviews as things they believe would help. They are captured here de-identified and unfiltered: some sit inside the current program's scope, some sit beyond it, and none are commitments yet.
A short monthly "what would you do" quiz for every staff member: a knowledge check that doubles as confirmation of receipt, with a dashboard showing where understanding is weak and light recognition to lift participation.
Short, real, de-identified video on screens in retail and on docks, raised as far more effective than reading or a verbal briefing, like a confronting road-safety ad.
A one-minute personalised video before a shift highlighting the previous day's risks, supported by more proactive telematics or AI risk data rather than reactive incident reports.
Capture and share the positive stories where someone intervened and prevented harm, not only the incidents, celebrating the behaviour the program wants to grow.
Move from a single scripted weekly toolbox toward bite-size safety moments in daily stand-ups, previewed with leaders on a short weekly call.
Tools that turn a message into a ready toolkit, or into a video plus quiz, to create engaging content faster without adding noise.
Verbal briefings to large standing groups were felt to have had their time; make delivery interactive and multimedia so people participate rather than tick a box.
For customer-facing and retail teams the biggest hazard raised is psychosocial: abusive calls and aggression, an invisible injury that current physical-safety framing does not carry. Participants believe it should sit on an equal footing, not as an afterthought.
There is still no common signal that a message changed anything. One team already uses a pause, breathe and reset code plus attendance as behavioural measures; a receipt-and-knowledge dashboard could generalise this across the network.
Message quality is often fine while delivery is uneven and leader-dependent; a craft uplift in how leaders facilitate toolboxes and briefings sits alongside the communication design work.
Several of the strongest ideas, pre-shift video, quiz platforms, dashboards and AI content tools, require technology investment beyond designing better communications.
The interviews reached leaders rather than the frontline; a site visit plus a frontline pulse survey would close that gap before solutions are locked.
All three workshops run the same four-part spine: Welcome, Learn, Practise, then Test and Commit. Each numbered activity shows what it covers and the experience that carries it. Participants pair their phones to the screen for the live activities.
The workshop series moves from shared foundations to practical communication craft, then embeds and sustains the approach.
We are developing and testing the first communication materials alongside the workshop series.
There may not be a single source of truth.
Messages arrive across weekly packs, email, Teams, the intranet and the corporate social platform, with no obvious central place to find the current version.
Important messages may get buried.
Safety content inside weekly packs can be missed, may not be passed on, and inbox volume may add delay.
Cascade and escalation paths may be unclear.
It is not always clear what to do, who a message has reached, or how to escalate locally versus nationally.
Inconsistent language may cause confusion.
The same task can be worded differently across states. Respondents prefer consistent, simple wording tied clearly to strategy.
Mixed reactions to a recent behaviour campaign.
Some felt it leaned toward behaviour rather than hazards. Co-design and testing with frontline teams may help.
There may be a relevance gap for office roles.
Corporate and support staff value examples about workload, role clarity, change and psychosocial risk.
Messaging may land better when led by leaders.
Engagement can be stronger when messages come from a person's own leader and connect to daily work.
AI tools may be adding new noise.
Well-meaning AI-generated images and posts may add clutter to an already crowded channel mix.
There may be channel access gaps.
Some staff cannot open Teams links or have notifications switched off, so a post may not reach everyone.
What respondents suggest may help most
Short, sharp, focused and timely messages; a central repository; early safety consultation; site-level cascade and follow-up; and respect for frontline time.