Slogans are very powerful and serve as a semiotic for organisations. Slogans are not just text but are symbolic and give organisations semiotic meaning. The moment a slogan is contradicted, they will be used against you. When this happens organisations look like clowns and what is remembered is the hypocrisy, incompetence and damage the slogan does, not the slogan itself.
We saw this with BP and the Deepwater Horizon disaster (https://safetyrisk.net/deepwater-horizon-and-the-suppression-of-risky-conversations/ ). Here was BP handing out medals on the platform of the oil rig for zero vision (https://www.britannica.com/event/Deepwater-Horizon-oil-spill) when the rig blew up killing 11 workers, injuring 17 and pouring millions of tonnes of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. Zero harm indeed!
Next cab off the rank is DuPont. Bragging for years about zero and how wonderful their approach to safety is! Doesn’t look that great when you kill thousands (https://safetyrisk.net/dark-waters-the-true-story-of-dupont-and-zero/) and try to cover it up! DuPont still peddle the slogan and parade zero mythology about safety performance (https://www.dupont.com/about/sustainability/deliver-world-class-health-safety-performance.html.html). That’s right, it’s all about TRIFR blah blah blah. BTW, injury rates have nothing to do with safety.
Don’t worry, keep believing the impossible (https://www.consultdss.com/content-hub/belief-in-the-impossible/) and one day you will achieve it.
BP are still addicted to the myth of Zero (https://www.bp.com/content/dam/bp/country-sites/en_au/australia/home/products-services/fuels/code-of-conduct.pdf).
The latest in a long list of meaningless slogans and slogans of meaningless is Boeing. Have a look at some of these: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g_XxnteztMk; https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=COAUDEnlD5o. At Boeing the slogan is: ‘Safety is and always will be a foundational value’ (https://www.boeing.com/safety). In Boeing ‘Nothing is more important than safety’ (https://www.boeing.com/safety#Our-Commitment). Of course, in Boeing, ‘we foster a Positive safety Culture’ and, ‘we promote a Just Culture’ (https://www.boeing.com/content/dam/boeing/boeingdotcom/principles/safety/SMS_Policy.pdf). Wonderful stuff. I wonder what that looks like when we see intentional ‘stonewalling’ of investigation (read cover up) regarding this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROeGKs4xTfs).
These are just three examples of how slogans come back to bite you. One would think that safety might show some interest in how semiotics work (https://safetyrisk.net/whats-the-safety-idea-whats-the-by-product/) apparently not.
And, it is not as if some of this above is some kind of mistake. All three examples demonstrate intentional cover up, intentional unethical behaviour and delusions understandings of what safety is. We saw the same recently with Qantas. Don’t forget at Qantas ‘safety is core to all that we do’ (https://www.qantas.com/au/en/qantas-group/about-us/safety-our-first-priority.html). As part of this ‘strategy’ Qantas also promote ‘Just Culture’ whatever that means. Just another slogan that really doesn’t mean much. Most often the discourse of ‘Just Culture’ is NOT about Justice or Culture (https://safetyrisk.net/the-discourse-of-just-culture-in-safety/). Unfortunately, it is just one more slogan in the collection of safety slogans that don’t mean much (https://safetyrisk.net/is-just-culture-unjust/ ).
See what happens when slogans don’t work (https://safetyrisk.net/when-slogans-dont-work/). So costly. Nothing erodes integrity, confidence and moral responsibility that double speak! Whilst Linguistics is the foundation of culture, it gets no mention in safety culture discourse. I know let’s just not talk about it.
Several organisations love the slogan of being ‘safety obsessed’ (https://safetyrisk.net/safety-as-a-mental-health-disorder-obsession/). How bizarre when we all know that obsession is a mental health disorder!
The seductions of slogans in safety are most often anchored to absolutes (https://safetyrisk.net/the-seduction-of-slogans-in-safety/) and then applied to fallible people, fallible systems and fallible organisations. See a problem?
The foundation for getting a slogan right is to start with a study in semiotics (https://cllr.com.au/product/semiotics-and-the-social-psychology-of-risk-unit-3-overseas-online-elearning/). Still Safety shows no interest in semiotics, the foundation of all communication (https://safetyrisk.net/what-is-semiotics-video/).
If you want to know how semiotics works and how to use such understanding for developing slogans with competence, perhaps start here: https://cllr.com.au/product/semiotics-and-the-social-psychology-of-risk-unit-3-overseas-oInline-elearning/. In this SPoR program we provide mature, wise, practical, positive and intelligent approaches to slogans/symbols and how to create meaningful symbols/discourse that employees can believe in.
Dr Rob Long
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