The 3 Biggest Mistakes Companies Make with Health and Safety Training
Why it Happens, and How to Fix It
Hey there,
Welcome to this week’s edition of the Safety First Journal.
Hope you all had a great Easter weekend and are ready to dive into the week.
Let’s start with a quick reality check:
The Health and Safety training that 99% of companies provide is not as effective as it could be.
As safety professionals, how often do we see employees get injured as a result of not following procedures that they have been explicitly trained on? In my experience, it happens all the time. For whatever reason, the training was not retained, was ignored, or was not considered relevant by the employee.
It’s not for lack of trying. Employers want to help. They want their training to be effective, and sometimes they may even have a sense that their training is somehow missing the mark, but they don’t know why or what to do about it. Fortunately, though, there are better ways to present Health and Safety training and improve your results.
Let’s look at the 3 biggest mistakes companies make when it comes to Health and Safety training, why they happen, and how to fix it.
Mistake #1 – Treating Training as a One-Time Event
Why it happens:
· Practicality. Time is always at a premium and companies typically want to get people trained as quickly as possible so they can start being productive. Training becomes a box to be checked as quickly and easily as possible so new employees can get up to speed with little delay.
· Faulty beliefs. Companies often see training as a means to compliance and assume being in compliance ensures safety. As practical results show, this is not necessarily the case.
Why it’s a Problem:
· Information retention fades quickly. According to psychologist Hermann Ebbinghaus’ forgetting curve, 70% of training information is forgotten within 24 hours and up to 90% vanishes from memory within a week.
· Risks are not static. New processes, new equipment or changes in business activities change the risks and severity of hazards in the workplace. A one-time training program doesn’t allow for updates as conditions change.
How to Fix it:
· Build in regular refreshers. Daily toolbox talks are a great way to keep safety top of mind for your employees. It also gives you the flexibility to address new hazards in a timely fashion.
· Use visual reminders. Posters, signs, safety meeting minutes and daily safety performance goals such as days without incident or other performance stats keep employees engaged.
· Informal communication. Supervisors and managers can find ways of bringing up safety topics during conversations with their team. A simple reminder of a hazard to watch for helps reinforce the message and fights the forgetting curve.
Mistake #2 – Using Generic, One Size Fits all Content
Why it Happens:
· Off the shelf training is convenient and inexpensive. It’s very tempting to download a training template, slap your company’s logo on it and then roll it out to employees.
· Companies often don’t feel confident customizing their own content. Often businesses lack someone with the knowledge and skillset to properly prepare relevant training programs and simply choose to default to generic content which seems to fit the bill.
· Liability concerns. Some business leaders are concerned that providing customized training may not meet regulatory standards and cause liability problems down the road.
Why it’s a Problem:
· Generic training may not address the real hazards in your business. Every company is unique and generic plans won’t cover everything your employees need to know.
· Workers tune out information that doesn’t reflect their reality. Employees are smart. When they see that the training they are being given doesn’t fit real life situations they face, they will lose interest.
· Loss of credibility. When training seems to be a practice of jumping through hoops rather than of providing relevant information, employees lose trust that the information is relevant and helpful.
How to Fix it:
· Tailor the training to your workplace. When establishing a training program, use real examples and case studies from your actual workplace. Walk your employees through the connection between theory and practice.
· Involve front-line employees in shaping the training. Get your most experienced front-line people involved so that you fully understand the real risks and concerns faced by your workers. Often your shop floor leaders can be your best advocates for safety as they have the respect and attention of the workers in a way that managers rarely achieve.
· Tailor external material to your workplace. If you do use external material for training, take the time to tailor it to the specific needs of your workplace. This could be done by adding specific examples from your business to the end of each module so employees can draw the connection.
Mistake #3 – Making the Training Passive and Boring
Why it Happens:
· In a word, convenience. It’s easy to just have employees read through a policy or procedure or watch an online presentation.
· Familiarity. Many employers associate training with lecture-style presentations or text-heavy Powerpoint slides. In today’s world, nobody learns optimally this way.
· Formality. Sometimes safety is viewed as a “serious” subject and opportunities to lighten it up or be creative are discouraged.
Why it’s a Problem:
· Attention spans are shorter than ever. The way people consume content online today is completely different than it was 40 years ago. Keeping readers engaged and retaining information is an almost entirely different skill than in the pre-internet days.
· Passive learning leads to employees zoning out. Training that doesn’t actively engage the reader causes them to zone out, disregard or even skip over the information altogether.
· Passive training ends up serving as a substitute for real world training and conversation. If you assume that training is complete after simply having your employee read through a procedure, you miss out on the opportunity to have real world conversations about the hazards, risks and reasons why the procedure is there in the first place, and how to actually address them in the real world.
How to Fix it:
· Use active demonstrations. Get out on the shop floor and show employees how to work safely. If you’re discussing ergonomics, for example, don’t just give employees a presentation to read, put together a quick shop floor demonstration to show them what safe lifting looks like in tasks they will actually perform.
· Discuss, don’t lecture. Involve employees in their training. Ask questions – shop floor employees know more about the ins and outs of their job than managers ever will. Get people talking and dig into real world problems and solutions.
· Keep sessions short and focused. Regular 10 minute sessions are far more effective than a 1 hour session once a year. Remember the forgetting curve, employees retain only a small percentage of the information presented at any one time, so regular reminders and follow-ups are a necessity.
When safety training is ongoing, relevant and engaging, it is much more likely to be effective, reduce incident rates and build a strong safety culture.
Well, that’s it for this week.
What is one thing you can focus on this month to upgrade your current training program? Let me know in the comments.
If you enjoyed this content, in addition to the Safety First Journal, I also ghostwrite newsletter articles and educational email courses for Health and Safety professionals. I’ll leave an example in the comments. If you’re interested in collaborating, I’d love to hear from you.
The Safety First Journal is published every Tuesday morning on LinkedIn and Substack.
Cheers,
Dan.