Making Your Safety Training More Effective

According to weekly safety poll conducted by Business and Legal Reports, when safety management was asked about the effectiveness of their safety training,

Ø 47% responded it was just ok

Ø 47% responded that it needed work

Ø 7% didn’t have any safety training

In a lively discussion that we followed a while back on LinkedIn, there were a great many

comments from safety professionals about how ineffective safety training really was, which would seem to correspond to the above poll.  As many millions are spent on safety training, does this poll really reflect that almost 50% of it is misspent?

If you’re not getting the bang for the buck you spend on safety training, you might want to view it from a different perspective.  Are you educating your workers on being safe?  Or are you training them on how to be safe?  This is not just semantics; the outcome of your training is a cornerstone of your safety culture. 

 

There's a big difference between education and training. One can be highly educated without necessarily being trained. Organizations such as the American Red Cross have known this for years, which is why you can't be certified in first aid or CPR just by taking a written exam. You have to demonstrate that you can do certain things.

To make it as effective as it can be, consider using feedback mechanisms to constantly tell them how they are performing, and then reward them with positive reinforcement when they perform well.  Behavior based safety rewards can be powerful when combined with training and help make an effective tool to improve your overall safety performance.

Successful safety cultures constantly measure how effective their training is. They monitor performance with hands on coaching and feedback on a continuous basis. Training becomes embedded in the everyday workplace when your workers can demonstrate proficiency in carrying out their tasks the way in which they were trained. If participants can perform the tasks, the training has been effective. If they can't, it hasn't.

For more information on how the AwardSafety solutions can positively affect your safety training please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net.

Creating a Behavioral Safety Program.

The article, Creating a Behavioral SafetyProgram, appeared in Safeopedia on November 3, 2016. It was written Chad Lilley a specialist in behavioral safety and safety culture development.  We have saved this article as a white paper in our collection as you might want to revisit it as it offers some excellent advice for companies who want start a behavioral based safety effort.

We found the following paragraph from the of particular interest because it dwelled on what we have been recommending for years, using a positive approach to safety and shifting emotions in the direction you want your workers to take.

“We need to shift emotions in the direction we want to move. Let’s concentrate on what is possible, what we can achieve by working together, by looking out for each other, by celebrating the small wins, acknowledging the people working beside us, and making people feel better about themselves. Instead of sending people home the same as they came in, why can’t we send them home better? What if people went home at the end of the day knowing they made a difference, knowing they had been listened to, knowing their efforts had been appreciated—how would that feel? And yes, it’s all possible, and it’s possible anywhere in the world and in any culture.”

AwardSafety has been recommending and implementing award systems for behavior based safety efforts for many years. We created a new safety award, On the Spot, to make is easy for our clients to positively reinforce safe behaviors whenever they occurred. We guide

clients on how to use these award systems to build safe on safety performance and turn this performance into a habit.  By using small dollar awards and issuing them to workers on a consistent and continuous basis we have shown clients how to do away with cash programs that were not only far more expensive but could also drew the attention of OSHA as programs that actually promoted the non-reporting of injuries and accidents.

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net

What Clients Say About Our Safety Incentive Programs

The end result of any safety award system should be to first prevent, and then to reduce, incidents of injuries and accidents.  Our gift card award solutions have been doing that for years with diverse organizations across many industry segments. But rather than US telling you about our programs, we want you to hear what our clients have been saying.

Here's just a sample of the feedback we've received from our customers over the years:

"...We've used all kinds of safety incentive awards over the years, but yours is by far the easiest to administer, has the lowest price, and provides us with a perfect way to motivate behavior change.  On a recent audit of one of our facilities we were praised by OSHA for having a terrific non-traditional safety award system"

"...This is the best $ for $ value of any incentive program I've ever seen.  The vast majority of the budget goes where you want it to go, in the hands of your people."

"...This is our third year using the On the Spot safety award and it is a just what we needed to motivate safe behaviors in our manufacturing facilities.  It is easy to use and very cost effective."

We maintain a ongoing file of feedback via program surveys to our clients, click here for a copy of the most recent listings.

For information on any of our Award Safety products, please contact us here.

Values and Practices that Make the World’s Safest Organizations.

Ten years ago, Williams International and O/E Learning Inc., benchmarked companies with excellent safety records to determine the values and practices that made those companies excel in safety performance.

After refining what they learned from reviewing the common practices of safety inspections, hazard investigations, strategy development and safety workshops, they came up the following six values.

While your views and opinions might differ in part or priority of these values, we submit that they would make a great starting point for any organization wishing to reengage or improve their safety culture.

All injuries are preventable—no one really wants to be injured, corporate processes aren’t designed to hurt the workers, so injuries should be predictable and avoidable.

Compliance is not enough—the world’s safest organizations believe that compliance is the starting point, but recognize that it takes more than VPP certification to protect workers.

Prevention is more valuable than correction—Best in class safety organizations spend their safety budgets on eliminating hazards before a worker gets hurt.

Safety is everyone’s job—workers at the world’s safest organizations understand their ongoing roles in keeping themselves and others, safe.

Safety is a strategic business element—corporate leadership needs to believe and continually communicate that safety needs to be managed as professionally as every other strategic objective.

Safety should be a part of Operations—the area of the company that has the greatest control over the safety of the workplace is Operations; while other departments, such as HR or Finance may play an important role, Operations should have the responsibility over the safety of the workforce. 

For more information on AwardSafety products or services or other white papers please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net