WorkSafe Victoria Toolkit

Client Profile
WorkSafe Victoria governs workplaces to ensure that physical and mental safety standards are being met within workplaces to keep Victorians safe.

Passionfolk previously worked with WorkSafe from March to May 2019 to deliver localised public relations and advertising activity to promote their Hearts and Minds ‘Reflections’ activation campaign in Geelong. 

The promotion of the Reflections installation was a success, resulting in Passionfolk being approached a second time in August 2019 to create and execute another public relations campaign.

Our Approach 
Prior to the current COVID-19 climate we all now face, WorkSafe tasked Passionfolk to create an educational, hands-on public relations campaign to promote the WorkWell Toolkit, specifically for the transport, warehousing and logistics industries in Victoria.

The challenge for us was to come up with an engaging ‘big idea’ to get transport industry leaders talking about workplace mental health and actively using the Toolkit, which contains industry-specific, practical information and procedures, in order to improve and/ or maintain and mentally healthy workplace.

 Originally, we proposed a campaign that focused on involving mental health experts and transport leaders as guest speakers, having them attend industry events to promote the Toolkit by creating face-to-face connection and via social media.

As COVID-19 quickly became our new normal in March this year, these industry events were cancelled, meaning that we had to pivot our campaign in order to succeed, despite state-wide lockdowns. 

Working virtually sparked an idea - a webinar series hosted by R U OK? Director, renowned author and mental health advocate, Graeme Cowan. Each of the four live, interactive webinars were hosted throughout June and July. More than 500 transport industry leaders attended as a result of EDM outreach, social media activity and transport media PR.

The webinars are now permanently hosted on WorkSafe’s website, covering the following topics:

1.    Creating a mentally healthy workplace in the transport industry

2.    Reducing the risk of fatigue

3.    Understanding the risk of trauma and improving procedures

4.    Supporting the mental health of contractors and sub-contractors in transport, logistics and warehousing.

Graeme said, “The transport sector has been the unsung heroes of the COVID-19 crisis. They have been an essential service that has ensured everyone is able to eat and buy supplies during this volatile period.

“It was a privilege to be able to share valuable resources and information to help CEOs and Managers protect, maintain, and build, the mental health of their workforce.”

We were delighted with this opportunity to work with WorkSafe Victoria on this PR + social media campaign. It was very rewarding to bring industry-specific business leaders together to hear from Graeme, and to learn about how the WorkWell Toolkit can assist them in creating mentally healthy workplaces.

Project Team
Janet Boland, Jacqui Thebes, Chloe Richardson