Use Group Psychology for Safety Training

While safety training is most often conducted by professional trainers, as a safety professional you are called upon to do some safety training.  Good group training is a skill developed over years and by giving hours and hours of training classes.  There are some terrific trainers in the industry that your employees enjoy and they can learn a great deal.  Unfortunately there are also some poor ones, and you can’t do much to avoid them, except not use them again. 

Great safety managers have learned the art of using group psychology when they need to do the group training.  There are some basics tactics they have used for years to make them the best they can be.  Here are a few of them that might help you when you have to do your own training:

Be the First in the Room

This may sound obvious, but many don’t do it.  Arrive early to your training and have everything completely set up and ready to go before anyone arrives.  As the famous Civil War general Stonewall Jackson used to say, “Get there the fastest with the moistest!”

Be Social

Establish a dialogue and engage with those who show up before everybody else. Make them an ally, build a rapport with them.  There’s always a time when a bunch of employees show up at once and you won’t be able to effectively engage all of them in the same way.

Leverage that Rapport

Psychologically these allies will be more likely to promptly and positively respond to your training than those whom you’ve not engaged previously.

Show You Value Participation

Getting employees involved is best if you do it early on in the session.  That’s why establishing a dialogue with a few early arrivals is so beneficial.  Participation can help with training by breaking the natural barriers that exist in any formal setting.  And make sure that you don’t go to any one person more than once.  Try to get as many involved as possible.

Motivate

Never make training a punitive affair.  Convince your audience that no one will fail, and that there is no bad answer or bad question.  Keep using positive comments.  Make sure you recognize the skills and experience that exists in the room. We’ve all seen these tactics used in various teaching situations…because they work. 

Provide Positive Feedback

As with so many things in life, providing positive feedback will elicit more meaningful and positive responses.  You might also want to encourage learners to assist in resolving other’s questions or concerns. 

Keep Your Meeting Moving

Keep the content and ongoing discussion focused on what learners need to know and avoid material that is merely nice to know.  We all know of trainers who like to hear themselves talk and get off on tandems or topics that aren’t really pertinent to the session.  Telling anecdotal stories is fun every once in a while, and surely can be enjoyable, but stay on point.  If you keep them in a meeting for a couple of hours, make sure they get what they need to know, but don’t dwell on something just because you’re looking fill up your time.

Reward Their Performance

Training is an important first step in changing behavior.  It is the A, or antecedents, in the ABC model of behavioral based safety.  It sets the stage for all the work related safety behaviors that follow.  During your session and especially at the conclusion, make sure you make you final engagement with them the C, or consequence, part of the model.  Providing positive consequences reinforces the learning and closes the loop that you are looking for in behavior change.

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

Instructor-led or Online Safety Training?

Many safety managers are proponents of eLearning safety training because it makes safety training accessible for users around the world. It guarantees a consistent training message and can easily manage who gets trained and when.  It can also include scheduling for continuous upgrades and retraining on an as needed basis.  It definitely can save money when companies who have a wide ranging diversified global workforce that requires training content anywhere at any time.

Knowing  some main differences between instructor-led training (ILT) and eLearning  training will make it easier to decide which one or combination should you use: 

·       While ILT is the one we are most familiar with it can have a high cost of implementation, both in terms of time and money.

·       ILT can have inconsistent messaging due to teaching styles and instructor knowledge or experience. 

·       With ILT time is taken away from work and training interrupts an employee's daily tasks

·       eLearning can save companies money, in terms of development hours, travel costs and employee time away from work

·       eLearning takes less time away from an employee's work day, as eLearning takes up 40-60% less time than classroom instruction

·       eLearning will allow employees more flexibility to access training when and where they have the time to do so

·       eLearning can be particularly suited for employees who are remote, travel or have a high turnover

·       eLearning can easily create personalized custom solutions for your training needs

·       eLearning has the reputation of being more convenient and cost-effective than classroom training.

·       e-learning can be particularly effective for retention because learners can revisit the courses as much as they want at any time for refresher purposes.

·      
Testing, feedback and reward are easily built into e-Learning making it an ideal method to reinforce behavior change.

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

The Real Importance of Regular Safety Meetings

Many years ago working with a very successful safety manager, we asked the question “what is the single most important thing you can do to reduce accidents and injuries”.  His answer was simple:

“Communicate, Communicate, Communicate”

He went on to say that if every employee could have a safety supervisor with him every step of the day, your safety performance would approach perfection.  Safety is about communications, starting with training and then all the strategies you put in place in reinforcement of training, especially safety meetings.  The more and better the communications, but better the results. 

Safety meetings are ubiquitous, when done correctly they have a high return on the investment. The primary criteria when evaluating any safety tool should be… “Does this help keep my employees safe from injury on the job?”   Safety meetings are the front line of your communications strategy.  They improve communications in a number of ways:

Increase Awareness

They prepare the employee for hazards they may face the potential danger and proper safe practices and help them to avoid a preventable incident.

Supplemental Formal Training

Safety meetings can be a great tool to remind employees about certain hazards and safe work practices that they have previously learned.

Increase Vigilance on the Job

Regular safety meetings means employees are reminded on a regular basis to remain vigilant, avoid hazards, and employ safe practices.

Create Open Dialogue

Safety meetings are the next best things to face to a face conversation.  They are more than one-sided lectures from supervisors to employees.  They open a dialogue that allows employees to participate in the conversation and learn more about the current state of your safety program.

Effective Communication and Influence

When you choose memos, emails, and bulletin boards as your main form of safety communication you are choosing efficiency over effectiveness.

The best form of communication regarding effectiveness is face to face, and when not done person to person, the safety meeting serves that purpose. 

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

eSafety Awards for eLearning Safety Systems

In our last blog post we discussed The Forgetting Curve and how the value of billions of safety training dollars are at stake if you don’t reinforce that training with more training. 

We also mentioned that more training was not the only alternative to reinforcing safety training and that small safety awareness awards can be just as effective and often more cost effective as well.

One of these alternative safety award alternatives is the e-gift card.  Now with just a few clicks at your desk or from the field on your laptop or from your iPhone you can give an employee who performed a trained safety function in the proper manner an instant e-gift card.  The codes for these e-gift cards can be purchased and stored for immediate use, so you can give them instantly.  Your employee can then use them immediately online to redeem for an item from that store.

To provide even more motivation, there are some gift card award companies, like the
Award of Choice, that can provide codes that can be redeemed for over 100 of the most popular brands in the country.  This saves you the trouble of trying to determine which gift card brand to use.  An added benefit is that these Award of Choice cards can be purchased without a fee, a dollar-for-dollar value.

The next time you think about doing more training as a reinforcement strategy for training, consider using small BBS awards instead.  You’ll get the added benefit of turning the training into habits, which is in effect a 100% retention strategy.

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

Employees Forget 70% of Safety Training Within 24 Hours!

Hermann Ebbinghaus a noted German psychologist, who pioneered early studies in memory, discovered that from the point when you learn a piece of information (100% retention), retention begins to drop exponentially. He called this the “Forgetting Curve”. What that means is, without follow-up, about 70% of learning is lost and forgotten within 24 hours of learning it.

In addition, while the loss rate does slow down, some studies show that total retention a month later is only around 10-20 %!  And that of course assumes the 100% of the learning is retained initially which is likely not the case. On a good day, we are lucky if a learner starts at 80% retention.

Over the years, psychologists have completed many experiments in the field of cognitive psychology, but researchers have not been able to replicate Ebbinghaus’ work.  The forgetting curve has stood the test of time. It is now relied upon as a sound concept.

So, does this mean that 70% of the billions spent each year on safety training is wasted after 24 hours? 

There will continue to be conflicting claims about what the forgetting curve actually is, how quickly people forget, and what trainers can do about it. You often hear safety training companies cite ‘the curve’ as the reason you need their product or service as reinforcement to the initial training or you risk losing training those safety investment dollars.

Despite the confusion, you can’t afford to ignore the forgetting curve. When lack of retention is properly planned for, it becomes another design issue. But when we pretend forgetting won’t happen or assume forgetting doesn’t matter; it will become a value killer.

Training reinforcement strategies can be more than just more training which would turn into a constant process of more training in order to enhance retention…it would never end.  Another suitable and successful alternative would be to turn the training into a habit (which is essentially repeated and retained learning.)  Doing this requires using the entire behavioral model….the training, the communications, the feedback, and the positive reinforcement….an award. 

Essentially, behavior based safety is a process to enhance the safety training that turns behaviors into habits.  When you apply continuous positive reinforcement to a training issue, you can build a habit and then go on to other important training issues. Historically small reinforcement safety awards are in fact nothing more than a training reinforcement strategy. 

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

Why Do Safety Training Programs Fail?

In the world of safety, no matter the topic, the goal of training is often to teach workers how to be more efficient, do their jobs better, and ultimately, work safely. So, why does this sometimes fail?

It often comes down to one of these three things:

Executive Support

When you ask your workers to attend a training session, how often do they simply receive a notice of the training with a requirement to attend? If you want your training to start off on the right foot make sure that your leadership communicates the purpose of the training with a compelling reason to have it and the value it is to the individual and the company. 

Workers will adjust their attitude and attention toward the training based on the attitude and attention placed on it by management. Safety management may have sold executives on the value of the training but individuals are only going to engage with these training tools that they believe will make them do their jobs better and more efficiently.

The Training Contact Lacks Focus

Assuming employees successfully receive communication on the purpose and value of the training, it is important to deliver clear, focused content that builds on the value.

The best world class training with the right trainer and materials will fall short if it really didn’t teach what they needed to know.  Generic feature by feature lectures that provide detailed knowledge is less helpful than giving specific context of how they are going to make the training useful on the job. 

Lack of Feedback and Reinforcement

From a behavioral change perspective, training is just the beginning of the process.  It is the antecedent or “what you want them to do.”  To close the loop you need to give your workers feedback on how they are doing and provide reinforcement when they have shown working knowledge of the material by positive performance. 

Collect and analyze meaningful safety data through inspections and follow up with the workers in a timely basis.  Then recognize them with something tangible to reinforce their positive performance.   Close the behavior loop on your training.  You spend thousands of budget dollars doing it.  Doesn’t it just make sense to spend a few more dollars to reinforce it?

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

Safety Certified or Safety Competent?

What’s the difference?   Of course, teaching and certifying the many skills necessary to perform in a safe manner is paramount in all safety cultures, but it is only a part of the balance needed to be a truly safe environment.

In working with safety professionals over the years, we’ve heard several questions and comments on this subject, mostly in relation to the effectiveness of safety training required to be certified.  It’s like so many other things.  If you know the proper way of doing something doesn’t necessarily mean you will do it properly. 

Both certification and competency are important but in different ways.  They mean different things.

Safety certification is essentially formal education where safety professionals complete a course of study, pass a written examination, and continue to take professional development courses over their careers.  They are committed to their profession, have set certification as a goal and have achieved it.  The certification is a third-party stamp of approval that validates that knowledge. 

Competency really has nothing to do with formal education.  It refers to the knowledge and skill necessary to complete a task. Many workers without being certified have competencies and are qualified to perform their work safely and often do so with little or no supervision.

As with certification, it takes time to develop competence.  Workers gain competence through initial training, on-the-job training, assessments and other formal qualifications, and especially by completing the job properly and safely every time.  Practice does make perfect and certification alone won’t provide a whole lot of practice. 

Training is a staple in the safety industry.  Workers often take a training course, and then take a test to prove their knowledge. They receive a certificate to prove their compliance in that area.  But when they don’t use this knowledge for an extended period of time it’s almost certain that they won’t be able to gain competence.  Research has shown that we can lose 50% to 80% of what we have learned the day before if we don’t do something with the information.  You miserable if can’t remember where you left you cell phone for a day, but when it comes forgetting safety information or processes it is dangerous!

One of the main reasons that behavior based safety is so successful is that you are constantly looking for and recognizing safety performance.  You are building safety habits, or in other words you are building a safety competent workforce. 

With behavior based safety you establish standards and criteria to assess competency through evaluation, use training for those who show gaps in competency, and then recognize improved performance.  You use the knowledge gained through certification to grow the competency of your workforce. 

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

Safety Training for Millennials

While the focus in recent years has been an aging workforce it has shifted and research shows that millennials are now the largest segment of the labor force.  According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020, nearly 50% of the U.S. workforce will consist of millennials.  And the time to plan on how provide safety training for them is now. 

In recent years, many have felt that safety training millennials was going to be difficult because they were thought to be hard to engage and even harder to keep interested because of their need for instant gratification and short attention spans. But many safety professional have found that safety training for millennials can be very rewarding and that they can actually be very attentive and engaged if you take advantage of their use of technology. 

They were born using technology.  When many in safety management didn’t even like to use computers on the job or even cell phones, these millennials were playing video games as a part of growing up.  Their use and understanding of technology is light years ahead of where the safety world was when they were born between the 1980’s and 2000.

They are not only tech savvy; they are used to finding what they want and finding it immediately!  While some of us may be pondering where to go for dinner, they have their cells phones out and have a list of several choices.  When you give them access to training on their own terms, you can get their attention.  They are highly mobile and are comfortable in accessing and receiving information, including training, through the use of technology and mobile devices, and in fact they expect to. 

Take advantage of who they are.  If you want to disturb your safety training routine, millennials will be ok with it, actually like it.  Some would say that millennials are more risk tolerant than previous generations and far more entrepreneurial.  When you combine those attributes it will give them a sense of competence. 

Behavior based safety, properly executed, works very well with millennials.  You can teach them with instant messaging, observe them in action, and reward them instantly. 

According to a 2012 study commissioned by Time Inc. millennials switch media types 27 times every nonworking hour. And, just because they are at work does not mean they put down their phones or stop checking social media sites. So take advantage of it. Use safety training materials that are concise and available on demand. You might be surprised at the results.

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

Advice on Marrying Safety Training with Safety Incentives

When your train someone how to be safe and then apply the principles of human behavior modification to actually performing their job in a safe manner, you will reinforce the training in such a way that it will become a habit.  When you continually and consistently acknowledge that safe performance with positive reinforcement you will be building a strong and positive safety culture that will be embedded in your companies.

In too many organizations safety training is viewed as a separate standalone function.  But in reality, safety is nothing more than the beginning of the behavior change model.  The term “safety incentive” has become a pariah in some safety circles because of the negative focus that OSHA has put on it.  Unfortunately the incentive industry as well as safety professionals who lacked the understanding of how to properly implement a successful safety incentive program have given much credence to OSHAs concerns.  But it’s time to learn from the mistakes of the past and see safety incentives as a part of your safety culture…the part that will positively affect your entire safety program. 

The only way to use a safety incentive appropriately is when you actually reward people for doing things safely.  You have to have a system to ensure that any incentive is based on an actual change or sustaining safe work habits…nothing less. 

This paper on OSHA and Safety will clarify all the confusion surrounding safety incentives.  If you want to  create a behavioral safety program that will provide results at minimal cost, be completely OSHA compliant and can provide dramatic results you may want to review the ideas in this white paper. 

Marry the right safety incentive with your safety training and achieve your goals by changing one behavior at a time.  

For further information on our products or services please contact us at awardsafetyinfo@cox.net.  

Will Safety Training Change Behaviors?

Yes, but only for the short term.  In terms of behavior based safety, training is an antecedent...or an event that comes before a behavior and sets the stage for the performance to be done well.  While training is essential in building any effective safety culture, it will not alone change someone into performing safely on an ongoing basis.

To make safety training as effective as it can be you need to add the other integral pieces of the behavioral model.  You must measure the performance letting your employee know what and how they are doing, give them their feedback and then provide them with a positive consequence when appropriate.

In essence with training you are educating why, then showing a person how and what or what not to do.  Antecedents alone result in temporary behavior change at best.  Consequences must be used to if permanent behavior change is desired.  

For a whitepaper that discusses how to turn a safe behavior into a habit, please click here.

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

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.