So now, that you know about anchors you might want to take a closer look at the gifts you give out at your next safety celebration or meeting. When you give a gift tie it into the meeting and if possible connect it to what you are talking about.

Someone once asked me what the value of using magic during my presentations was. I answered them that it has several purposes. First, to get people’s attention, second, to make the meeting fun and third, and most important, to serve as an anchor to cause them to recall the safety meeting every time they tell someone about one of the tricks they saw. As you may know, I have many different presentations which allow me to return to the same audience several times. I vary the tricks for each presentation but I always end my presentation with the dollar bill in the lemon trick. Why? It becomes an anchor for them to recall me and my message. I know that people aren’t likely to go home and say, “Wow, I heard the best safety story ever!” But they probably will go home and tell people they saw this guy have a torn up dollar bill reappear back in one piece inside of a lemon at the safety meeting today! When they do this their families and friends also hear about safety but more importantly from a positive perspective. The anchor of the lemon and the magic trick causes the person to remember what was said at the safety meeting.

At one meeting, I met an exercise expert named Kathy Bro, who was teaching employees how to prevent injuries by certain exercises they can do. She demonstrated an exercise using a small, “stress ball” that will help prevent carpal tunnel syndrome. I was standing next to the president of the company and he said, “I’m going to buy one of those for each of my workers. It was then that we took the idea one step further. Since I do the lemon trick, we found a stress ball in the shape of a lemon. We had a safety slogan printed on the lemons and developed our first product which served safety on several levels. If they use the lemon to do the exercises they will improve their likelihood of avoiding an injury. If they only leave it on their desk or in their truck it will serve as a visual reminder of the safety meeting and the tricks, lessons, and stories they learned. Finally, the slogan on the side will remind them of something that could help them avoid injury every day.

Our products on my web site have been selected because they can be used to create a positive anchor for safety. We have a can of cookies in a paint can container with a humorous label on it. This was developed so they could even take the message of safety home with them. They share them with their family and explain they got them at the safety meeting. This spreads the message of safety and every time they have one of the cookies they are reminded of the safety meeting.

The point is to think of how you can improve retention and the awareness of safety by making every part of your safety meeting something that enhances the results you want to achieve. If you would like to see some products that create positive anchors for safety go to,

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