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Larry Mutenda | What are good examples of safety training videos? Good safety training videos teach one hazard or one behaviour and show it in a setting workers recognize. Strong examples include EU-OSHA’s wordless Napo films, WorkSafeBC’s Listen to Your Gut campaign and HSE’s first-person asbestos stories. The best ones ask for a specific action and are short enough to use in a toolbox talk. |
A safety training video teaches workers to recognize a hazard and act on it. It might cover a single rule, like how to climb a ladder. It might cover the culture behind every rule, like when to stop work.
This list covers 10 videos from government safety agencies, a mining company and our own studio. It moves between animation and live action, so you can compare how each format handles the same kind of message. Every entry has the video, who made it and, where one exists, a published figure.
We picked videos with an official upload from the agency or company that made them. Each one teaches a specific hazard or a specific safety behaviour. Where a published figure exists, we include it. Where it doesn’t, we say so.
The first video is one we produced. For it, we describe the communication challenge and the creative approach behind the script. For a wider set of workplace learning pieces, see our corporate training video examples.
| # | Video | Made by | Topic |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Health and safety culture | New Gold | Stop work authority |
| 2 | Homecomings | WorkSafe Victoria | Why safety matters |
| 3 | Napo in Lighten the Load | EU-OSHA | Musculoskeletal disorders |
| 4 | Listen to Your Gut | WorkSafeBC | Young worker rights |
| 5 | Spell It Out | CCOHS | Plain language |
| 6 | Martin’s asbestos story | HSE | Asbestos |
| 7 | Napo in the Hidden Killers | EU-OSHA | Work-related cancer |
| 8 | 5 Things to Know about Ladder Safety | OSHA | Ladders and falls |
| 9 | Pop Up Safety | CCOHS | Young workers |
| 10 | Start the Conversation | OSHA Safe + Sound | Mental health and safety |
Client: New Gold, a gold mining company.
Project type: 2D animated safety culture video, 1:03.
Communication challenge: Turn “health and safety is our number one priority” from a slogan into behaviour every team member can act on.
Creative approach: The script asks the question workers are likely thinking. What exactly does that mean? Then it answers with plain commitments.
Never compromise on safety. If a job can’t be done safely, it can’t be done. Look out for one another, because if one of us is unsafe, we are all unsafe. Stop work when it isn’t safe, and respect colleagues who identify a hazard. They are looking out for everyone’s well-being.
The close moves safety out of the morning meeting. Safety is not something to check off a list. It means being proactive, leading by example and having the courage to care. The illustrated workers wear hard hats, hearing protection and high-visibility vests, so the audience sees its own job on screen.
Homecomings is a WorkSafe Victoria TV commercial. It was the first of the agency’s Valuing Safety ads, launched in 2006. A boy waits at home for his father to come back from work while his mother grows anxious and makes a call to find out where he is.
The story cuts between that house and everyday, funny scenes of other parents and children arriving home safely. Nobody is hurt on screen. The tension comes from waiting, which is the part of a workplace injury that families live through.
It is an awareness ad, not a procedure video. It works at the start of a training session because it gives the reason before the rules. Every worker in the room has someone expecting them home.
Napo in Lighten the Load is an animated film from EU-OSHA, the European Agency for Safety and Health at Work, about musculoskeletal disorders such as back pain and repetitive strain injuries. Napo is a cartoon worker who runs into common hazards on the job, and his films use no dialogue.
The film puts Napo through a series of work situations. It covers the whole load on the body. That means the weight being moved, the pace of the work and conditions such as cold. EU-OSHA says the film suits all workers, including migrant and temporary workers. Its Napo page lists the rest of the series.
Wordless animation reduces the need for spoken language. A crew that speaks several languages can watch the same film and talk about it together. It is still worth checking that everyone reads the scenes the same way.
By the numbers: EU-OSHA says the film shows 11 workplace scenes. The first Napo film premiered in 1998.
Listen to Your Gut is a WorkSafeBC campaign for young workers aged 15 to 24 and their employers. This construction spot tells new workers that proper training, supervision and orientation are part of the employer’s health and safety responsibilities.
The message is simple. If something doesn’t feel right, ask questions and talk to your boss. When WorkSafeBC launched the campaign, one video series showed workplace scenarios to help young workers recognize hazards. A second series, What I Know Now, had employers in construction, restaurants and retail share lessons from their own early careers.
It trains a behaviour, not a procedure. A new worker can’t know every hazard in week one. They can learn to speak up.
By the numbers: WorkSafeBC reported that more than 32,000 young workers aged 15 to 24 were injured on the job in B.C. between 2012 and 2016. More than 3,600 were seriously injured, an average of 14 per week.
Spell It Out is a plain language toolkit from the Canadian Centre for Occupational Health and Safety (CCOHS). This animated spot, Put Your Main Message First, uses cartoon beavers on a work site to show what goes wrong when the key detail doesn’t come first.
The series uses four sets of animal characters. Dolphins struggle with jargon about noise levels. Ants get lost in regulatory language. Bees trip over acronyms like SOP, SDS and PPE. The beavers get information without the key details up front.
This is safety training about safety communication. CCOHS’s point is that workers have the right to know how to do their job safely, and unclear language leads to frustration, errors and misunderstandings. Anyone writing a safety script can use the same four rules.
This is a Health and Safety Executive (HSE) film for tradespeople in Great Britain. Martin was a carpentry teacher who spent his career working in buildings he didn’t know contained asbestos. At 61 he was diagnosed with mesothelioma, a terminal cancer caused by inhaling asbestos fibres, and given three to four months to live.
Martin speaks openly about the moment he found out, the treatment that followed and what he wishes every tradesperson knew before picking up a tool in an older building. HSE notes that asbestos can still be present in buildings constructed or refurbished before 2000.
A first-person account does what a hazard slide can’t. Asbestos fibres are microscopic, so the risk is easy to ignore on site. Martin makes it hard to ignore.
By the numbers: HSE states that asbestos causes around 5,000 deaths every year and that exposure to asbestos is the greatest cause of work-related deaths in Great Britain.
Napo in the Hidden Killers is an EU-OSHA animated film about work-related cancer. It focuses on process-generated carcinogens. These are substances created as a by-product of the work itself, such as diesel engine exhaust, silica dust, hardwood dust and welding fumes.
These hazards are hard to train on because they don’t come in a labelled container. There may be no reference to them in a Safety Data Sheet. The film shows something workers can’t see, which is the job animation does best.
It speaks to builders, drivers, mechanics, woodworkers, painters and welders. EU-OSHA’s core message is that many workers are not aware these substances can cause cancer.
5 Things to Know about Ladder Safety is a short video from the US Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA). It counts down five ladder rules over live-action footage, with each rule on screen as text, such as keeping three points of contact on a ladder.
It runs under 30 seconds. That length fits a break-room screen, a social post or the opening minute of a toolbox talk.
The format suits a rule people already half know. New workers need proper training on ladders. People who are already trained often need a short reminder right before they climb one.
Pop Up Safety is a CCOHS video aimed at the parents and guardians of young workers, not the workers themselves. It pairs bright motion graphics with short live-action clips of young people at work.
The message is that parents have a responsibility to prepare their kids for work, even before the first job. Staying involved is the key ask. The video points families to CCOHS’s Safety Starts at Home resources.
Choosing the audience is the creative decision here. A teenager may not raise a safety concern with a new boss. They may raise it at the dinner table.
By the numbers: CCOHS states that more than 30,000 young workers in Canada are injured at work each year.
Start the Conversation is an OSHA Safe + Sound video in which members of Associated Builders and Contractors (ABC) talk about how mental health affects worksite safety. It is a live-action interview piece.
The speakers discuss the stigma around talking about mental health and the approach needed to reduce or remove stressors in the workplace. It treats mental health as a safety topic, not a separate HR topic.
Peer voices carry weight on a subject people avoid. Workers in the trades hear it from people in the trades.
The videos on this list share five patterns.
New Gold asks crews to stop work when it isn’t safe. WorkSafeBC asks young workers to speak up. OSHA’s ladder video gives five rules in under 30 seconds. A video that tries to cover a whole safety manual is remembered for nothing.
Hard hats and site gear in the New Gold video. A construction site for Listen to Your Gut. Older buildings for HSE. Viewers pay attention when the setting looks like their job.
Martin speaks for HSE. Contractors speak for Safe + Sound. For Pop Up Safety, the messenger is the parent at home. The person on screen, or the person the video talks to, decides whether the message lands.
Animation shows what can’t be filmed: carcinogens in dust, strain inside a back or a message a multilingual crew can follow without words. Live action works when a real face or a real site is the proof.
Most of the videos here run between 30 seconds and three minutes. The exceptions are Martin’s story and Lighten the Load, which cover more ground. The length follows the job the video has to do.
It should include one hazard or behaviour, the reason it matters and the exact action you want workers to take. Show it in a setting that looks like their workplace. Our guide on how to make a training video walks through the planning steps.
They should be long enough for one lesson. On this list, OSHA’s ladder video runs under 30 seconds and the New Gold culture video runs just over a minute. Longer pieces like Lighten the Load suit a classroom session better than a break-room screen.
Neither is better in general. Animation suits hazards you can’t film, like airborne carcinogens, and it can work without words for multilingual crews. Live action suits real testimony and real sites. We have produced both over more than 15 years.
Government safety agencies publish many for free. WorkSafeBC, CCOHS, OSHA, HSE and EU-OSHA’s Napo series all post official workplace safety videos on their websites and YouTube channels.
Yes. A custom video can show your own site, equipment and procedures, which a generic video can’t. We make them through our training video production service.
The strongest safety training videos on this list start with one behaviour and one audience. Then they choose the format that makes that behaviour easy to picture: a wordless cartoon, a worker’s own story or a 30-second reminder.
If you are planning a safety video, start with the one thing a worker should do differently after watching it. The script, the format and the length follow from that.
Larry is the Founder and Producer at Mammothic Films, with more than 15 years of production experience. He leads a team that creates story-driven videos for businesses and brands. A marketer, designer, and animator, Larry has overseen the production of more than 1,500 videos for Fujitsu, Logitech, Warner Brothers, NFL, Blockdaemon, Astronomer, Canonical, and 370+ other companies in Canada, the United States, and around the world.
Larry is a devout Christian who believes in placing God first, and that everything else is a blessing that comes from serving Him. When he’s not working, he’s hanging out with his wife and three kids, playing the piano, or sightseeing.