The Workplace Improver Blog » induction videos

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

Marie-Claire Ross — Wed, 12 Oct 2011 23:55:30 +0000

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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Digicast Featured on “Technology Behind Business”

Marie-Claire Ross — Mon, 16 May 2011 00:46:41 +0000

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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How a great induction process makes a great company

Marie-Claire Ross — Mon, 18 Oct 2010 03:47:20 +0000

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?

Be friendly and welcoming.
Have training materials that treat the new starter like a valuable friend. Use lots and lots of visuals to train people better.
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.
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.
Test the newcomer on their knowledge.
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).
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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Do you make these mistakes in your workplace safety communications?

Marie-Claire Ross — Mon, 04 Oct 2010 01:38:07 +0000

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:

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

Marie-Claire Ross — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 03:30:03 +0000

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.

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.
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?
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?
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.

“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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Announcing New Training Video Best Practice Guide

Marie-Claire Ross — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 00:05:15 +0000

It’s smart for companies to be worried about staff training videos and how to tackle them correctly. There are so many choices. Quite frequently, training videos are produced that just don’t get used. Now, working out what components to include in your training video just got easier.

Melbourne, Australia (August 26, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a training video production house, today released the “Best Practice Guide: How to Produce Staff Training Videos that get Results”. Developing the right training video for your company isn’t easy. This guide is a useful resource for anyone involved in the challenging and complex task of producing a company training video that performs.
In this 4 page guide, discover:

The key components required for the best induction training program
The causes of a poor performing training video
Issues to avoid during the production of a training video

This guide is suitable for anyone wishing to produce a company training video that will be used for many years. It is a companion guide for the Training Video Buyer’s Kit.

For a complete copy of the kit, visit http://info.digicast.com.au/best-practice-guide-to-training-videos

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.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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How Using Quizzes in Induction Training Improves New Starter Learning

Marie-Claire Ross — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 00:39:55 +0000

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:

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.
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.
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:

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.
Quiz your learners after (or during) the video training. This makes sure they have absorbed the information.
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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Announcing New Training Video Buyer’s Kit

Marie-Claire Ross — Tue, 10 Aug 2010 22:09:10 +0000

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

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

Digicast Productions
+ 61 3 9696-4400
mc@digicast.com.au

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Announcing New White Paper: Optimising Induction Training: Reduce Costs, Improve Quality and Talent Retention

Marie-Claire Ross — Sun, 25 Jul 2010 22:05:37 +0000

Getting Training Messages to stick can be Tricky. This New Report reveals the Key Factors behind Successful Staff Induction Training and how to implement them.

Melbourne, Australia (July 26,2010) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new white paper “Optimising Induction Training: Reduce Costs, Improve Quality and Talent Retention”. Around the world, many companies train new starters and contractors ineffectively often finding it difficult to get training messages to stick inside people’s heads. This paper outlines the impact of poor induction training, the high cost of face to face training and the growing importance of including visuals in training materials.

Eighty-three percent (83%) of human learning occurs visually, yet the majority of companies produce text based induction training materials that have a 10% effectiveness rate on recall levels.

Smart organisations who regularly need to train contractors and new staff are looking for a more streamlined, engaging and cost effective way to ensure staff absorb training messages.

This exclusive white paper addresses the various pitfalls of a poorly designed induction training process and what can be done about it. The report looks at:
•   What current induction training programs are really costing companies
•   The importance of avoiding a poor safety culture
•   The emerging trend of using more visuals in communication
•   How to make training messages sticky
•   A little mistake that cost a Quarry $20,000 a year

For a complete copy of the whitepaper, download it now.
About Digicast Productions

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

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7 Tips to Improve Induction Training Materials

Marie-Claire Ross — Tue, 20 Jul 2010 04:32:07 +0000

1. Use more Visuals - 83% of human learning occurs visually. Use lots of photos, videos, diagrams and colour to present training information. Avoid relying heavily on text based training. After all, we only recall 10% of what we read compared to 50% for what we both see and hear.

2. Tell Stories – During training, tell stories of exemplary staff behaviour that typify the type of action you want staff to do. Stories help people make emotional connections.

3. Lead by Values – Let staff/contractors know what your values are. Using values, empowers workers to make decisions based on company values. Difficult for staff to make the right decisions if they only have rules to follow.

4. Positivise it – Remove negative language. Tell people how you want them to behave, rather than telling them what you don’t want. Remove words such as ‘no’, ‘can’t and ‘don’t’.

5. Involve senior management - Senior management play an integral leadership role in establishing culture. Effective leadership whether it be concerning safety, a new sales method or business structure must be led from the top. They must be involved in the induction process.

6. Reduce complication - Get rid of long sentences, jargon and big words in training materials. Keep it short and tweet.

‘Words are how we think, story is about how we link’ Christina Baldwin

7. Ask more why questions - Teach people why they need to do something, so they can always figure out the how. Otherwise, company processes keep getting perpetuated without people ever questioning why they do something.

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