You can’t change workers’ attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) issues with reeducation or disciplinary measures. Here are some things you can do.
Yesterday’s Advisor began a discussion of ADHD-affected employees and their challenges to workplace safety.
Attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, to use ADHD’s official name, is a neurological issue that causes an inability to concentrate normally on assigned tasks and procedures. This often causes mistakes, miscalculations, and accidents, making it a prime safety issue. Cornell University researchers explain that the condition appears in three types:
Inattentive ADHD people simply don’t listen to what you say. Their minds are apparently in another world, and they often seem confused, as if “in a fog,” say the researchers.
Impulsive ADHD workers are too much in the moment, and can’t wait for it to progress naturally. As such, they flit from one task to the next, and they take shortcuts and ignore procedural steps, opening the way for disaster.
The final type, hyperactives, simply can’t sit still long enough to learn what you’re trying to convey, and their incessant talking and fidgeting distracts others from acting as they should.
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Because these behaviors are based on brain chemistry, they can’t be unlearned or discouraged with disciplinary threats. Instead, if you want to keep the worker involved on the job (ADHD people can do some extraordinary work!), they have to be accommodated. Here are a few strategies Cornell University researchers and others suggest for doing this:
▪ Reduce or eliminate distraction. When doing safety training, eliminate any sensory input that might pull attention from the task at hand. Use a quiet, windowless room or draw the shades, leave Blackberrys and cell phones outside. Or even, “allow workers to perform facing away from co-workers … or with their backs to the door,” suggests Anne-Rachelle McHugh, blogging on the website SafetyXchange.org
▪ Break information into small steps. That’s so there’s no overload of mental capacities that simply can’t focus on too much at one time.
▪ Allow alternate means of retention. As you can’t depend on ADHD workers paying enough attention to immediately absorb your material, let them tape-record lectures or classes for later review at a pace they can handle. And reinforce with the key points on handouts they can look at back on the job.
▪ Use more than one way to demonstrate or explain. We all take in information in different “learning styles,” say education experts. The more ways you can explain key points, the more chance of making a match with students.
Finally, respect the fact that the time span you can hold the attention of these kinds of students in safety training is extremely limited, so choose materials with that stricture in mind. Our editors enthusiastically recommend a program to meet this need, BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer.
Think you have no time to train? Think again. BLR’s 7-Minute Safety Trainer lets you fulfill all key OSHA-required training tasks in as little as 7 minutes. Try it at no cost and see! Click to learn more.
The program is exactly what its name implies: 50 training meeting modules, most OSHA-required, teachable in as little as 7 minutes each.
That time frame didn’t just happen. Educators know that in many learning situations, the minds of even students with normal attention spans start to wander in just 7 minutes. Thus, each lesson was designed to be completed in that time. A side benefit, of course, is more time for you, for your other important tasks.
Try 7-Minute Safety Trainer at no cost or risk. Click for details.
The 50 prewritten meetings deal with every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on. You can view a complete table of contents here, but among the topics are:
· Confined spaces
· Electrical safety
· Fire safety/response
· HAZCOM
· Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
· Material handling
· PPE use and care
· Housekeeping/slips, trips and falls
· and dozens more
In addition to the lesson materials, every meeting module includes a detailed trainer’s guide, a handout, and a quick quiz with answers. Just make as many copies as needed of the handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train. You can view materials from a sample module here.
And just as important, when new or changed regulations compel new training topics or training needs to be freshened, the program ships new meetings every quarter. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over a dollar a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.
If you’d like to personally evaluate 7-Minute Safety Trainer and see how it can build safety awareness, we’ll be happy to send it to you for 30 days, on a no-cost, no-obligation trial basis. Just click here and we’ll arrange it.