What this is
What is a safety campaign plan?
What is a safety campaign plan?
A written plan for a time-boxed push on one safety topic, holding why the topic was chosen, the measure it intends to move, the activities to be run and who owns each. It is raised before the campaign and completed in place as it runs and closes, so intent and outcome sit on one document.
What makes a campaign different from ordinary communication?
Routine communication is continuous and untargeted; a campaign is bounded and has a number attached. The template enforces this through Start and End Date, a single Topic, and a Baseline paired with a Target Measure. Anything running indefinitely across every topic is a communications programme, not a campaign.
What is a baseline measure in this context?
The value of the thing you intend to change, taken before any campaign activity runs — manual handling incidents per month, observation findings against a cause code, compliance seen on walkarounds. It must be something already counted routinely, because a measure invented for the campaign cannot show a trend either side of it.
Scope
When is a safety campaign plan required?
This plan covers a bounded, single-topic push with a measure attached. Adjacent records exist for the individual events a campaign contains and the ongoing programmes it sits inside; using this one for those produces plans that never close.
Use this template when
- Incident or observation data shows a concentration on one hazard the site can name
- A serious event elsewhere in the group prompts a focused, time-boxed response at this site
- A management review or objective calls for measurable movement on a specific behaviour
- A seasonal or process risk is approaching and needs attention before it arrives, not during
- The committee wants to test whether a targeted intervention works before scaling it across sites
Do not use it for
- Safety Moment Record, which captures one short topic shared at the start of a shift or meeting, not a plan spanning weeks
- Safety Stand Down Record, which documents a deliberate pause in work after a serious event and is a response, not a planned campaign
- Safety Climate Survey, which measures culture across all topics rather than driving change on one
- Observation Trend Review, which analyses where the problems are and is properly an input to this plan's evidence field
- Ongoing awareness activity with no end date, which is business as usual and will leave this record permanently In progress
Compliance mapping
Which ISO 45001 cl.7.4 requirements does this satisfy?
ISO 45001 places campaigns at the junction of three requirements — communication, worker participation, and objectives that are planned and evaluated. The template is arranged so each leaves a distinct trace.
| Clause | Requirement | Where it lands |
|---|---|---|
| ISO 45001 cl.7.4.1 | Determine what will be communicated, when, to whom and how, taking account of the audiences involved | Activities |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.4.2 | Internal communication reaching all levels and functions, including changes to the management system | Activities |
| ISO 45001 cl.5.4 | Consultation and participation of non-managerial workers in determining what needs communicating and how | Header |
| ISO 45001 cl.6.2.2 | Plan what will be done, what resources are needed, who is responsible, when it completes and how results are evaluated | Activities |
| ISO 45001 cl.6.2.1 | Objectives are measurable or capable of performance evaluation, and consistent with the OH&S policy | Why this topic |
| ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Monitoring, measurement, analysis and performance evaluation against defined criteria and at defined intervals | Result |
| ISO 45001 cl.7.3 | Workers are aware of the hazards and risks relevant to them and of the consequences of departing from requirements | Why this topic |
| ISO 45001 cl.10.3 | Continual improvement of performance, with results used to inform what happens next | Result |
What it does not cover
- A Baseline Measure written after the Start Date has passed, which measures a population already exposed to the campaign and guarantees the comparison understates any effect.
- Evidence For Choosing It filled with a restatement of the topic, which describes the campaign rather than justifying it and leaves clause 6.2.1 unsupported.
- Committee Consulted recorded as No, which turns a participation requirement into a broadcast and is the finding most often raised against otherwise well-run campaigns.
- Target Achieved marked Yes with a Measure At End that does not compare to the baseline, which asserts a result the record cannot evidence.
- Effect Sustained After 90 Days left blank on a closed campaign, which stops the record at the point where the only interesting question begins.
Global
Safety Campaign Plan requirements by country
Campaigns are rarely mandated by name, but the duties they discharge — informing, instructing and consulting workers on the risks that apply to them — are statutory almost everywhere, and the wording differs enough to change what the plan must evidence.
ISO 45001:2018, cl.7.4 Communication and cl.6.2 OH&S objectives and planning to achieve them
Requires communication to be planned rather than incidental, and objectives to be measurable and evaluated, with responsibilities and timescales assigned.
An auditor reads the plan as an objective in miniature. Baseline, Target, Owner and Date must be present before the campaign starts, or cl.6.2.2 is unmet however well it ran.
Council Directive 89/391/EEC, Articles 10 and 12
Places distinct duties to inform workers of the risks and to provide adequate, job-specific training, both extended to workers from outside undertakings working on site.
Target Audience matters legally here. Excluding contractors and agency workers from the audience list leaves a duty unaddressed for the people most often exposed.
Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974, s.2(2)(c); Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999, reg.10
Requires information, instruction, training and supervision so far as is reasonably practicable, and comprehensible information on the risks identified by assessment.
'Comprehensible' is the operative word. Demonstration and Workshop carry more weight than Poster where the workforce has language or literacy barriers.
How to complete it
How to complete a safety campaign plan, step by step
Filling the plan in is trivial. Four judgements made before the first activity runs decide whether the closed record is evidence or decoration.
The Topic picker offers specific options — Isolation, Working at height, Manual handling — because breadth is the enemy of measurement. A campaign on housekeeping across a whole site has no number that can plausibly move in four weeks. If you cannot say in one sentence what behaviour changes and where, split the campaign rather than widening the measure.
Baseline Measure and Target Measure are free text, which tempts sites into inventing a bespoke metric. Resist it. Use something already counted — incidents against the Related Cause Code, observation findings, walkaround compliance — so the figure exists for the months before and continues afterwards without extra effort. A metric that exists only during the campaign cannot show decay.
The Activities section repeats, and the Date on each entry is the plan, not a diary. A demonstration in week one, reinforced by walkarounds in weeks two and three, then a supervisor workshop, behaves differently from five toolbox talks in one week. Assign a named Owner to each: activities owned by 'safety' generally are the ones that drop out when the line gets busy.
Effect Sustained After 90 Days is optional in the form and mandatory in practice. Decide at planning time who re-reads the measure and when, and give that commitment a date. Campaigns closed at full completion and never revisited are indistinguishable, three months later, from campaigns never run.
What auditors find
Most common safety campaign plan findings
Six findings recur across campaign records, and each of them is visible from the plan alone — no interviews needed.
| Finding | Clause | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| No baseline recorded, so the result cannot be assessed | ISO 45001 cl.9.1.1 | Do not backfill it. Note the gap, close the campaign as unevaluable, and gate the next Start Date on baseline capture. |
| Topic chosen without traceable evidence | ISO 45001 cl.6.2.1 | Populate Related Cause Code and Cause Code ID from the incident data, and rewrite Evidence For Choosing It to cite the trend rather than the topic. |
| The committee saw the plan only after launch | ISO 45001 cl.5.4 | Move topic and measure selection onto the committee agenda, and gate Status leaving Planned on Committee Consulted. |
| Contractors and night shift excluded from every activity | Council Directive 89/391/EEC, Article 10 | Check Target Audience across every repeated Activities entry, and add at least one activity per excluded group rather than assuming spillover. |
| Activities completed but the measure did not move | ISO 45001 cl.10.3 | Record Target Achieved as No and say so in Measure At End; raise a CAPA to change the intervention, not to repeat the same activities louder. |
| Participation Count left blank on most activities | ISO 45001 cl.6.2.2 | Capture the count at the activity, not at close-out; Participation Percent from a partial denominator is worse than no figure. |
Case in point
Case in point: the campaign that worked for six weeks
A distribution centre ran a four-week manual handling campaign after strain injuries rose through the summer. The plan was competent: cause code cited, baseline of 4.2 strain incidents per month, target of 2.0, eleven activities across toolbox talks, a physiotherapist demonstration and a team competition. Completion closed at 100 percent, participation at 91. Measure At End read 1.6 and Target Achieved was marked Yes.
Nobody re-opened the record. When the following summer came in at 4.5 per month, the site's first instinct was that the campaign had failed. It had not — the plan showed a real effect. What it did not show was when that effect ended, because the 90-day field was never completed. The re-measure is now a dated activity in the plan itself, and the honest finding is that the demonstration and competition held for roughly two months while the posters held for nothing.
The template
The template, field by field
The form exactly as it installs. Every field, option, score and conditional rule is editable, and the links to other templates come with it.
4 sections
- Reference
- SAF-128
- Archetype
- Plan
- Record ID
- CAMP-2026-000
- Scoring
- Engagement percent
- Direction
- High is good
- Singleton
- No
- Basis
- ISO 45001 cl.7.4
- Links
- Links Objectives
- Tags
- Campaign, Culture
- Sections
- 4
- Fields
- 38
- Follow up fields
- 3
- Repeating sections
- 1
- Links out
- 3
Header
12 fieldsCampaign ID*
Auto sequence. Format CAMP-2026-000.
The record's own ID. Other templates point at this value.
Status*
Drives who this goes to next.
- Planned2 pts
- In progress2 pts
- Complete3 pts
- Deferred0 pts
- Open0 pts
- Closed3 pts
- Overdue0 pts
Site*
Site ID*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Campaign Name*
Start Date*
End Date*
Site 2*
Site ID 2*
Format SITE-000.
Links to FDN-001 Site ID
Campaign Owner*
Committee Consulted*
- Yes3 pts
- No0 pts
Short, Specific, Measured
Campaigns work when they cover one topic, run for a defined period and have a number attached. General safety awareness campaigns achieve nothing measurable.
Why this topic
6 fieldsTopic*
Evidence For Choosing It*
Incident data, observation trends, cause codes or worker feedback.
Related Cause Code
Cause Code ID
Links to FDN-010 Cause Code
Baseline Measure*
Target Measure*
Activities
Repeats7 fieldsActivity*
Activity Type*
Toolbox talk, demonstration, competition, poster, walkaround, workshop.
Owner*
Date*
Target Audience*
Completed*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Participation Count
Result
13 fieldsActivities Planned*
Activities Completed*
Completion Percent*
Participation Percent*
Measure At End*
Target Achieved*
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Effect Sustained After 90 Days
Campaign effects usually decay. Measuring later is what separates a campaign from a poster.
- Yes3 pts
- Partly1 pt
- No0 pts
Action Required*
Raise the action record, then enter its reference here.
- No2 pts
- Yes0 pts
Priority
- High0 pts
- Medium1 pt
- Low3 pts
CAPA ID
Format CAPA-2026-00000.
Links to FDN-014 CAPA ID
Action Owner
Campaign Owner*
Signature*
SAF-128 · record IDs look like CAMP-2026-000 · Links Objectives
Open in KnowellaRun it with agents
From a document you fill in to a programme that runs itself
Campaign plans fail between the writing and the closing — activities slip, counts go uncaptured, and the 90-day re-measure has no owner. That interval is what the workspaces below cover.
Holds the plan against incident and observation data, so the cause code and baseline come from the site's own trend rather than recollection, and closes the loop back to the measure at end.
Turns the genuinely instructional activities — demonstrations, workshops, supervisor sessions — into attendance-tracked delivery, feeding real participation counts back into the plan.
Schedules each dated activity against shift patterns so nights and weekends are covered rather than assumed, and keeps owners on the hook when production pressure moves the date.
Tracks the campaign through its dates, chases missing participation counts, raises the 90-day re-measure as a dated task, and holds every write for your approval first.
This template lives in KnowSafe — safety and compliance. Incidents, hazards, permits, inspections and the critical controls behind them.
Meet KnowSafe→Glossary
Safety Campaign Plan definitions and key terms
- Baseline measure
- The value of the target metric before any campaign activity runs. Without it the closing measure has nothing to be compared against.
- Leading measure
- A measure of activity rather than outcome — completion and participation here. Useful for managing delivery, misleading as evidence of effect.
- Cause code
- The classification that groups incidents and findings by underlying cause. Links this plan back to the data that justified the topic.
- Decay
- The tendency of a behavioural effect to return to baseline once the intervention stops. The reason the 90-day re-measure exists.
- Target audience
- The worker groups an activity is aimed at. Recorded per activity so gaps — contractors, night shift, maintenance — are visible rather than assumed.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions about safety campaign plan
How long should a safety campaign run?+
Long enough for every shift and group to meet it more than once, short enough to keep a sharp start and end — usually four to six weeks. Campaigns running a quarter or more lose the boundary that makes them measurable, and the record sits In progress until someone closes it administratively.
Can one campaign cover more than one topic?+
The Topic field is single choice deliberately. Two topics means two baselines, two targets and no way to attribute the movement in either. If both genuinely need attention, raise two plans; they can share activities and dates without sharing a measure.
How is a campaign plan scored?+
Scoring is engagement percent, where high is good, drawn from completion of planned activities and participation against them. Treat it as a delivery score only. Target Achieved and Effect Sustained After 90 Days carry the actual verdict and should be read separately.
What if the campaign fails to hit its target?+
Record it as No and keep the plan. A campaign that ran fully, was well attended and moved nothing is one of the most useful records a site can hold — it rules out a whole class of intervention for that hazard. Rewriting the target after the fact is the only genuinely bad outcome here.
Do posters count as a campaign activity?+
Poster is an Activity Type option and belongs there, but never as the only one. Passive material sets context; behaviour change comes from demonstrations, workshops and walkarounds where someone is present to correct what they see. A plan made entirely of posters shows participation figures it cannot substantiate.
Who should own the individual activities?+
Whoever will actually be in the room. Line supervisors and area leads make better owners than the safety function, because the campaign then arrives from the workers' own management line rather than a department they see occasionally. The safety lead owns the plan, and few of the activities.
Keep going
Related templates and programmes
Industries this is written for
Programmes this belongs to
Used together in Safety Culture and Engagement
Improvement Suggestion Record
Captures an improvement idea from anybody, with what it would change and who could own it
Safety Observation
A short record of how a task was actually done, noting both safe practice and risk
Behaviour Based Observation
Looks at a specific set of behaviours agreed with the workforce, such as line of fire, body position and tool use
Leadership Safety Walk
A senior leader spends time in the workplace talking with workers about how the work really goes
Safety Coaching Record
Records a coaching conversation after an at risk practice was seen
Critical Task Observation
Watches a high risk task from start to finish against its procedure
Written and reviewed by
Siddarth Singh
Founder & Chief Executive Officer, Knowella
Certified Safety Professional and industrial and systems engineer with more than a decade inside food supply chain, freight and manufacturing operations. This page was written against the current text of the standards it cites, not against secondary summaries of them.
- Certified Safety Professional (CSP), Board of Certified Safety Professionals
- MBA, University of Chicago Booth School of Business
- MS and BS, The Ohio State University, Industrial and Systems Engineering
- Six Sigma Black Belt
Sources and last review. Reviewed 16 August 2026 against:
- ISO 45001:2018, cl.7.4 Communication; cl.6.2 OH&S objectives and planning; cl.9.1.1 Monitoring, measurement, analysis and performance evaluation
- Council Directive 89/391/EEC on improvements in the safety and health of workers at work, Articles 10 and 12
- Health and Safety at Work etc. Act 1974 (UK), s.2(2)(c)
- Management of Health and Safety at Work Regulations 1999 (UK), reg.10 Information for employees
- ILO Convention C155 Occupational Safety and Health Convention 1981, Article 19
This page is general guidance, not legal advice. Confirm requirements with your jurisdiction’s regulator.