Workplace injuries on the rise

In “Why Leaders Don’t Learn From Success” by Franceso Gino and Gary R. Pisano in Harvard Business Review April 2011, it was argued that success can breed failure.  We all know that learning from failure is important, but how many companies learn from their success?

When we do well, we’re likely to believe that our staff, our safety equipment and our safety procedures are the reason why our staff have a good safety record.   Psychologists call this fundamental attribution errors.

But another quality that can lead to our downfall is the overconfidence bias.  This is when we believe that everything is so good that we don’t need to change anything.

However, the most interesting aspect that Gino and Pisano attribute to downfall is the failure to ask why syndrome.  This is the tendency by humans to not investigate the causes of good performance.  Senior teams no longer ask the tough questions which enable understanding of why safety is going well (and therefore, what they should keep doing).

Companies too often believe that their safety record is due to their excellent managerial skills, yet, it could through be through sheer good luck.  Success makes us believe that we are better decision makers than we actually are.

Mind the Oil

Let’s think about the BP oil spill crisis.  Before that time, BP believed that they were doing an excellent job of managing safety.  Now, in retrospect, many flaws were found in their safety system.  They cut a lot of corners in their risk assessment process.

Margaret Heffernan author of the book Wilful Blindness found that the BP Oil disaster was at some level caused by senior leaders who were cut off from how the business operates.  Their assumed power gave them a distorted view of their own skills which made them rely on snap judgements and received wisdom.  Heffernan says “It’s power.  Not your power.  It makes you intrinsically more optimistic and detached from the reality of the world.  You become psychologically cut off” (you can read more about this in “How to get Senior Leaders more Involved in Communication”).

We’re so good because we just are

With success, there is no evidence that you need to change strategy.  Even Toyota with its highly applauded production process that is built around uncovering problems and continuous learning failed to measure why it was being successful.  The result being thousands of car recalls, which senior leadership believing that being successful led them to pursue higher sales which had blinded them to the fact that operations had comprised quality to achieve growth.

Why getting an “A” needs as much review as an “F”

As Marcus Buckingham wrote in the great book “Go Put Your Strengths to Work”, when a child comes home with a report card that has one A, four B’s and one F, it’s the rare parent that would say  “Well done, you’ve got an A.  What did you do in that class to get an A”?  Most parents would fret on the F and focus on how to get their child to improve in that area.  Parents spring into action when their child is doing badly, but don’t think much about it when their child is doing well.  Humans have a tendency to have a problem focus, rather than a solutions focus.

In the book, Switch by Dan and Chip Heath, they mention that companies need to look at “bright spots”.  The areas in which people are making something work really well, whether that be a good safety record or higher sales.  Staff that are performing exceptionally well are then studied for what they are doing differently.  Then, they are used to train other staff on how to improve.

The next time your company produces some great safety results – celebrate, but find out why.  Build up your strengths, rather than focus on your weaknesses.  Investigate why you got such a good result with as much detail as you would an accident.  After all, there is much to learn from our successes as with our failures.

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A funny thing happened yesterday.

My husband was driving carefully down our local shopping strip.  It was raining quite heavily (and it was a Sunday).  However, the 4WD behind him wasn’t happy.  The driver overtook him and subsequently sped through the pedestrian crossing.  Thankfully, there were no pedestrians, but there could have been.  The driver wouldn’t have been able to see them if they were crossing from the left.

But why was this funny?  The driver had a customised numberplate that was about safety.  I can’t tell you what it was because it will name the safety consultancy company.

Now, I’m not about to condemn the driver for being all aggressive and for being rude to a cautious driver.  But…isn’t there something hypocritical about a safety consultant that goes into workplaces and talks about the importance of safety, yet is unsafe in their personal life?

Surely, running down pedestrians on a suburban street is just about as atrocious as a company that knowingly lets their staff use dangerous machines without the right safety equipment?

A true leader knows that it’s not their words that tell their staff that they believe safety is important.  It’s their actions.  And a safety consultant that cares little about pedestrians during their days off, really can’t care that much about workers.

So for all the safety professionals out there – where in your life are you acting in a way that isn’t safe?  Are any of your actions letting you down when it comes to communicating about safety?

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Getting the right people into your company and training them properly is crucial for the success of any company.

There are so many reasons why inducting is so important.  Reasons include:

• 25% of new starters make the decision to stay in a company in their first week
• 47% of employee turnover occurs within the first 90 days of employment (with 60% of respondents citing induction as a priority area of improvement within the company, Recruitment Solutions 2007).
• The quicker that new hires are trained the quicker the return to your bottom line (let’s not forget the expense of hiring a newbie, training them and waiting for them to get productive).  Companies that do this right get a 60% reduction to their “time to productivity rates”.

So what’s a great induction process?

1. Be friendly and welcoming.
2. Have training materials that treat the new starter like a valuable friend.  Use lots and lots of visuals to train people better.
3. Have senior management explaining the values of the company, what the company goals are, what the safety goals are, and how the new starter fits into the scheme of things.  Tell stories to make your values memorable.
4. Have face to face training, but also use training videos to further explain processes that will convey much more information than just words and pictures alone.
5. Test the newcomer on their knowledge.
6. Be friendly and welcoming and do include a meet and greet early in the process (I know I’ve mentioned this twice, but it is really important).
7. Make it fun!

By improving your induction process, you will not only reduce your recruitment and training costs, but improve the duration people will stay at your company.  Oh, and they will also want to work at your company and tell all their friends how wonderful you are.

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Image courtesty of: Jusben/MorgueFile

When it comes to inducting people from a training perspective into any organisation, as important as this process is, unfortunately far too often not enough thought or preparation goes into it.

Organisations can become obsessed with running induction/orientation programs (with these terms often misinterpreted as being one and the same) on a new employee’s first day. Now I am certainly not saying that being given an OH&S overview or understanding the organisation’s mission statement isn’t important. But what about a true induction – and I am not referring to systems or database training, being allocated a new e-mail account, shown where the biscuits are, or being added to the kitchen roster.

These days it is not uncommon for people to move not only from one job to another, but also from one industry to another. And these people need to experience an in-depth induction, which can often go for an entire week.  But for someone new to both the organisation and the industry, when is the best time for them to be inducted?

From my own experience as a manager and having often hired people from outside my sector, I am a firm believer in having them sit within the business for at least 3 – 4 weeks observing the other staff, shadowing the experts, and getting an insight into the true goings on of the business.

After about a month, I think this is then the best time for them to be formally inducted (either by a facilitator from the within the business or an external expert). However the key word here is formally. Not just sitting at a desk, but being in a classroom environment – experiencing industry-specific training as well as performance support, role-plays and true simulations.

By waiting the month, new staff will have become more familiar with industry lingo, they will have watched their more experienced colleagues in action, and that way what is covered in the formal induction will actually make far more sense and be less likely to result in information overload.

Paul Slezak is our guest author this week who is the Director and Head of Learning and Development for Recruitment Academy – www.recruitmentacademy.com.au, one of Australia’s leading providers of induction, training, and consulting solutions to the recruitment industry.

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This safety poster has helpful manual handling tips but fails by showing the wrong behaviour. Only show the behaviour you want.

Effective communication is vital to get staff and contractors aligned and working towards a positive safety culture.

Yet, just providing training to work safely is not always enough.   How we communicate about safety influences whether or not people will accept or reject our safety messages.

A lot of companies produce training about a particular safety topic or  communicate awareness with lacklustre results.

We have found that the following issues often let safety communication down:

1. Infrequent safety message reminders – Multiple message placements are the key to getting staff to remember new safety messages.  Try and get workers to engage in your safety messages in different formats (such as watching it, hearing it and reading it).  People learn in a variety of ways, so an effective safety campaign needs to use a variety of communication methods.  Messages need to be distributed in multiple ways and multiple times. Workers will need six or more separate exposures to your message to remember.  Use video, newsletters, posters, meetings, events and training sessions.  The more the better.
2. Messages aren’t credible - Senior management play an integral leadership role in establishing the culture of a company including safety.  Effective safety leadership needs to be led and driven from the top.  Staff look at senior leaders actions to see whether new safety messages are being taken seriously.  Are your senior leaders really supporting the new messages or are they just playing lip service?
3. Messages aren’t consistent – Good safety communication campaigns have alignment with all departments who are all working towards the same outcome.  This means working with all departments before you launch your safety messages and ensure that they will work with you and not against you.  A common example is that the production manager will push for speed, while the safety manager will tell people to work safely and cautiously.
4. Overuse of negative language – When writing your safety messages, it is important that positive language is used that focuses on the behaviour you want and not the behaviour you want to avoid.  It also needs to communicate the issue in friendly language rather than rule-based or blame-centric writing.  You will get little traction of your message if you blame workers for the current state of affairs.
5. Lack of consequences – It is important to introduce the new safety initiative by first explaining to everyone what the current problem is and the issues it is causing.  Then, managers need to explain the new rules of the game and the expectations.  It is also really important to let workers know of the consequences of not following the new guidelines.  This means letting staff really understand that poor safety behaviour not only puts themselves at risk, but the safety of other workers.  Let them know the effect this will have on their personal life and their family.

Of course, there are a lot more mistakes, but these are the main ones.

What can you do to improve your safety communication?

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Research studies tell us that 70% of workplace mistakes are a result of poor communication.

Communication failures can be costly.  It can cause loss of business, accidents, frustration, hostility, high employee turnover, low productivity and much more.

According to Kris Cole, who wrote the book Crystal Clear Communication, there are quite a range of communication difficulties.  These being:

• Not explaining goals or priorities properly
• Not listening
• Not understanding fully and failing to ask questions
• Mind made up, preconceived ideas
• Not understanding others’ needs
• Not thinking it through clearly, jumping to conclusions
• Losing patience, allowing discussion to become heated
• Short of time
• Bad mood
• Failure to explore alternatives

But it’s not just personal communication that can go awry.  Business communication will also fail to miss the mark, if those responsible for corporate communication have the same communication difficulties as mentioned above.  That’s why it is so important when companies commence a training video that all of those involved in the process are on the same page.  Otherwise, the training video process can be drawn out and in danger of missing the mark.

Where in your daily life can you change your communication style to ensure mistakes get reduced?  And for company communication, how can you make sure it is unified with all those responsible aligned with the same agenda?

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It might seem like a hardened, senior management business view, but there is evidence that moving from measuring incident rates to the cost of safety in dollar terms, can actually improve safety.

In his article, Mind Shifting into Safety Excellence,  Dr Larry L. Hansen from L2H, talks about the need for companies to change how they measure safety performance.

As Dr Hansen succinctly puts it, “What does your CEO and CFO value most…reduction in rates? Or reduction in costs?” Obviously, nearly everyone would choose costs.  Yet,  so many companies emphasize incident rates as the driving metric of safety performance.

In a Safety & Health magazine readership poll a resounding 86.3% percent of respondents believed that occupational injuries in the US are under-reported.

While at a more local level, Dr Yossi Berger from the Australian Worker’s Union (AWU) has stated in a recent NSCA interview that reductions in injuries do not provide the correct information about the quality of health and safety standards nor about daily risks experienced by workers at their tasks.

Dan Zahlis, Founder of the Active Agenda project used to be the Regional Risk Manager for The Häagen-Dazs Company.

His most immediate challenge was to reduce high Workers Compensation costs at the California facility. What he found was that head office imposed “incident rate measurements‟  which had frustrated supervisors (because they were accountable for something over which they had little control), had created employee cynicism, (because workers knew that numbers were suspect), and had driven real problems and near-miss events underground, (until they ultimately surfaced as costly injuries).  Dan removed the incident rate measurement and implemented what he called the “ultimate safety metric‟ – “Average Loss Cost‟ -calculated by the following formula:

Average Loss Cost = Total COST of all INCIDENTS/Total NUMBER of all INCIDENTS
(And by INCIDENTS, Dan meant ALL – Near Misses, First Aid, Medical Only, Restricted Duty, and Disabling)
Dan’s goal was to build trust and remove cynicism by removing the negative consequences associated with reporting, which in turn would expose real problems and allow real safety progress to occur.
The genius of this metric is that the only two ways it can be improved is by increasing the number of incidents reported (exposing hidden problems), or by reducing total costs (forcing better management of employee claims).
At the end of the first year, the plant reported 33% more claims, BUT produced a 30% reduction in claim costs.  And, of course he lost his job for bucking corporate policy.  He then went on to a Dole Foods Division where he applied the same approach and reduced loss costs from $385,000 to $30,000 in the first year.

So what do you think?  Leave a comment below about your company incident rates and your experiences.

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Induction training is absolutely vital for new employees.   It is also the time when new starters are thirsty to know more about their new workplace and want to quickly integrate into their new team.   However, it can be difficult to know how well a new starter or contractor has absorbed training information.

Establish an induction training evaluation system

According to Joe Huang from Wondershare, makers of the Quiz Creator, as with any type of training, it is important to review and seek feedback before, after and during induction training.  The evaluation of induction training can be divided into three stages:

1. Evaluating new employees’ learning and academic performance. Before new employees start with you, you can quiz them on their knowledge.  This can be determined through examinations: paper-based tests are usually the most common way, but for the sake of time-saving and cost-effective, computer-based tests are the best choice.
2. Evaluating the appropriateness of the training course content.  For companies who are not sure about the content in their training and how new employees feel about it, you can quiz new starters to find out how they found the training and what they liked/disliked.  This is a great way to update your training in a meaningful way.
3. Evaluating the work performance of trainees.  After the newbie has started, you can quiz  supervisors on certain learning outcomes, to find out what they think of the performance of the new starter, so  you can know how the new employees took their training into practice.  This is also important information when reviewing your induction training and what areas need further improvement.

How quizzes can be used with induction training video for optimal results

Research has found that viewers of a training video score better on message retention and recall levels when they are told that they will be tested.
To use quizzes properly with a training video:

1. Quiz your learners before producing the training video. By finding out what information current staff have difficulty with, you will be more knowledgeable about the type of information to put into your training video.
2. Quiz your learners after (or during) the video training. This makes sure they have absorbed the information.
3. Use a quiz as a review tool. This is a great way to refresh staff.  Even if they only watch a small segment of an induction training video (for example: warm up exercises, by undertaking a small quiz on this topic, you know that they have learnt the information).

Now, while it is all well and good to test people during induction training, we hear from many companies that this sort of e-learning approach can be flawed.  All it takes is for a dodgy supervisor to hand people the answers and everyone passes through the quiz in flying colours.

That’s why it is important when testing people that if they get it wrong, they have to go back to that section and watch the video again.  Or alternatively, the questions are randomly displayed so that it makes cheating much harder.

According to Joe Huang, it is important to choose a quiz creating software that has anti-cheating features.  This includes a time limit (so that there is no time to research answers), randomization (questions occur in different order), access control (password only access to change the test) and a concealed XML file (this stops the answers from being viewed).

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It’s smart for companies to be worried about staff and customer training videos and how to tackle them correctly.  There are so many choices.  Quite frequently, training videos are produced that just don’t get watched.  Now making the right decision has just got easier.

Melbourne, Australia (August 11, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a training video production house, today released the “Training Video Buyer’s Kit”.   Developing the right training video for your company isn’t easy.  Nor is choosing the right company to help you.  This kit is a useful resource for anyone involved in the challenging and complex task of deciding upon producing a staff or customer training video and then how to go about it.

Using a four step process the buyer kit includes:

• A list of questions to decide whether or not a training video is right for an organisation.

• The critical questions to determine what the training video needs to achieve, in order to write the brief and how to best manage the project internally.
• A valuable checklist to evaluate the suitability of a video production house.
• An additional checklist to measure the effectiveness of training videos already produced by production houses.

For a complete copy of the kit, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/things-you-need-to-know-before-buying-a-customised-training-video
About Digicast Productions

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos. 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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