Employee engagement brochure

We inspired AstraZeneca employees to prioritise safety with an engaging employee engagement brochure. Designed to promote awareness and accountability, it helped reduce accidents and incidents across construction sites worldwide.

Background

With a strong commitment to achieving zero workplace accidents and incidents, AstraZeneca’s Global Engineering team needed an effective way to help construction site staff understand their role in maintaining a safe work environment. While the company prioritised getting every employee “home safe every day,” they wanted to encourage greater personal involvement in this mission, fostering a stronger safety-first culture across all sites.

Challenge

Our goal was to motivate employees to do more than just identify safety risks. We wanted them to understand how their actions could directly impact the wellbeing of their colleagues. AstraZeneca also aimed to educate staff, equipping them with the knowledge and confidence to take the right steps before, during and after an accident, ensuring the best possible outcome in every situation.

Solution

To highlight the human impact of work site accidents, we designed an employee engagement brochure that puts real people at the centre. Instead of focusing solely on statistics, the design uses authentic imagery and relatable scenarios to create a stronger emotional connection, encouraging employees to take personal responsibility for safety.

The hero image on the front cover immediately captures attention, guiding the reader’s focus from a wider scene to a single individual. This visual technique reinforces the “people first” message, highlighting the importance of worksite safety in protecting individuals rather than just following procedures.

Blending elements of an employee handbook and a practical resource guide, the brochure provides employees with a clear understanding of company safety procedures while offering valuable insights into workplace interactions. It not only explains essential protocols but also helps employees navigate difficult discussions in high-pressure situations.

Recognising the diverse range of personality types employees encounter daily, the brochure includes guidance on effective communication to foster collaboration and reinforce a positive safety culture.

To ensure teams worldwide felt a genuine connection, we sourced local photographers and organised photo shoots at AstraZeneca work sites in Sweden, China, the UK and the USA. Capturing real employees in their actual work environments made the imagery authentic and relatable, strengthening engagement with the brochure across different regions.

Combining educational content with photos of real employees reinforced the message that every individual plays a crucial role in site safety. Featuring actual team members instead of stock images made the content more relatable and engaging, helping employees see themselves as active participants in the initiative.

The compact 210mm square format made the employee engagement brochure stand out from other internal communications materials. Its distinct size made it easy to recognise, handle and reference, ensuring employees could quickly engage with the content whenever needed.

Clever design elements and visual cues, such as names on hard hats, family photos and a ‘Greatest Dad’ mug on a desk, subtly reinforce the human side of site safety. These familiar, everyday details create an emotional connection, reminding employees that their colleagues are also real people with families, responsibilities and lives beyond work.

A plastic cover strengthens the manual, spiral binding makes it easy to handle and coated paper stock protects it from wear. The sturdy design ensures it lasts in construction site conditions while remaining accessible for workers.

The use of infographics and icons made company policies and best practices clear and easy to follow. Visual cues helped employees quickly grasp key information, ensuring better understanding and retention.

We also created a range of other internal communication materials to reinforce our client’s safety message across multiple platforms. This included a booklet for easy reference, web pages to provide accessible online resources and emails to ensure consistent messaging. We also developed PowerPoint presentation templates and digital assets for the company’s plasma screen network, helping to keep safety awareness high throughout the workplace.

“The employee engagement brochure was extremely well received by everyone, helping to support a more collaborative work environment and reducing accidents by inspiring staff to look out for one another.”

Take a look at other examples of brochure design.