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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 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

 

 

 

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8 Essential Induction Tips for New Recruits

In this week’s issue of BRW magazine, there is a helpful article called “It pays to be Nice” that offers companies insightful tips on how to usher new recruits into your company.

Jeanne-Vida Douglas interviewed me for the tips and to give readers extra information, here is some extra detail about how to design a great induction program (that didn’t get printed).  Let’s call it the director’s cut.

Designing a Great Induction Program

Overall, a great induction program needs to be well thought out and planned right down to the daily induction tasks required during orientation over a 1-6 month period.  Those involved in inducting are thoroughly trained in all the right steps and can easily find all the induction materials required.  It should not differ from one industry to another as all these steps are crucial.  Important elements are:

  1. Start inducting the new employee before they start their job.  Send a letter welcoming them to the company.  Let them know what is expected of them in their role and the steps involved with their induction process, so they know what to expect on their first day.
  2. Make new starters feel welcome.  First impressions aren’t easy to erase.  Take them on a personalised tour of the company and introduce them to everyone.  Encourage other staff to be friendly to new workers.  Spend extra time introducing them to their new team members.  Assign them to a mentor or buddy.  The best inductors also have the CEO or other senior person take the new starter out to lunch in their first month.
  3. Have their workspace ready.  This includes a desk, a computer with personalized logon information, telephone which will improve their ability to be productive.
  4. All HR forms, policies and procedures are ready.  Administration tasks that are required by HR are ready to go and help is given to the new starter with filling this out.  Ideally, before they start their job new starters are told what information they need to bring in (eg: tax file numbers, bank account details etc).
  5. Have their direct supervisor available.  Care is taken so that their direct supervisor is available on their first day to make them feel valued as an important addition to the team.   This is the same with the mentor or buddy.
  6. Provide visually engaging induction training.  Avoid sitting the new starter down with a big, boring manual to read on their own.  The best induction training programs are structured and include a face to face component, vivid presentation techniques (photos, diagrams, videos and lots of colour), assessment and senior management involvement.  Ensure they are not overwhelmed with too much information.
  7. Communicate company core values.  Great companies start aligning their core values and culture on the newbie from Day 1.  While part of the induction training and mentor/buddy effort, pains are made to get the new starter living and breathing company core values as quickly as possible.
  8. Train the trainer: ensure that those involved in the process have been trained and know what is required of them.  Make sure they are able to communicate the company’s core values and have the knowledge to answer questions.

What do you need to improve in your induction training program?

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10 Ways to Improve your Induction Training

Inductions represent the most teachable moment companies have with new starters.  They are an ideal time to align staff and contractors with what your company stands for and how you like to do business.

Companies that fail to impress newbies risk losing them pretty quickly with research pointing to 25% of new starters deciding to leave their new company within the first week. This increases to 47% deciding to leave after three months with a poor induction process being blamed for those wishing to leave early.

First impressions aren’t easy to erase.  So to harness the power of induction training, here are ten tips to consider including:

  1. Use lots of visuals - avoid heavy text based training.    Educational researchers have found that 83% of human learning occurs visually.  Our right brain prefers visual information and can process pictures hundreds of times faster than the left brain can process words.  Use video, photos, diagrams and colour.
  2. Tell stories - Stories and metaphors provide an emotional connection to information and can be an ideal when trying to get people to remember numbers.
  3. Be Positive - Use positive language.  Tell people what they can do, rather than what they can’t.
  4. Involve senior management – Senior leaders drive the culture of the company.  They need to be seen and involved with induction training as a way of welcoming new starters.
  5. Answer why questions – Too often companies teach staff how to do something but not why.  Company processes get perpetuated without people ever questioning why they need to do something.
  6. Participative learning methods – Ensure training is active rather than passive.  Give demonstrations and get workers to have a go and coach them.     Ask learners questions that get them to relate to the training in terms of their own experiences.  Think of ways to involve all of the senses during training.   Avoid a lecturer telling people what to do.
  7. Test - Using quizzes in induction training improves message recall and retention.
  8. Communicate your Core Values – Great companies have staff that clearly know what the company does and does not do.  Spend a lot of time indoctrinating staff on your core values and culture.
  9. The importance of safety - Poor inductions undervalue the importance of safety.  It’s crucial to let new starters know from the outset how important safety is to the company.  Without this, a poor safety culture gets tolerated which ends up being difficult to change.  Make sure you inform new starters at inductions how important safety is to the company and why.
  10. Standardize training – Induction training must be structured.  This ensures consistent, standardized training throughout the company.  Only if you have standardized training can you have a buddy system.  Otherwise, workers teach new starters bad habits and wildly different standards of training.

What can you do today to start improving your company induction training?

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Digicast Featured on “Technology Behind Business”

Research shows that companies that have a learning culture are more profitable and productive than those that don’t have one.

But faced with tight budgets, competitive pressures and diminishing time, many organisations under-invest in both learning and training.

John Kerrison, the host behind the Sky News Australia program “Technology Behind Business” posed this topic to a three person panel.  John wanted to find out, how important these areas are, common mistakes companies make and innovative ways training & learning solutions can be delivered.

The panel consisted of Karen van Druten from Strategic Human Resource Consulting, Marie-Claire Ross from Digicast Productions (and the writer of this blog), as well as Paul Hardwick from Seertech Solutions.

You can watch the 12 minute panel interview by clicking here.

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Announcing Seven Communication Tips for Workplace Safety Managers Seminar at Safety in Action 2011

Getting Safety Training Messages to stick can be Tricky.  Find out Seven Key Factors behind Successful Workplace Communication and how to implement them.

Melbourne, Australia (9 March, 2011) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video package production house, today announced that their popular seminar Seven communication tips for workplace safety managers will be available to all trade show visitors of Safety in Action in Melbourne during the 5 – 7 April 2011.

In this short, free 30 minute seminar, participants will learn:

  • The most important components to include in induction training
  • Seven communication tips for success
  • How to be the industry leader in workplace communication.

Located at the Demonstration Stage seminar session times are:

  • Tuesday 5 April– 2pm
  • Wednesday 6 April– 1pm
  • Thursday 7 April– 1pm

Callout Title
“Good clear points.  Good research data. Good examples”. Alison Hunt-Sturman, Faculty OHSE Manager, University of Melbourne

All participants will receive a free copy of the popular white paper “Seven Communication Tips for Workplace Safety Messages”.

For a complete copy of the whitepaper, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/workplace-safety-messages/

Callout Title
“Easy to understand and listen to”. Cameron Cranstoun, HSE Manager, The Bayside Group

Digicast Productions will present the Seven Communication Tips seminar at Safety In Action, which runs from April 5 to 7 at the Melbourne Exhibition Centre. For more information, visit www.safetyinaction.net.au, email safetyvisitor@aec.net.au or phone Australian Exhibitions & Conferences Pty Ltd on 03 9654 7773.

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.  Digicast will also be located at stand S14.

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

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Frequently Asked Questions about getting a Company Training Video made

Here are  some of the most common questions we get asked when companies are considering putting together a company training video.

1. Should our staff feature in our training video or do we need actors?

Human beings love looking at people.  Especially people that they know.

When it comes to producing a training video for you staff, the more workers that you can have starring in the video the better.  Not only does this increase morale (preparing your company for filming increases excitement and camaraderie amongst colleagues), but staff will actually pay more attention to the video as they watch their own workplace buddies on screen.

The downsides with using professional actors are that they do not know procedures often resulting in an unbelievable performance.  Staff are also more likely to deride their performance of an ‘outsider’.  They’re also expensive to use.

Paid actors can be important for more emotional, juicy roles.  For example, for a recent training video project we needed to film an elite athlete with an illicit drug problem talking to a psychologist.  As the acting was important and needed to be real, in order to train psychologists, professional actors were used.

However, for procedural based training videos, it is always best to feature your own staff.

2. We think only half a day of filming is needed to make a 20 minute training video.  What do you think?

Filming is integral to ensuring there is clear communication on how to undertake a task.  It’s a mistake to think that just because a procedure takes three minutes it will take three minute to film.

This is because lighting needs to be set up, the camera needs to be put in the right place and then the shot needs to be checked for accuracy.

Also, filming the procedure from the one angle results in a boring training video and also one that does not convey your information clearly.  Often, we film a procedure from three different angles (includes a close up, mid shot, and wide shot) to really explain how a process is undertaken.  This means the actor has to undertake the procedure three times.

Often, this can take time as you need to make sure that each shot is consistent and can be edited together.  For example, if you are filming a person washing their hands and the mid shot has them wearing a jumper, while the close up has them without a jumper, the video is going to be pretty confusing.

Also, filming can be halted due to too much noise, sun coming in and out or because an intruder  ‘accidentally’ appears in the shot.

So the answer is filming always takes longer than real time.  As a rule of thumb, a 20 minute video generally needs about three full days of filming.

3. We’ve heard that it’s a good idea to put video content up on YouTube.  We’d like our training video available for everyone on YouTube.

YouTube is a public place to view video content.  A company training video is a private affair and should only be available to your staff.

YouTube is great for marketing purposes, so if your training video is to help customers, then it is a good idea to put your video on YouTube.

However, YouTube only accepts videos that are less than 10 minutes long.   So you need to make sure your customer training video is short.   It also  re-compresses videos, so if your video quality isn’t great to begin with, it certainly won’t look any better on YouTube.  A good question to consider is whetheryou believe a poor quality video will affect you brand.

Other video streaming providers should be considered to ensure that high quality video is streamed and to have the ability to allow only certain viewers to watch the video.

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How to decide whether you need an Off the Shelf or Customised Training Video

As a training video production house, we often get calls asking if we have a training DVD that people can buy right there and then.

Given that we only produce customised training videos, the answer is no and we send customers elsewhere.  But what are the pros and cons of an Off the Shelf v. A Customised Training Video?

Let’s take a look at the differences between the two and the associated pros and cons.

Off The Shelf Videos

Advantages - This is an extremely cost effective way of training workers with audiovisual content.

Given that 83% of human learning occurs visually, any training that involves just reading a manual or looking at fairly bland PowerPoint slides with a presenter will always give you mediocre training results.  Humans learn better with pictures.  So just by adding video content to your training presentations will not only engage your trainees, but it will also increase their message recall and retention.

For small businesses, it is a great way of getting affordable video content for your staff.

Disadvantages – While people might initially be interested in watching a video (to break up the constant chatter from the presenter), it has to hold their attention.  Strange looking workplaces, actors and uniforms can start to lose their appeal.  And depending upon the quality of the training video, poor acting, bad hair, different accents and music can start to make the video more of an object to laugh at rather than learn from.  You really need to assess ready-made training videos carefully, as there are some dodgy companies out for a quick buck, that make some pretty horrendous training videos.

Will they or won’t they?

A couple of years ago, a client ‘forced’ me to watch an off the shelf  safety training video that was made in 1985 (it can still be bought today).  The client was still using it and they were thinking about producing a more, shall we say, modern version.

Nearly all of the actors had bad moustaches and the one thing that stands out to me, was that after the video illustrated a bad accident at the workplace, the next scene was a female worker approaching the office of the production supervisor to look at his safety report.  As she approached the doorway, the music changed to well, porno music and I really thought something non-safety related was going to happen (okay, that might depend upon your definition of safety).  It didn’t.  But it just shows how little I was learning.  Needless to say, any video that looks tired and dated won’t be very effective as a training tool.

Customised Training Videos

Advantages – This is where companies can use examples from their own workplace and ensure that processes and language matches what they use in their company.  It also is filmed at the company workplace, with their own staff and uniforms.  Interestingly, staff really enjoy seeing their fellow workers on the screen.  It’s like a bonding experience.  In fact, filming a training video can have the added benefit of boosting staff morale.  Staff love being involved (okay, some don’t but they still like to watch their co-workers).

A customised training video, if produced correctly, can also give you high message recall and retention levels.  Generally, much better than what you’d get with an off the shelf video, simply because your staff can relate to it more.  You own custom made video can also be used for five years plus (depending upon on quickly processes change).

Disadvantages - It is more costly and it takes time to produce.  If done poorly, it can be a big waste of time and money.

Summary

So my advice is if you are about to start training workers in a lecture, jump online and see which off-the-shelf training videos you can purchase to liven  up your training session.

However, if you know that you have a lot of company procedures that are nothing like what other companies do, or you have a large workforce, then you are better off investing the time and money into your own bespoke training video.

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How a great induction process makes a great company

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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How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages Campaign (Part 2)

As mentioned in ” How to Develop a Workplace Safety Messages  Campaign” Part 1, marketing is the key to getting your safety messages heard and understood.

But how does the ordinary safety professional instigate a marketing campaign to educate staff about safety initiatives?

Let’s do some Marketing 101 lessons, to look at the steps you need to undertake to deliver your marketing (oops, safety) strategy.

  1. Who is your audience? You need to work out who your target audience is and their demographics.  Are they mainly males 35 – 55 years?  Or a combination of both males and females, but aged 15 – 25 years?  By working out exactly who your audience is, you can better work out the types of communication they are more likely to watch, read and hear.
  2. What are your objectives? What are you trying to achieve?  How can you measure the success of the communication program?  What data can you measure both before and after the launch of the new safety campaign?
  3. What is your message? What is it that you want to say?  If it is to raise awareness about safe forklift driving, why do you need to let people know about this.  Ensure that you let people  know what the safety initiative is and why it is important.  How can you ensure all departments have the same consistent message?
  4. What communication methods can you use? Ideally, use multiple types of communication and deliver it multiple times.  Put together a strategy as to how you can communicate the same safety messages daily, weekly or monthly.

Let’s take a look at an example.

Gypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA) needed a manual handling training program to train 3,000 workers from five different companies on how to handle plasterboard safely.  In the plasterboard industry, manual handling injuries are the most common of injuries.

The training program was treated as a marketing exercise.  An iconic plasterboard man was designed who featured on all of the communication.  A slogan was also created “Move it – The GBMA Way”.  Both the iconic man and the slogan were a way of reminding workers on a daily basis about the training they had received.  Training centred around a 20 minute training video that also included medical animations to show how the back works.  A trainer’s manual, PowerPoint Slides and employee handbook were used for training.  The employee handbook was A6 size to encourage workers to keep in pockets or lockers for easy reference.  Posters were also designed with the same theme as a daily reminder.

Callout Title
“The training material components were key in engaging roles such as Team Leaders to deliver the training to their teams effectively.   One of the keys to getting engagement with the safety messages on a daily basis has been the handbooks and posters to prompt training information.”.  Gerard Crosswell, GIB NZ
Effective safety communication needs to be very specific to your organisation and tailored to your workplace demographics and culture.

It must integrate with a company’s day to day activities and be of value to the workers watching it.  Slick communication materials are not the answer.
Care needs to be taken so that communication materials are credible and easy to understand.
But more importantly, any safety communication needs to provide daily reminders to staff while they work, for the best results.
How can you best communicate your new safety initiatives?
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