The Workplace Improver Blog Improving Workplace Safety, Performance and Training through Video

Tag Archive: safety videos

7 Tips to Improve Induction Training Materials

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.

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‘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.

Think you need help to improve your company induction training materials?  Then, go to the seminar to find out more information.

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How to Communicate Workplace Safety Messages

Safety training comminicationAccording to Steven Bell, senior associate with law firm Freehills, in January 2012 the new Australian OHS laws will expect companies to drive safety management internally and push greater alignment between key messages and action.

The new laws will introduce a level of personal responsibility that will help drive the changes needed for better OHS.  This means that senior managers will be expected to foster a positive workplace culture, receive regular safety reporting and a practical understanding of what is happening on the ground.

This is a great step forward as senior management actually drive the safety culture of a company.

Currently, most companies promote a safety culture, but send out mixed messages when it comes to a safe workplace.  For example: A fairly standard grumble by many workers is that they are expected to work safely, yet at the same time they are told to work faster or in a way that involves safety risks, to drive productivity.

So with the new requirement to promote safety messages and show evidence of a positive safety culture, what is the best way to communicate workplace safety messages?

With any communication program, it is important to take into account that people absorb messages differently and the more they see it, the more likely it will be taken on-board.  Therefore, any workplace safety communication messages need to include a variety of communication approaches such as posters, training videos, staff newsletter and ‘toolbox’ talks.  They all need to be branded with the company’s unique safety messages.

In addition, the workplace safety communication must be personalised to the company.  Generic safety messages won’t cut it.  Instead, it needs to be formulated according to your culture and demographics.  And then it needs to be followed up with action.

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Training videos are more persuasive than written material which is perceived as less important and credible.

A lot of companies that we have worked with have successfully used a customised training video as the main communication medium to drive OHS behaviour change. They have then supported the training video with posters, newsletters and other safety specific materials.

A staff training video is an ideal way to connect with staff.  Made correctly it will positively and believably demonstrate your company commitment to the healthy and safety of your workplace.  After all, research has found that training videos are more persuasive than written material which is perceived as less important and credible.

In order to take into account the new laws, consider creating a customised training video that includes:

  • An introduction by senior managers talking about the importance of safety to the staff and company.
  • Safety rules/explaining that poor safety effects the viewer and other workers
  • Procedures
  • Summary

Of course, just playing a training video doesn’t automatically ensure that staff will know your training messages.  It needs to be followed up with a consistent workplace culture that always considers the safety rules/message in every activity.  Not just when played on a training video.

More importantly, senior management must support and agree with all the safety communication tools.  And refer to them often.

After all, staff won’t believe that the company backs its safety messages, until they see the proof of action.

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Do you make these mistakes in your induction training?

Over the years, I have had the pleasure of revising company induction manuals and what I have found is that just about every company makes the same mistakes in its training materials.

Given that the quality of your induction training can actually determine whether a new starter will want to stay or not, it’s imperative to have the best training materials you can.  So which of these common mistakes do you have in your induction training:

1. Provide text based training - This is when training is from training manuals or PowerPoint presentations that contain mostly text.  Studies by educational researchers have found that 83% of human learning occurs visually.  You can actually help people keep their brain active and alert to new information by providing visual information relevant to the training.  Use lots of colours, photos, diagrams and video content to better explain training concepts.

2. Talk in corporate speak - Avoid formal corporate language in your training manuals.  Workers at different site locations will know if corporate has written the training materials and they weren’t consulted.  This can make the training manuals seem less credible.  Make sure it is friendly and conversational – and welcoming!  Keep sentences short (17 words or less), use short words (5 characters or less) and avoid jargon.  And in this day and age of Twitter, keep it short and tweet!

3. Use negative language - Remove rules that focus on “don’t, can’t, forbidden”.  Remember induction training is you most teachable moment with a new staff member/contractor, so use language that is friendly and warm.  Let people know what they can do, rather than tell them about behaviour that you do not want.

4. Forget the How - This is when staff are told what to do but no explanation is given as to why.   Company processes are perpetuated without people ever questioning why they do something.  Over time, staff are taught processes that solve problems that no longer exist.

In order to boost retention rates and improve productivity levels, inducting right is important to any company who wants to improve the bottom line.

By making your induction training visually appealing and easy to learn, you will be able to improve your staff productivity and safety quite remarkably.

Start adding colour, video and pictures to your induction training materials and keep sentences short.  Where can you convert processes into more visually appealing training videos that will get the messages across better than just boring text?

By fixing these common induction mistakes, you will have people commenting positively on the quality of your induction training.

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We’ve won a Gold Award for Best Use of Video in a Training Program

LearnX Asia Pacific 2010 recognizes Digicast Productions as producing induction training videos that are like gold.

We are very excited to be given a gold award for the induction training video we created for our wonderful client Conundrum Holdings.

The reasons we won were because of the amazing time/cost benefits we have saved Conundrum, as well as providing higher quality training.

Since the induction video was introduced at Conundrum Holdings, Conundrum’s induction training has been re-invigorated and they now get praise for their induction system whereas before they mostly got grumbles.

“We continuously aim to improve the safety and productivity at our quarry sites.  Now
that we have a quality training tool that can be incorporated into our site induction
process, it has reduced the time to train staff/contractors by 68%. A major benefit has
been the saving to management time which is saving us around 2.5 hours a week or about
$20,000 a year. Site managers now have more time to get on with the task of actually
managing the sites. But more importantly, it still ensures that the inductions are of a
consistently high standard and we no longer get complaints from contractors about
having to sit through another dull site induction”.

Tom Kerr, OHS Manager/Quality Assurance Manager, Conundrum Holdings

Thanks to LearnX and Conundrum for this Award.

You can read more about how we helped Conundrum, here.

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Companies losing billions from poor safety, says Professor

According to a recent article published on IndustrySearch, companies lose 10% of their annual turnover, as a result of poor safety costing billions in lost production and flow-on effects.

Professor Patrick Hudson, based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, made the comments at a briefing with journalists recently in Melbourne.

“I have an estimate that a company may be losing up to 10 per cent of its turnover as a result of poor OHS and E (occupational health, safety and environment) performance, that is usually a whack of money,” Prof. Hudson said.

Professor Hudson, who specialises in safety for the health, oil, gas, construction and mining industries later told reporters the figure could mean billions of dollars for large miners.

“When you have a shutdown you lose production, and you just add it up,” Prof. Hudson said.

“It is a massive amount of money and most of it goes in relatively small-scale stuff, not necessarily payouts to people who are injured but in the whole way things are run,” Prof. Hudson said.

“If anyone disagrees with me, that is fine, but when I challenge them to come up with the real figures I find they don’t have any,” he said.

Professor Hudson said that while the companies he dealt with did not put a figure on the worth of a worker, a workplace death was usually estimated to cost a company millions.

“It may be an individual is costed at one, two or four million dollars, depending upon what country you are in,” he said.

“Really what costs is things like lost production, slowdowns, having regulators all over you, having a lot of lawyers getting very excited,” he said.

Prof. Hudson said Australia had come a long way in improving occupational health and safety.

“The old Australian culture, looking back a long way, was pretty rough,” he said.

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When Safety Training Videos go Bad

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Following up from my last blog post, How to Evaluate the effectiveness of a Training video, I though it best to show a safety training video that’s well, crap!

This is quite an extraodinary example of how to not make a training video.

It’s more of a horror health and safety movie that focuses on educating through fear.

It does this through lots of gore, fake blood and workplace accidents that are too implausible to believe (my favourite is the nail flying through the air into a person’s eye).  And of course, lots of bad acting and ridiculous music.

As a video producer, it makes me really embarrased about the sort of videos that our industry makes (okay, it was a long time ago, but it should never have been given the go-ahead).  But it’s pretty easy to work out that the scriptwriter/producer must have believed that safety is boring, so let’s make it more entertaining by scaring people.  This is another reason why not to get your training video made by wannabe film directors!

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Improving Forklift Driving Safety in the Workplace

Forklift driver trainingGypsum Board Manufacturers of Australasia (GBMA) is a collection of five plasterboard companies across Australia and New Zealand (Boral, CSR, Lafarge, Winstone Wallboards and BGC).  They meet every month to look at ways to improve safety within their industry.  And despite being competitors, they actually collaborate and work towards lifting safety standards together.

One example is the Forklift Challenge.

Every year workers at all five companies are given the opportunity to test their forklift skills by entering the Forklift Challenge.  Throughout the year extra forklift training is undertaken and competitive trials.  Three of the best forklift drivers from each company then compete in the national competition (or 15 competitors in total).

The challenge involves drivers driving product through several difficult courses.  It also includes a pre-operational check and a theory test.  They are also judged on their safety knowledge and operational ability.

It’s a great way to get forklift drivers involved in improving their driving skills and being more aware of safety procedures.  It also lifts the standard of forklift drivers across the industry.

And the competitors all want to get involved, in order to be a part of the challenge that is usually held at an interstate (or even international) location.

GBMA is a great example of competing companies working together to improve the safety and training standards in plasterboard companies.

How can you look at working together with your competitors to improve the safety standards in your industry?

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