The Workplace Improver Blog » safety training

How to work out your safety induction training content

Marie-Claire Ross — Sun, 02 Oct 2011 22:00:50 +0000

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.

Undercover CEO – An Interview with Neil Coulson, CEO Jayco Corporation about Safety Speeches

Marie-Claire Ross — Sun, 29 May 2011 21:50:50 +0000

Continuing the theme on workplace safety speeches, in this post, we interviewed Neil Coulson from Jayco who has been the CEO for three years. Jayco is the leading manufacturer of recreational vehicles in Australia with 850 employees.

Recently, Neil Coulson went “undercover” for The Skeleton Project and just like from an episode of the Undercover Boss, but with a safety bent, he visited his manufacturing plant in disguise posing as a safety researcher.

Despite his unbelievable disguise (can anyone really get away with a strange looking wig and a crooked fake moustache?), his workers were undeniably passionate about discussing manual handling improvements on site.

1. As a participant in The Skeleton Project, how has it changed how you prioritize workplace safety when planning your business goals?

Neil: It reinforced the value of our earlier investment in safety through witnessing the improvements achieved and the value to employees. This confirms the need to have safety as a business goal. Our experience has shown that improving safety often improves efficiency, so it is good business

2. You mentioned that communication is the number one priority in improving safety. Since being involved with The Skeleton Project has it changed how you deliver a workplace safety speech?

Neil: Not really, it has primarily confirmed the importance of setting safety as our company’s number one priority in all our communications with employees. It is also important to measure your performance and communicate this and other activities around safety so you heighten awareness and ownership for safety across the site.

3. From your experience with The Skeleton Project, what you would you say is the most important information to convey during a safety speech?

Neil: You must not only communicate your company’s priority on safety but then back it up with swift action in dealing with possible improvements as actions speak louder than words.

4. When giving a safety speech, what have you found that works? What doesn’t?

Neil: Being clear about what we are trying to achieve and why this allows all Management and employees to embrace the spirit and intent of the goal and focus their involvement with an appropriate level of passion. Also, being clear that we will act where improvements are required, then acting on the issues, gives all parties confirmation the company is serious about delivering an improved outcome in safety terms.

Neil’s approach to safety speech writing ensures that as the CEO, ‘he walks the talk’. Workers look to senior leaders to see evidence that safety is important. One way they do this is look to see if the CEO is backing up their ‘talk’ with action. Staff want to feel safe in the workplace, so by Neil following that up his speeches with action, he will ensure a high performing safety culture at Jayco.

Let’s hope he doesn’t wear his wig and moustache for his next speech….

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Delivering the CEO Safety Message – An Interview with Stuart Jacquet, Managing Director, Lafarge In this post, I interviewed Stuart Jacquet the Managing Director...
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Are you safe at work and home?

Marie-Claire Ross — Tue, 15 Mar 2011 00:20:02 +0000

: Image by A.Myers via Flickr

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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How to improve the effectiveness of Occupational Health and Safety Training

Marie-Claire Ross — Sun, 07 Nov 2010 22:38:55 +0000

Research has found that the most engaging methods of safetytraining are, on average, approximately three times more effectivethan the least engaging methods in promoting knowledge and skillacquisition, as well as reducing accidents,illnesses, and injuries.

Given the cost of workplace accidents to a company, getting your safety training right can save millions of dollars.

Dr Ian Woods, from AMP Capital Investors says that the average workplace injury costs 6 percent of profit. While in the construction industry, the total workplace injury cost is equivalent to a staggering 98 percent of the industry’s operating profit.

These high cost effects a company’s ability to be competitive. A good OHS strategy is necessary to prevent accidents in the workplace and improving OHS safety is now a necessity not a nice-to-have.

So how do you make safety training more effective?

Training can be either passive/low engagement (eg: lectures and reading which are the least engaging) to active/high engagement (eg: watching a training video with a quiz, hands-on demonstrations).

Here are the four tips to an engaging safety training program:

Visuals - The trainee receives classroom style training with high impact visuals. 83% of human learning occurs through visuals. The right brain prefers visuals and it is believed that it can process pictures much faster, even hundreds of times faster, than the verbal brain can process words. The application of more interesting visuals such as diagrams, video and pictures can have enormous positive impact on learning.

Assessment - the trainee is assessed on the information they have learned and face to face feedback is given on their results. It is important that a person gives the feedback (not a computer).

Development of training in stages – this means that the trainee receives different standards of training before starts job (basic), then on-the-job training that changes to suit the increasing knowledge of the trainee. The training can get more complicated as the trainee understands more.

Behavioral modelling - this is integral to an active learning style. A buddy or trainer demonstrates a particular task, then lets the trainee undertake it. Coaching is then given as to how to improve. However, it is important that the buddy is good at their job and will teach procedures correctly.

Action-focused feedback isregarded as the key to knowledge acquisition, in that it forces the trainee to work out relationships between events and actions, leading todevelopment of strategies for handling unforeseen events.

And while classroom training is the a passive form of training it can be used effectively if it includes:

High impact visuals
Quizzes (with one on one feedback).

Once information is imparted in classroom training, hands-on demonstrations are also required both in the class and when the new starter is on the job.

By incorporating more engaging, hands-on training into your learning design, it will ensure that workers get more meaning and understanding from their safety training.

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How to Improve Manual Handling Training and Awareness

Marie-Claire Ross — Sun, 31 Oct 2010 22:56:12 +0000

One in three injuries to Australian workers are caused by manual handling, with inexperienced staff at greater risk.

Back in 1986, the New Zealand Accident Compensation Corporation was faced with increasing back injuries and decided to launch a nationwide television campaign to promote good lifting and bending techniques among the general public.

The campaign consisted of a one minute television ad shown at peak viewing times that motivated people to bend their knees whenever they were going towards the floor to either lift or put down objects. In addition, a 25 minute training video was produced called “The Bad Back Video”.

The results of 1,000 randomly selected respondents were quite remarkable.

The survey findings were based on those who had seen one minute ad:

• Fifty-four percent of the respondents were aware that lifting, bending and strains were a major cause of back injury.

• While 88% of those who had seen the ad, said that they had modified they way they treated their backs, while 49% had changed their lifting behaviour.

Doctors, schools and industry all took some of the promotional materials and used them to train patients, students and workers.

There are some flaws to these research findings (eg: how did people lift a year later?, what percentage of people were aware of the major causes of back injury before the ads?)

But it does raise an interesting fact.

Video is a powerful way to inform and educate viewers on correct lifting techniques. To properly train manual handling techniques, video modules are required.

For those of you who have tried to increase awareness of manual handling tasks using photos, you know that the the learning task is next to useless. By using video for learning, you will greatly improve your training outcomes.

If you want to see how a manual handling training program was successfully implemented across Australia and New Zealand to train 3,000 plasterboard workers, read this manual handling case study.

This information was taken from “Back injury prevention – Awareness versus Performance” by Leornard Ring , Professional Safety, July 1989

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Announcing New White Paper: Seven Communication Tips for Workplace Safety Messages

Marie-Claire Ross — Wed, 06 Oct 2010 21:50:25 +0000

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

Melbourne, Australia (7 October, 2010) – Digicast Productions, a safety and induction training video production house, today released a new white paper “Seven Communication Tips for Workplace Safety Messages”.

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.

The main objective of any safety communication program is to change behaviour. But how does a safety, training or human resources professional change attitudes towards safety?

Find out how in this exclusive white paper, which also looks at:

The secret to developing highly successful safety communications programs
How to develop a workplace safety message strategy
Seven tips to improve both your written and verbal safety communication
How the Gypsum Board Manufacturer’s of Australasia (GBMA) promoted manual handling techniques to 3,000 workers across Australia and New Zealand.

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

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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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

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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