Workplace Communicator Blog

Six Secret Principles to an Effective Workplace Safety Campaign

In the brilliant book, Made to Stick, by Chip and Dan Heath, they discussed a 1999 research project by a team of Israeli researchers.  In this study, 200 award winning ads were classified into six templates.

They then classified 200 unsuccessful ads and found that only 2% could be classified into the six templates.

But wait there's more...

The researchers brought in three groups of novices and got them to create three ads for three different products.  The first group received information on the products and no ad design training.  The second group was trained for two hours by a creativity instructor, while the third group was trained for two hours on the six templates.

For all groups, the best best ads were selected by a creative director and tested with consumers.

The group that was trained on the six templates was the clear winner with a 55% more positive attitude rating towards the product advertised and also rated 50% more for creativity by consumers.

The Six Secret Advertising Principles

Based on the research study, the Heath Brothers came up with six advertising principles.  These can also be used to powerfully transform your safety communication to improve message recall and understanding.  Here is a list of the SUCCES principles:

Simple - Use simple and easy to understand language.  Only communicate one core message and make it as short as possible.  Avoid decision paralysis where the more information a person is given, the harder it is for them to make a decision.  Think metaphors and proverbs that contain highly informative information in a bite-sized take away.

Unexpected - Common sense is the enemy of sticky communication.  When our brain's guessing machine fails, it wants to work out why it was unable to guess.  This surprise grabs our attention, so that we can be prepared in the future.  By trying to work out what went wrong, our brain is more likely to remember the information.  A good example is the Enclave television ad.

Concrete - Information that is communicated with lots of words to describe say, a process, is called abstract.  The information can be difficult for novices to understand.  To help people understand the information you need to make it more real-life or concrete.  Give real world examples, make comparisons to other similar things that people will understand, use visuals to explain such as photos, video and diagrams.

For example:  A successful campaign that was undertaken to educate people about the high levels of saturated fat in movie popcorn was to compare the saturated fat content of a bag of popcorn as being equal to two big Macs.  Telling people that they are eating 37g of saturated fat is abstract and has no real meaning, unless you're a dietician.  Instead, talk in a language that people can understand, which in this case was comparing the fat content to a well known high fat product.

Credibility - In Influence: The Psychology of Persuasion, Robert Cialdini talks about social proof.  One way humans determine what is correct is to find out what other people think is correct.  In particular, we view behaviour as more correct in a given situation to the degree that we see others performing it.  Having credible spokespeople is important in any safety campaign.  These can be anti-heros who have been injured by an unsafe practices that are better at motivating staff to change than senior management.  After all, they've experienced first hand the consequences of poor safety and can talk about how it affected their life.  Viewers will look to the spokesperson to model their own behaviour.

Emotional - Despite economists wanting to believe that we make logical, unemotional decisions, the truth is hitting people's emotions is important for change.  Giving people analytical, logical reasons to stay safe aren't always effective.  Put emotion into your communication.  Make people care.  It can be as simple as talking about a person affected by poor safety.  Humanise it.

Story - This leads us to using stories to communicate your messages.  Stories are tremendously powerful and help provide an emotional connection to information.  They are especially useful when your audience is resistant to change or in denial about the safety issues.  Become a story finder in your company.

Sometimes you can't include all of these in your communication, but the more you can include the better.

The most powerful way is to get a credible spokesperson telling their story which covers three principles (eg: Credibility, Emotional, Story).

How can you start to incorporate more of these principles into your communication?

The secret behind consistent workplace training

Many companies often get frustrated about how their workplace training is inconsistent from site to site, despite trainers using the same training materials.

Regardless of all good intentions, company trainers tend to deliver the content differently resulting in staff being taught variations in how to do something. This can be extremely frustrating for managers who end up with confused staff and an unproductive workplace.

But even more importantly, keeping strict version control on your PowerPoint training presentations and ensuring that your trainers are all teaching the same thing is a legislative requirement.  If a death were to occur at your company site, the coronial inquest would request that the training materials used on the day the person was inducted and trained be submitted for review.  If there is evidence that the PowerPoint version was open and anyone could change it or that the trainer did their own version of training, then that company would be found to be non-compliant training wise.

With the new OHS harmonisation laws arriving, it's important that companies begin to have strict version control over their training materials.

The good news is that there is a way to reduce inconsistent training practices in your company that also ensure the best training outcomes.

It involves centring the workplace training around an engaging training video and producing a complementary trainer's manual and employee handbook.

Research has found that the most engaging methods of safety training are, on average, approximately three times more effective than the least engaging methods in promoting knowledge and skill acquisition, as well as reducing accidents,illnesses, and injuries.

One of the main benefits with this type of workplace training is that it incorporates highly active training in its design, which can then be rolled out to other company trainers across your company.

Here's how it works.

3. Employees are also given an handbook, which contains information about each procedure, as well as similar photos and diagrams that they would have seen in the training video.  A quiz can be contained in the booklet with a tear off page for them to hand to the trainer.  Trainees go through their handbook during training and get to keep it.  In our experience, they like to keep their booklet in their locker or drawer to refer to when there is any confusion when doing a task.

These training materials make it very difficult for a trainer to give information that is different to the course material.  This means that staff get consistent training, but also highly visual and active training.  It also means that the company has strict version control with its training materials that meet legislative requirements.

Trainers love the package because because all the hard work has been done for them.  All they have to do is to convincingly teach the information and help trainees with their questions and coach them on ways to improve.

How to Design your next Safety Campaign

Now that you have worked out your topic for your next routine workplace safety campaign, it's time to sit down and start writing.  Here are some tips that have been designed for routine workplace communication initiatives (and not for large safety communication programs that require a lot of change, for large scale initiatives go to "14 Tips to Launch a New Safety Initiative").

1. Work out your main communication objective and your audience.  Keep yourself focused on what your are communicating about and who to.  Work out your key goals and keep these in your mind while designing your campaign (check your safety figures to see what issues you might be having that needs to be addressed).  Get out a picture or a photo of the person who represents your target audience.  Master communicators find it very useful and inspiring to look at these photos, while trying to come up with the right wording.  You can even label them and refer to them affectionately, as “Cam the Construction Man” or “Patty the Packer”.

2. Research your topic – Find as much information as you can about the topic and look for interesting facts and figures.  What can you say that topic that's unexpected or different?  How can you break a pattern and get people's attention?  Use this information to write your headline.  But make sure you develop one core message.  Often, it’s tempting to believe we have lots to say and we feel that we need to talk about everything around that topic to communicate safety.  Yet, research has proven that too many messages confuse people.  Write your communication with one clear message in mind.  Every time you add content question whether it is part of your core message.  Remember, simple clear messages are easy for people to understand and recall.  Steve Jobs was a master of the core message in each of his famous Apple presentations.  Think “1000 songs in your pocket” for the iPod.

3. Keep your writing short – Once the brain has to work hard at what communication is trying to say, it begins to lose interest.  Always ensure your communication is clear and people don’t need to work at deciphering the information.  Use short words (5 characters or less), sentences (17 words or less) and even paragraphs.  Be friends with white space avoiding cramming lots of text into your communication.  Write at the reading level of a high school student.  And use positive language.

4. Write the announcement - Now that you've done some research and you've honed your writing skills, it's time to get writing.  Remember, how can you make the headline interesting?  What can you say that is counter-intuitive to the message?  Common sense will not get you noticed.  What interesting facts do you have about the safety focus that will grab people's attention?  Use the funnel method of writing where you explain your core message in your first paragraph (what, when, why, how where) and then write your medium important information in the next paragraph, followed by the third important information etc.  Avoid giving lots of details in the first paragraph.  Instead, make the first paragraph interesting, so that it draws people into the detailed information (but not necessarily the most important information).

Here's an example in relation to slips, trips and falls:

Falling Down Stairs kills more people than Sharks

Did you know that you're more likely to injure yourself by falling down stairs than by being attacked by a shark?  Stairs represent a serious injury risk and are one of the most common causes of injury at the workplace.

And here at XYZ, they represent our most common form of injury.  You can avoid falling down the stairs by:

• Always having three points of contact

• Avoiding talking or texting while going up or down the stairs

• Ensuring that stairs are clear and are not used for storage of items.

5. Use lots of visuals – Humans recall and understand visual information much faster than words.  And they grab our attention.  Always include a photo or picture that best represents your information.  Where possible, use human faces, as we are very drawn to looking at other people.  Emotional imagery also is more likely to get people to change.  Always consider including different colours, video, diagrams and pictures whenever you need to create high impact communication materials.

6. Repeat your message in many different ways – Advertisers know that for humans to even recall a television ad they need to see it at least six times.  And the more they are exposed to the ad in different formats such as radio, bus posters and magazine ads, the better the results.  With any campaign you create, you will also need to create a calendar of communication events.  Ideally, you must plot out a different communication activity every week for the next 2 months with the same consistent message.  Include posters, toolbox meetings, video content, personal letters from the General Manager, email newsletters, stickers and staff stories.  Remember, frequency is key and using a variety of communication formats.  Make sure all of the communication has the same consistent core message with matching visuals.

Writing safety communication information generally isn't the most favourite job of a safety professional.  Rather than approach safety communication in the usual fashion and producing mediocre results, use these tips to engage your staff and make communication fun.

Announcing Free Report: How to Improve the Induction Timing of your Training

Time is precious.  In most companies finding the time to train and allowing staff time for training is problematic.  This new report provides key information on how to reduce induction training time and create flexible training that both improves training results, but also reduces training costs.

Melbourne, Australia – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new report “How to Improve the Timing of your Induction Training” to help safety, training and HR professionals get better results with their company inductions.

In many companies, time is precious.  And finding the time to train is problematic.  After all, how do you communicate all of the relevant issues to staff when time is limited?

Then, there is the issue of stressed out trainers constantly undertaking induction training on a daily basis.  Organisations often worry about how to make their induction training more interesting and ensure consistent high quality training.

In this free report you will find out:

• Three tips to reduce your induction training length.
• How to grab trainee attention.
• How to improve message retention and recall rates.
• How to systemize your training for improved training outcomes.

Inductions are an important process that done right results in will reduce the start up costs involved with learning a new job, reduce injuries, improve talent retention and productivity.

Discover how you can have an engaging induction process for your organistion that will be most cost effective than your current system.
For a complete copy of the report, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/improving-induction-timing/

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos and workplace training packages. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos.  For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross
Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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How to find the right stories for your company

Telling stories are a great way to create an emotional connection to information that gets people interested in what you are talking about, but more importantly helps them to remember your message.

Good leaders use corporate story-telling as a way to communicate the behaviour they require and how it needs to be done.  It puts knowledge into a framework that helps staff understand how they are supposed to act.

But the art of spotting the right company stories can be hard.  How do you know what stories to use?  And which stories work well in which context?

Well, the good news is that there are learning templates that have been created on how to find the right story.

According to Dan and Chip Heath, from Made to Stick, there are three basic plot lines to look out for.  These are: The Challenge Plot, the Connection Plot and the Creativity Plot.

The Challenge Plot

This is when the hero is up against an insurmountable challenge and wins.  Think David and Goliath, the story line in the Australian movie The Castle and Erin Brockovitch.

There are different types of Challenge Plot: rags to riches (think Cinderella) and the triumph of sheer willpower over adversity (think of a sports team that was doing badly that won the final).

The special quality of challenge plots is that they inspire us to act.  They encourage us to persevere and have courage in the face of adversity.

These story lines are ideal for companies that are doing it tough and need to rally the efforts of staff.  Look out for staff who have battled a major illness or family issue, but have done amazing things at work or in the community despite the setbacks.

The Connection Plot

Includes storylines where people develop a relationship, despite their differences such as race, class, religion or other.  Think Romeo and Juliet, Titanic and Avatar.

Connection plots are all about overcoming challenges and our relationships with other people.

Use these type of stories when working with overseas customers and to reduce racial hostility with staff.  Look out for stories that involve staff working together despite their differences.

The Creativity Plot

Another type of storyline that you can use to inspire the troops is the Creativity plot.  This involves a mental breakthrough, solving a puzzle or problem in an innovative way.

Think Macgyver or the apple that falls on Newton's head.

Creativity plots make us want to do something different and experiment with new approaches.

These type of stories are perfect for when you need to reinvent the company culture and you want to show staff a new type of thinking or way of doing things. Be on the look out for staff testing different approaches to reach company goals.  And use these examples as your stories.

Stories help people accept information in a non-judgmental way.  They are ideal to use if you know the information you need to tell will elicit denial and a possible angry response.  Or if nobody seems to care.

Done well they will create buy-in and springboard people to act.

To find the right company stories, you need to go out and find them.  Be open to them and you'll be surprised by what you might find.

How to work out your safety induction training content

So your company has finally decided to systemise your safety induction training and you're in charge of sorting it all out.

Before we go into the actual safety training content, make sure that when designing your induction training you:

• include a face to face component (eg: site tour, meet and greet),
• have friendly, welcoming training (if you want to keep the new starter for a while, treat them really well),
• include visually appealing training material to increase engagement.

For more information on how to design your training content, refer to some of the article links posted at the bottom of the post.

When designing your safety induction training program, there are some content items that you need to include.  Here is a brief checklist to help you get started.

1. Introduction - it goes without saying, but surprisingly there are companies that launch straight into their induction training without providing adequate information to the new starter on what the company actually does.  Remember, staff and contractors are walking, talking billboards for your company.  Anytime they are at a family BBQ on the weekends, they should be out there telling people what your organisation does.  Make sure they know what you do, why, how, where and when. (A little story - about 10 years ago we produced a marketing video for an engineering company.  While the marketing video helped the company to educate and sell more of it's complicated shipping products, the video also helped educate staff about what the company did.  Amazingly, as most of the shipping equipment was so complicated around one third of the staff didn't really know what the company made!)

2. Core Values (optional) - This section is really for  induction training that is not safety related.  If you are doing safety training, refer to 'Your Safety Values' below.  Great companies spend a lot of time indoctrinating new staff into the company values and culture.  Make sure you also explain what your company is about and your core values (read How to Engage Staff with your Core Values).

3. Your Safety Values - Senior leaders drive the safety culture of a company.  This is where you really need to include senior members to talk about the importance of safety at your company.  This needs to come from the heart.  Make it friendly and personal.  Remember, first impressions count!

4. Duty of Care - This is more of a legal nature, but always important to include with any safety training.

5. Site Safety Rules - Explain the main safety rules that you have.  Make sure they are written in positive, friendly language.  Refer to the  safety principles example from CSR Viridian (above).

6. Personal Protective Clothing - Show people the different types of safety clothes that they need to wear and explain the reasons why.

7. Other specific safety information - Depending upon your site, go through specific information about emergency evacuation, incident and injury notification, traffic management, hazardous materials and so on.  If you do not know the specific safety requirements, contact your local safety advisor or Government body.  Remember, it's important to demonstrate as many different aspects of safety information to help learners remember the information.

8. Summary - End your training in a friendly manner.  Summarise your core message.

Further reading:

10 Ways to Improve your Induction Training

Why Induction Training Programs are so important to Company Success

How to Improve the Effectiveness of Health and Safety Training

8 Essential Induction Tips for New Recruits

How Using Quizzes in Induction Training Improves New Starter Learning

How to get Senior Leaders more involved in Company Communication

How Corporate Story-telling improves Company Performance

Story-Telling: An Effective way to improve Food Safety Training

How to make your Training Materials More Positive

How a Great Induction Process makes a Great Company

14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Announcing: 14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative

Promoting a new safety campaign to workers can often be difficult.  This new presentation provides the key communication tips you need to undertake to make sure your new initiative is easily accepted by every-one in your company.

Melbourne, Australia (26 September, 2011) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new presentation “14 Tips to Launching a New Safety Initiative” to help senior leaders and safety professionals get better traction with their safety campaigns.

Humans are wired to resist change, but with the right techniques you can convince nay-sayers about the need to embrace a new safety program.

This visually appealing presentation addresses the need to plan your communication and provides details on how to prepare for your safety initiative launch.  The report looks at:

• Who you need to get involved before launch
• What techniques to use during the launch to get buy-in
• How you need to track your safety initiative post launch.

Change can be overwhelming to staff.  Make the transition easier by having clear instructions on what staff need to do and how.  And pretty soon, you’ll be able to introduce new safety initiatives with little resistance.

For a complete copy of the presentation, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/launching-new-safety-initiative/

About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos and workplace training packages. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos.  For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions

+ 61 3 9696-4400

mc@digicast.com.au

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How to avoid decision paralysis among your staff

It sounds counter intuitive but the more options you give staff, the harder it is for them to make a decision.

Multiple choices actually make us more likely to freeze in action and retreat to the status quo.

According to Chip and Dan Heath in the book, Switch, numerous choices induces Decision Paralysis.  Choices can be deadly for change - because the most familiar path is always the status quo.

In fact, lots of choices can be exhausting.  Ever spent a day shopping and felt exhausted at the end?  It wasn't just from all that walking.  All of those choices literally makes your head spin.  When it comes to company change, what often looks like laziness is actually, just exhaustion.  Change is hard for people as it wears them out.

Leaders may pride themselves on setting high-level direction believing that they can state the goals and actions.  However, big picture hands off leadership isn't likely to lead in a change situation.

Change can be paralyzing because of all the details.  Staff need to be directed into what they need to do.  Called "scripting the critical moves", leaders need to think of what behaviour changes are required and document these.  For best impact, the new changes need to become part of a routine.

In "Switch", the example was given of General Motors concerning new safety behaviour:

1. Everyone is required to wear hard side shields and safety glasses.
2. No-one can expose any bare skin (no shorts or short-sleeve shirts).

Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they said that to make ideas sticky, you need to work out the core.  Too many messages, can be paralyzing for decision-making.  In fact, psychologists have discovered that when there is too much complexity or uncertainty, people will make irrational decisions.

Having a core message reminds people of what's important.  For example at South West airlines, staff make all of their decisions based on the line "We are the low cost airline".  This helps employees make better decisions about what is right for customers and South West.

When trying to get your messages down into one core message, think of a proverb - it's compact and core.  One short sentence can pack tremendous wisdom.

Absolute power corrupts absolutely

To err is human (To forgive divine)

So the bottom line here is that when creating a training program, marketing a new product or even selling an idea - you need to distill your message into one core message.  The shorter the better.  Because the more messages you have, the more confused people will get and they'll end up resisting what you say.

How to get staff to remember training information

To get trainees to remember new information, you need to get the information to encode into the brain.

Based on current research, there are four techniques you need to include to help people remember the training.

These are:

1. Use lots of Visuals - According to Dr John Medina, the author of Brain Rules, we're really good at remembering pictures.  Various studies have found that recognition doubles for a picture compared with text.  Reading is inefficient for us, but we are able to comprehend pictures instantly (read  Why Using Visuals in your Communication is so Important for more information).   In fact, when we team a visual up with audio, the information is dual-encoded in the brain which enables better recall ability. Combining photos with text is also more effective than just using pictures alone.

2. Repeat to Remember -According to Dr John Medina, the human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds! Which means, your brain can only handle a 7-digit phone number.  If you want to extend the 30 seconds to a few minutes or even an hour or two, you will need to consistently re-expose yourself to the information.  Memories are so volatile that you have to repeat to remember.  For trainers it's important to get trainees to repeat the new information around 90-120 minutes after the initial learning occurred.  Trainees will remember information better with  repeated exposure to information at specifically timed intervals.  This provides the most powerful way to fix memory into the brain.

Thinking or talking about a lesson immediately after it has occurred improves memory recall of the information.  Deliberate repetition can lessen memory loss.  Make sure repetitions are spaced out after each topic.

In a workplace setting, techniques to help remember the lesson include talking about it (getting trainees to think about ways the information might have personally effected them or others in the past is helpful), undertaking a demonstration with class members and then coaching for improvement or doing a quiz.

4. Go through the training at a moderate pace - Fast training that's undertaken in unstoppable waves of information makes it difficult to learn.  Give people time to digest the information.  Break the training down into 10 minute chunks.  After 10 minutes of learning, undertake a new activity.  Choose one that produces an emotional connection to the information such as telling a story, watching a video or a relevant activity.

5. Use a range senses  - Research has found that groups in multisensory environments always learn better than groups in unisensory training environments.  Try and use as many senses as you can.  Get people to touch examples, hear sounds (audio/music works well in training videos), taste (pretty easy for  food service companies, not so good for chemical companies) and smell.

Remember engaging training is active training.  Design your workplace training materials around interactive elements.  So the more you can do to get trainees to interact with the information, the higher the likelihood of them recalling the training information over time.

Three causes of trainee boredom and how to avoid them

Trainers often worry about how to create engaging company training for staff.

Let's face it, some company training can be quite painful and you can literally start yawning when you hear the topic name.  But, there is some good news.

New starters are often very keen to fit in and learn about their new employer.  So if you are training at the start of the new job, employees are at their most teachable.  Also, according to John Medina, the author of the fantastic book, Brain Rules, our brains can be excited about learning something new.  The trick is to capitalise on this interest which will last only an hour or two.

The bad news is that the brain shuts off when things get boring in training.  And when this happens, it's pretty difficult to get the learner to pay attention fully.  In fact, he found that we don't pay attention to boring things (this is an actual brain rule, not a general observation).

So it's crucial that trainers structure training sessions so as to avoid boredom.

But before we talk about how to improve training structure - what do you believe are the main causes of boring training?  A monotone voiced trainer, boring content, classroom environment or being forced to learn?

Read on to learn the four main causes of boredom in training (they're not what you think):

1. Getting people to read training materials or a PowerPoint presentation.  The brain sees each letter in a word as an individual picture.  Reading is inefficient as we have to identify certain features in the letters to be able to read them.  Your brain interprets every letter as a picture.  This takes take time to read.  It also means that lots of words shown on say, a PowerPoint slide, chokes your brain (read the article "Why Using Visual in your Communication is so Important" for more).  Trainers that rely on showing lots of text are contributing to boredom.  The way to get around this is to actually use lots of visuals in your training.  Use photos, videos and diagrams to explain the information.

2. Delivering the content without stopping.  This is combined with the previous tip.  But constantly reading information or telling people about a new training concept without stopping actually increases confusion.  After 10 minutes, audience attention steadily drops.   Every 10 minutes the trainer needs to do something emotionally relevant to regain attention.  Dr Medina, says to tell a relevant story, show a relevant video, or do a relevant activity.  While after 90 minutes, you need to re-energise, otherwise excitement will vanish (exercise is also really important to give oxygen to the brain).

Learning occurs best when new information is incorporated gradually into the memory store rather than when it's jammed in all at once (So if you thought a monotone voiced trainer was the main cause of boredom, it was probably their non-stop delivery style that was boring you).

3.Teaching abstract ideas rather than concrete.  In the book, Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath, they found that the best trainers used real life examples with their training.  So rather than just teach a new concept to students, they made it more relevant to students by using actual examples.  For example, rather than teaching children to add by writing 2 + 2 =4 on the blackboard, the best teachers would show two apples and then put another apples beside them to show how it made four apples.

So to engage your trainees, you need to:

1. Space out training with adequate breaks.

2. Undertake training at a moderate pace, so people have time to absorb the information.

3. Use real-life, concrete examples that people can relate to.

4. Use videos, pictures, diagrams and colours in your training materials to engage.

The good news is that if you structure training correctly, you will get people involved and learning.