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.