The film, one of over 1,000 exceptional entries from all over the world, stood out to prominent jury members including Oscar and Emmy winners who awarded it the top prize at one of the film industry’s most prestigious events honouring the world’s finest corporate films, online media productions and documentaries.
Safety is ArcelorMittal’s top priority. To engage effectively with employees on a topic that literally can be a matter of life or death, corporate health and safety and communications departments collaborated to commission a video that would give everyone pause to think about why safety is a priority as well as why they want to return home safely at the end of each shift.
The film, follows the true and tragic story of their colleague ‘Max’, as read out by unsuspecting employee volunteers from around the world who represented all levels of seniority within the company. When it first aired internally across the company to mark ArcelorMittal’s annual Health and Safety Day in April, the film resonated so well with employees that they wanted to share it with their family and friends. So the company, for the first time ever, published its Health and Safety Day film externally. Since May 2018, We choose the safest way has had almost 25,000 YouTube views and is well on the way to becoming the company’s most-watched video production ever.
Robin Paulmier, Head of Corporate Health and Safety says, “The company has been organising an annual group-wide health and safety day for over a decade and although it has achieved a significant improvement in health and safety performance over that time, achieving our ultimate aim of being an injury-free workplace has proved elusive. To drive further progress toward this goal, the health and safety committee and I felt a fresh, personal and highly emotional message might encourage us all to stop and think about workplace safety in a way no other film has. We choose the safest way has achieved that goal beyond all expectation, touching not only our colleagues, but also a panel of esteemed film industry professionals. Congratulations and sincere thanks to everyone involved in this project, particularly our employee volunteers who connected with Max’s story with genuine emotion and gave the film its impact.”
Nicola Davidson, Vice President of Corporate Communication and Corporate Responsibility says, “We are all delighted with the award that recognises a film about a topic, health and safety, that is ArcelorMittal’s number one priority but that is creatively difficult to address. At the end of the day this film was made to help save lives and reduce accidents so it must tackle the issue head on, and make people stop and think about what more they can personally do to ensure we work in a truly safe environment at all times. Ensuring a safe working environment for all our employees every day takes constant attention and awareness and effective communication has a critical role to play. This is a film’s uniquely human approach resonated deeply with all parts of the company. Congratulations to everyone who was involved, including the volunteers, our own employees, who participated and made the film possible.”