“The Safe Way” Squadron Newsletter

AO1 (AW) Jeffrey Campbell -- click on image for a larger view

One of the biggest challenges facing any safety department is keeping people interested in learning about safety. We’ve all heard the safety officer who sounds like a broken record and have seen the outdated safety stand-down videos from the ‘70s. People seem to spend more time making fun of the “cheesy” mustaches than listening to the message that is being taught.

AO1 (AW) Jeffrey Campbell, a safety petty officer in VFA-14, recognized the need for a fresh medium to deliver information about current operations shortly after joining the Tophatter safety department. He noticed as soon as copies of Approach and Mech were distributed throughout the squadron, people quickly would sit down to see what the new issue had to offer. Hoping to capitalize on the popularity of fresh reading material in the shops, Petty Officer Campbell began publishing a squadron safety newsletter titled “The Safe Way.”

The newsletter is published twice per month and it is focused on issues that are most relevant to the current operations of the squadron. Additionally, the VFA-14 safety department is able to use the newsletter to disseminate information from daily airwing safety meetings when embarked, as well as lessons learned from recent hazard reports.

The Safe Way has proven to be a very effective way to highlight individuals who have contributed to keeping the squadron running smoothly. When a sailor prevents an accident or uncovers a discrepancy that might have gone otherwise unnoticed, we detail their actions in the newsletter as reward to the individual and as evidence to others that we all are responsible for correcting any safety related deficiencies we find.

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