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Tag Archive: workplace performance

How to make New Workplace Behaviours Contagious

In the 70s, pet rocks were a fad that spread contagiously throughout the world.

Imagine that you’ve launched a new company initiative, but the transition has been quite bumpy.  You calculate that 60% of staff are doing the new behaviour correctly, but you want 100% compliance.

Rather than getting despondent or even angry at your fellow workers, it’s now time to get out all the tools hidden away in your persuasion toolbox and get everyone on the right path.

Let’s step through what to do based on the Switch framework for change.

Using your Persuasion Toolbox

  1. Follow the bright spots - The most important first step is to investigate what is working.  Who is doing it right and why?  Shadow those who have migrated across to the new behaviour to discover what it is they are doing well.  Have they streamlined the process?  Are they motivated by fear?  Work out what they are doing and clone it.  Remember, by focusing on the positives, you will get more positive results, than if you were to focus on the negatives (which coincidentally, gives you more negative results).
  2. Change the environment – What often looks like a people problem can actually be a situation problem.  By following superstars, you might discover that people aren’t submitting their reports on time because they are not sure how to collect some of the information (and superstars have an easier method).  Rather than make the process hard, what can you re-engineer so that staff can access the information easily?  Can you have a page on your intranet that centralises data that people can include for their reports?
  3. Script the critical moves - Once you have discovered your superstar workers who have transitioned to the new behaviour, write clear instructions on how they are achieving success.  Let everyone know in as few steps as possible what they need to do.  Make it easy and try to build it into a habit.
  4. Communicate your successes – Humans look to others to see what behaviour is the right one.  Build on this, by publishing who is getting the right results or doing the right thing.  Paint them as a hero.  Write a case study in your newsletter about how Sue from accounts manages to submit her weekly report each week without fail.  End it with clear instructions on the steps she takes for success.  Another option is handing out awards to your super stars in public.
  5. Communicate the Collective Goal – Assuming that you goal wasn’t clear enough, re-word it.  Try and give it a nickname.  For example:  Say you goal is to submit “50 reports in 50 days” you could make it catchy by saying “50 to 50″.  Organise as many visuals of the goal as you can.  Get creative (use screen savers, posters, have visual reminders of how close you are getting to reach the goal, organise printed pocket sized cards etc).  Get everyone on-board by appealing to their group identity.  Make everyone feel part of a team.  For example: rally the troops in a speech using inclusive language.  ”Come on, guys, we’re production people we’re good at doing things fast!’ or “Come on every-one, we’re XYZers the best company in our industry, as a leader in our field we can do better than this!”
  6. Using the Power of Small Wins – Ever used a loyalty card where, for example, if you buy 10 coffees you get one free?  Research has found that people are more likely to use a loyalty card if one coffee has already been stamped, so you only have nine to go.  However, if people are given a loyalty card with no stamps, they are less likely to use it.  One way to motivate people is to make them feel that they are closer to the finish line than they thought.  In what ways can you let the team know that they are already on their way?  How can you pre-stamp their coffee card, so to speak?
  7. Do a regular public review – Depending on how quickly you get results, do a weekly or monthly review meeting where you publish the results you are getting.  Make it clear to everyone that most of the group is doing the right thing.  By publicizing the group norm, you are saying “This is what every-one else is doing.  By submitting the reports late, you are letting the team down”.

By following these seven steps, you’ll find launching a new initiative a piece of cake.

 

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For Safety Professionals: An interview with Communications Specialist Kris Cole

Photo courtesy of The Australian by Morne de Klerk, www.photographylife.com.au

Kris Cole is the author of Crystal Clear Communication a fabulous book that gives you the skills for understanding and being understood.  She is a corporate trainer, international speaker, industrial psychologist, manufacturing technologist and a certified trainer.

Recently, I interviewed Kris to find out what communication tips she has for workplace managers and safety professionals.

1. In your book, Crystal Clear Communication, you mention the need to use positive language when communicating as “negative words encourage us to act negatively and positive words to act positively”.  What advice would you give any safety professional who is looking to communicate to his/her team about a new safety initiative?

Kris: You want to present the new safety initiative in a positive light and in a way that shows the organisation cares for its employees, hence the reason for the new initiative.  And let them know the WIIFM – what’s in it for them.

For instance, it may make their lives easier or help them do their jobs more efficiently or give them a bit more peace of mind.

If it’s a welfare or wellness initiative, you might offer:

Who is involved?

Why are you asking your team to take these actions?

How should your team do it?

They might not all be relevant but it’s worth thinking those prompts through, so you cover everything you need to.

You may also want to post the initiative on the team’s notice board and draw their attention to where they can find it in the organisation’s manuals or intranet.

And of course, remember to follow through at the next few team meetings.

Reiterate your messages, find out whether anyone has any questions or has found any difficulties with the initiative.  Few initiatives are so perfect at roll-out that they can’t stand a bit of fine-tuning.

2. You also mention the importance of show and tell.  And that to provide memorable communication you need to support words with visual aids.  When would you recommend that safety professionals use show and tell in their communication?

Well, we know people take in information more with their eyes than ears.  Let’s face it – most of us are pretty poor listeners.  That’s where the proverbial “a picture is worth a thousand words” comes in.  My tips are:

  • So rather than just telling people what to do  – show them.
  • Demonstrate it and even exaggerate your demonstration to make it memorable.
  • Tell a little story to back up what you’re telling them, so they can build a picture in their minds.
  • Put up a poster or draw a silly drawing to drive your point home.

And when do you use this technique?  Anytime something is important!  For instance, use it when you’re explaining how to do something – don’t just tell someone – show them.

Run them through it and then ask the to do it while you watch.  Just watching is seldom sufficient and that’s a big mistake a lot of busy people make – showing someone something and then walking away, expecting that they’ll remember it.

3. In terms of getting safety messages across to workers, what would you say is the most important communication technique?  Any others?

You might want to vary how you say it, so you don’t get bored, but when something is important, you can’t stress it enough.

And do “show and tell”, too.  The power of your own behaviour, of walking your talk and practising what you preach.  None of this “Don’t do as I do, do as I say stuff”.  People always take their cues from you – from what you do more than what you say.  So you have to support your words with your actions.

4. Workplaces can often be hotbeds of frustration and anger.  For managers who are having difficulty getting workers to listen to them, what communication techniques would you recommend?

Kris: Ah, well!  If it’s a work team that’s a hotbed of frustration of anger, I’d be looking at some serious team building and looking at the way people work together, communicate and relate to each other.  You need to make sure everyone knows what the team as a whole is aiming at and how each individual contributes to achieving it.

If it’s the whole organisation or an entire worksite that’s a hotbed of frustration and anger, you’ve got yourself an even bigger problem.  A fish rots from the head, so I’d start working with the leadership team and getting them to communicate more – and more genuinely with employees.  And not just about safety, but about all sorts of other things.  And not just talking, but the other half of talking – listening.  You know, even leaders have two ears and only one mouth and even leaders should use them in those proportions.

Well, I don’t know about you, but I feel that Kris has given us all some common sense information to help make communicating in the workplace a more enjoyable and effective experience.  Thanks, Kris.

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CEO’s safety behaviour at odds with OHS and HR Personnel

Senior leadership plays an integral leadership role in establishing the safety culture of an organisation.

According to Dan Brown, “The culture of a company is the behaviour of its leaders.  Leaders get the behaviour they exhibit tolerate”.

Staff look to senior leaders to know that they are safe.  They want to see tangible evidence that safety is a priority.  This means they want to see action, so while senior leaders might like to talk about the importance of safety, their staff judge the truthfulness of such statements with follow up action.

So it is quite disappointing to find in a recent Australian study that senior leadership might believe that they are ‘walking the talk’ when it comes to safety, but their staff don’t feel the same way.

The 2011 Business of Safety survey conducted by the Australian Institute of Management VT and the Safety Institute of Australia has revealed that only 47% of OHS personnel and 55% of HR personnel agreed with the 88% of CEOs/board members and 70% of senior manager that top level management ‘walked the talk’ when it came to safety.

These results are similar to Safety in Action 2009 study which  found that 71% of CEOs say OHS is ‘a very high priority’, yet only 44% of OHS personnel agree with this.

Hopefully, next year with the new Work Heath and Safety Act that places direct responsibility to senior management and directors for failing to provide a safe working environment, these figures will start to improve.

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The Real Cost of Workplace Injuries

Workplace safety
Image via Wikipedia

Since the early 1990′s, most companies have got their act together and decreased their workplace injuries (see chart).  After all, it’s a no-brainer that workplace safety accidents cost businesses lots of money each year.  And from a human perspective, it’s always a good idea to look after people.

Yet, many companies around the globe often forget about the real costs of an accident preferring to cut spending on safety training and equipment.

Let’s take a look at some different viewpoints on the real cost of workplace safety to an organisation:

  1. The Liberty Mutual Workplace Safety Index report states that improving workplace safety is a key strategy for reducing direct costs resulting from workplace injuries. The direct costs that are stripping businesses of their profits include medical expenses, workers’ compensation payments and costs for legal services.   Direct costs are just the beginning of the ‘price’ of an unsafe working environment. Workplace accidents trigger a range of indirect costs including repairs to damaged equipment and property, hiring and training of replacement personnel, as well as costs associated with lower employee morale and absenteeism that is common in a work site that is considered unsafe.
  2. While across the Pacific Ocean, Ian Woods, a senior business analyst at AMP Capital Investors was quoted as at a Safe Work Australia event that “From an investors’ perspective, we actively consider OH&S performance in our investment decisions, as we believe it is a good measure of management quality in many high-risk industries”.  Woods argues that investors now cannot ignore the cost of workplace injury as it is passed on to Australian employers. The average workplace injury costs 6 percent of profit. In the construction industry, the total workplace injury costs borne by workers, employers and the community is equivalent to a staggering 98 percent of the industry’s operating profit.
  3. While Professor Patrick Hudson, based at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands was also quoted as saying “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…when you have a shutdown, you lose production, and you just add it up,” Prof. Hudson said

Gary Gregg, executive vice president of Liberty Mutual’s Commercial Markets sums it all up by remarking “There is a clear link between workplace safety and a company’s performance”.

But who is really responsible for workplace safety?

Research undertaken by Missouri Employers Mutual Insurance revealed that 95. 7% of those interviewed stated that the responsibility for creating a safe work environment belongs to management.

The bottom line is that companies need to assess their risk situation and to educate employees about how to keep themselves safe.

For organisations with a profit and humanitarian focus, education and safety training video packages are a wise investment in reducing business risk since they protect the most important business asset of all. . . human capital.

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How to Create the Best Workplace Training Materials

Companies often tell us that they are frustrated by how hard it is to engage staff with training.

After a bit of digging, we usually find out that training consists of:

  1. A trainer talking a lot,
  2. Some trainer made PowerPoint slides (learn how to improve your training presentations here) that generally consists of lots of words, or
  3. A black and white manual that staff are expected to read.

What research has found is that is that passive/low engagement training is ineffective compared to active/high engagement training.   Passive training is when you get a trainer or lecturer telling lots of information or when lots of reading is involved.

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The most engaging methods of safety training are, on average, approximately three times more effective than the least engaging methods in promoting knowledge and skill acquisition, as well as reducing accidents, illnesses, and injuries.

So any training that is designed around a trainer reading through slides is not enough to create engagement.  Nor is producing a training manual and expecting workers to read it.

The Most Effective Training Materials

Educational researchers have found that 83% of human learning occurs visually.  The right brain prefers visuals and can process pictures hundreds of times faster than words.

When it comes to producing training materials, it’s a good idea to use as many visuals as you can.  And to really increase engagement, try and get trainees to touch, see and hear (obviously, taste and smell aren’t suitable to all industries, but they work especially well in food).  Use as many of the senses as you can during training.

And while having a trainer talking at students is passive training including lots of “Show and Tell” or demonstrations takes the training to a new level.  This is where the trainer demonstrates a process and gets the trainee to have a go.  This is integral to an active learning style.  Coaching is then given to improve.  Which brings us to assessment, which is also really important with learning.  It is important that trainees get face to face feedback on how to improve rather than information from a computer.

A Checklist for Creating Effective Training Materials

Several research studies have found that learners more easily understand and recall new material presented in video that allow participants to both hear and see the information.

This dual-encoding process reinforces information in multiple brain areas, thereby increasing the chances that the material will be stored in long-term memory.
To make use of this powerful memory booster, training materials need to be centred around a visually appealing training video.  By getting learners to see, listen and read important information you start getting higher levels of recall than just reading alone.  After all,  we remember 10% of what we read, 20% of what we hear and 30% of what we see, so by addressing these three areas, recall is increased to 60% v 10% for reading alone.

But just having a training video is not enough.  Another important addition to your training kit is the Trainer’s Manual.  This guide needs to help the trainer know the best method to teach the material.  It needs to include a trainer’s session schedule that has advice on what segments of the training video to play, what questions to discuss, when to do a demonstration, when to get trainees to have a go, when to pass around relevant items and the questions and answers for the quiz (and how to test respondents and discuss the answers).

In addition, to really keep trainees engaged and to help them believe that the training is important, each trainee needs to receive their own copy of an Employee Handbook.  This is the document that they go through in class, it needs to have information on how to undertake tasks, as well as photos that will remind them of the training video that they have seen.  The booklet needs to also contain their quiz with space for them to write in their answers  (also gives them ownership rights).

By using these three main training materials, you end up with a self-contained training package that gives trainers the resources and support that they need to create an interactive and high engagement training session.  It will also ensure that training is taught consistently across numerous locations.


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How Poor Communications results in Workplace Mistakes

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

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

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

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

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

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

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How to improve safety by valuing safety in hard dollars

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

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

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

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

Callout Title
“The biggest impediment to safety excellence is the use of incident rates as the driving measure of performance.” – Dan Zahlis

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

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

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

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

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

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How Using Quizzes in Induction Training Improves New Starter Learning

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

Establish an induction training evaluation system

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Announcing New Training Video Buyer’s Kit

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

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

Using a four step process the buyer kit includes:

  • A list of questions to decide whether or not a training video is right for an organisation.
  • The critical questions to determine what the training video needs to achieve, in order to write the brief and how to best manage the project internally.
  • A valuable checklist to evaluate the suitability of a video production house.
  • An additional checklist to measure the effectiveness of training videos already produced by production houses.

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

Established in 1991, Digicast is an Australian vendor of customised safety and induction training videos. Thousands of people each year worldwide are trained with Digicast training videos. For more information, visit Digicast at www.digicast.com.au or The Workplace Improver blog for training tips, www.digicast.com.au/blog.

Contact Marie-Claire Ross

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

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

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

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 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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