Stop Safety Training!

To all safety professionals:  Please, I beg you, stop training!  Stop digging out those old videos and PowerPoint files.  Stop standing at the front of a stuffy room, running through the same old regulatory materials.  Stop telling safety “war stories” that are really only interesting (possibly) to other safety professionals.  Just stop it.  Please, stop.

I know, you have regulators swarming around you, wanting you to prove that your employees are trained.  In many cases, the laws will even tell you what information must be included in your training.  They may dictate the frequency at which you need to repeat or “refresh” that training.  You may even need to be able to demonstrate competency through follow-up testing.  So I understand why you have been training, over and over, all these many years.  I sympathize with your impulse to fire up that video or run through those slides yet again.  But I promise you it is possible to meet your regulatory requirements, and yet you can stop this futile, senseless training.  You can stop putting your target audience to sleep.  You can stop watching heads nod and eyes roll, and at the same time, you can actually make your employees safer.  You can get them more directly engaged.  You can keep them awake.  You might even be able to get them a little excited about their own safety.

But first stop training.  Turn your training on its head.

So let’s get started.  In a nice, quiet room, all by yourself, pull out one of those old PowerPoint presentations.  Ask yourself what really needs to be known and understood by your employees.  Do they need to know the origins and reference numbers of the standard?  Do they need to know how many people have been injured or killed while participating in activities related to this standard?  Is it essential that they see paragraph after paragraph of the standard’s text?  And even if they do need to know all this, isn’t it likely that the vast majority of them have already seen and heard all this last year?  How does seeing it again (truthfully, suffering through it yet again) help make them safer? 

Now get out of your quiet room, and go to the training room.  Put your presentation up on the screen.  Sit at the very back of the room.  Can you read every word of every slide from there?  If not, then why are the words even there?    Even more importantly, do the slides excite you?  Do they make you want to know more?  Do they make you curious?  Do they relate to something that is important to you, like your family or your hobbies or your personal interests?  Keep in mind that nobody else in that training room is going to be a safety professional, so you need to reach them by some avenue other than a natural interest in safety, right?

And even if the slides are interesting, why should they want to listen to you?  Why should they be open to your information, especially if they have heard it from you multiple times before?  Why in the world would they be willing to sit through this agony with you yet again?

Okay, now let’s fill that training room with your employees.  Go back to a blank screen, or maybe just the subject title projected on the screen.  As an example, let’s go with LOTO.  Put up a slide that simply says, “LOTO” in huge letters.  Step into that room with a bag full of candy or a roll of raffle tickets.  Stay away from the lecturer’s podium, and stroll around.  Ask the assembled employees the following:

• Who can tell me what LOTO stands for? (Correct answer:  Lock-Out/Tag-Out)

When someone raises their hand and gives the correct answer, give them a piece of candy or a raffle ticket.  Now ask:

• Who can tell me another name for this standard? (Correct answer:  Control of Hazardous Energy)

Again, give the candy or raffle ticket to the first person with the correct answer. 

Now continue, with more and more questions, inviting everyone to participate, immediately rewarding those who do.  Here are a few more questions:

• What is the difference between an Authorized person and an Affected person?
• What are some types of energy in equipment that might need to be controlled?
• What kind of work on a machine requires control of the hazardous energy?
• When is Tag-Out allowed?
• How do authorized employees determine which energy sources are present and how to lock them out?
• What happens if more than one authorized person will work on the equipment together?
• What can happen if machine energy is not properly locked out before servicing or maintenance work begins?

If someone offers an incorrect or incomplete answer, be sure to gently correct them, so that everyone leaves the room with the proper information.  But try not to be too picky with precise wording.  Make it easy to win, easy to be a part of the success.

Now you can finally go back to your PowerPoint slides, if needed, scrolling through, only stopping at points that were missed in the question/answer exercise.  Or maybe you want to show some helpful images of lock-out devices or show examples of machines properly locked out (or improperly locked out). 

Next, talk about how lock-out might be an issue at home.  Maybe someone will need to repair a light fixture or an automatic garage door opener.  Maybe their teenage son needs to know about controlling hazardous energy before mowing the lawn.  Ask your audience for further ideas about how LOTO could be an issue at home.

If you need to test their knowledge with a written quiz, do it now, while the energy in the room is still buzzing.

Finally, if you handed out raffle tickets, do your drawing for prizes.  Maybe there is one big prize, like a roadside emergency kit or a small Android tablet.  Or maybe you have multiple small prizes, so that nearly everyone leaves with some sort of reward for participating.  At the very least, maybe they got a piece of candy.  Maybe they had some fun.  Maybe they finally had an opportunity to demonstrate a bit of their own knowledge, and that was a rare treat.

And what did you gain?  Were you a little more energized than you have been in a long time for a “training” event?  Did you get a clearer sense of what is understood by your employees and what really needs to be reinforced?  Did you discover that some employees are just waiting to be asked, and they will happily join in your mission?  Did you have a little fun?  And finally, did you deliver the “required” training, without feeling like you had done this a thousand times before?

We safety professionals who insist on using painfully tired old methods for meeting our training obligations are quietly killing the creature we hope to create.  By turning training on its head, we have an opportunity to finally bring life to the vital discussion of safety and risk and how to bring the two into harmony. 

For the sake of our employees in that training room, I think we should give it a try.