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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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.

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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According 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.

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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According to the Worker’s Health Centre, studies show that shiftwork and shifts with extended hours can have significant adverse effects on health, workplace accident rates, absenteeism and a worker’s personal life.

Over 70% of men and 50% of women working shift work are overweight.   Due to altered eating habits when working shift work, workers often experience higher rates of gastrointestinal problems, including indigestion, heartburn, or stomach ulcers, constipation, diarrhea and gas.  Other issues include increased heart diseases, social problems and increased error and accident rates.

Working Nights, an excellent blog on, well, working at night, talks about a recent study in the journal Obesity that has found that when we eat may be more of a driver of weight gain than what we eat.  This obviously has significant impact for shift workers.

In the study, mice were fed a high-fat diet during the time they’d normally eat, the regular day-time hours on their daily circadian cycle, gained 20% in weight over six weeks. But mice fed the same high-fat diet during hours they should have been sleeping gained 48%!  This new study was initiated to consider the potential impact on at night shift workers, who eat the most of their daily food intake during hours when humans are usually sleeping. The researchers believe that findings for people would be consistent the results within the mice population.

But there is good news!

Working Nights has also published some information about a new study by scientists at the University of Illinois that has found that soluble fiber, found in oats, nuts, and apples, strengthens the immune system and reduces the inflammation related to obesity-related diseases (e.g. diabetes and heart disease).  These results will appear in the May 2010 issue of Brain, Behavior, and Immunity.

The bottom line is to enhance their immune systems, shift workers should consider the amount of soluble fiber they eat.  Of all grains, oats have the highest proportion of soluble fiber.

Working Nights suggest that  shift workers need to stock up on high fiber nutrition bars.  These are easy to pack for consumption while working at night.  Our bodies’ digestive system slows down at night, even if we’re awake working.  So, employees working the night shift should eat light meals.  To read more about the importance of eating the right foods when working shift work, click here.

Companies who have shift workers should consider making oat based bars available to their workers through vending machines.

Personally, I think that all shift workers need to eat porridge for dinner just because it’s yum!  Add some chopped nuts and sliced apple and you have a great meal that your body will thank you for.

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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.

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1. Ensure that there are common goals between management and staff. One way to accomplish this is by defining desired outcomes for the unit/business and measuring the unit’s or business’ success towards accomplishing those outcomes on a regular basis.
2. Explain why. Many supervisors just tell their staff what to do. However, informing them why tasks are done a particular way, or why certain behaviors are required goes a long way towards eliminating worker/supervisor friction, ensuring that the tasks and behaviors are actually done correctly, and that improvements in the workplace occur through suggestions from workers who are performing those tasks on a regular basis.
3. Be results oriented. Many workplaces value time over results. However, unless a job function is time-based (e.g. customer service phone representative), reward the results of someone’s work more than their face time on the job. A worker who works a normal work day but produces high quality output and new ideas is more valuable than the worker who spends more hours at work but produces lower quality work and has fewer new ideas.
4. Promote balance. Many workplaces want their employee’s top priority to be their job; over family, over enjoying life, and maybe even over life itself. In my opinion this leads to employee burn-out and many employees eventually working on “auto-pilot”. The best employees are employees who have a balanced life. Whether they balance work with family, playing softball, donating their time to a not for profit, or going to the movies is irrelevant. When an employee has balance and works for a business that promotes balance, when that business needs him/her to go through a period of time where work comes first, they will do it and be effective.
5. Demand the best. Don’t accept workers being just okay. Remind them that they weren’t hired to do a so-so job. They were hired and are being paid to do a good job.
6. Hold workers accountable. Your workers are adults so treat them as adults. Don’t act like an enabling parent. Don’t accept excuses, don’t allow them to slide through, don’t allow them to point fingers. You’d be surprised how holding workers accountable results in good workers performing at their best and feeling fulfilled at work; and bad workers (probably performing a lot worse than you realize) quitting or starting to look for work elsewhere.
7. Reward properly. This means both rewarding the right people and rewarding them appropriately (no big reward for a small accomplish). This includes verbal praise as well as tangible rewards such as raises and bonuses. Nothing disrupts the smooth operation and effectiveness of a workplace more than the best workers not getting the recognition/rewards they deserve. Therefore you need to be aware not only of the actual performance of your staff, but their perceptions of who are the best workers. Then you need to take steps to ensure that their perceptions coincide with your employees’ actual performance by communicating what you value.
8. Encourage creativity. Not everyone is creative. Therefore, creativity needs to be part of “going above and beyond” not part of the expected work product unless a person’s job is a creative position (e.g. writing advertising copy). That means that creative employees may not be creative on the job since it isn’t part of their standard job functions. So encourage creativity by always responding positively to creative suggestions (unless they are clearly ridiculous) and reward useful creativity with excellent rewards.
9. Provide ongoing feedback. Don’t leave your employees waiting for their annual review to know how well they are performing on the job. Also, don’t wait for them to ask how they are doing. Provide ongoing feedback; positive feedback to your top employees (but also include areas where they can improve) and constructive feedback for others (don’t just let them know they need to improve, but give them steps to take to help them improve their performances). Also let your employees know that they really need to worry when they are receiving no feedback from you. For the under-performing employee, lack of feedback on their performance means you do not think that employee can improve, so you aren’t wasting your time talking to him/her about his/her job performance. This is also a good way to send a message to employees you would like to look for work elsewhere.
10. Build an effective team. All managers obviously promote teamwork. However, there are some who build teams of workers who all have skills and knowledge that overlap their own, but at a lower level. Other managers build teams with workers with skills and knowledge that compliment their skills and knowledge. You would be surprised how many take the first approach since they either are intimidated by employees that know more than them in a specific area, or they do not have confidence that they can make good management decisions on topics that they are not knowledgeable on. However, that is not the way to build an effective team. Build your team with employees that have skills and knowledge that you do not possess, and have confidence in your ability to think logically and make solid management decisions.

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The Centre of Sleep Research at the University of South Australia has developed a fatigue calculator to help workers assess if they are too tired to work.

Developed by Professor Drew Dawson, head of UniSA’s Centre for Sleep Research, the calculator helps individuals recognise the likelihood of them making a fatigue related error on the job.

“Employers in high risk industries such as mining, trucking and health care need a simple way to know if their staff are fit-for-duty and how to estimate the level of risk,” says Prof Dawson.

The Fatigue Calculator takes into account two factors when determining individual fatigue levels: How long a person is going to be awake; and how much sleep they have had in the previous two days.  The answers to these simple questions are calculated to determine whether the individual is operating at a low, medium or high risk level.

“Use of the calculator has the potential to reduce the number of fatigue related incidents and accidents that occur in the workplace,” Prof Dawson said.

“Staying awake for 17 hours has the same effect on performance as having a blood alcohol level of 0.05 per cent and after 21 hours awake you demonstrate the same deterioration as having a blood alcohol concentration of 0.1 per cent.”

A number of mining companies are already using the calculator and have implemented it as part of their fatigue management programs.

The calculator retails for around $40 and is available at www.fatiguecalculator.com.au

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Gypsum 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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