Employee training may be your most important responsibility. Find out how to strengthen your training programs this year.
The renowned American sprinter Jesse Owens observed, “A lifetime of training for just 10 seconds.” For some employees one critical decision influenced by years of training will make the difference between life and death.
Whether you’re hoping to save a life, prevent a costly accident, or improve compliance this year, training should be a key component of your safety strategy.
Big Picture
James Johnson is a long- time consultant and project manager who currently serves as the National Safety Council’s group vice president for workplace safety initiatives. He oversees the council’s safety training and consulting activities, among other duties.
Johnson says there’s no doubt that economic challenges over the past couple of years have required companies to think carefully about how they invest in training.
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“Training unto itself is not the solution,” Johnson says. “It’s about training within the context of an overall safety management system.”
This means including with safety training courses that address:
- Leadership
- Employee engagement
- Cultural elements of the organization
Training should be a part of an overall plan that encourages employees to have a voice in the workplace and as Johnson puts it, “to be engaged in a meaningful way in the safety effort.”
Johnson also recommends courses directed at supervisors and managers to be sure they understand their role in safety management. In that regard, it’s important to integrate different categories of training, including:
- Safety
- LEAN (a production practice centered on preserving value with less work)
- Productivity
- Quality
“Then whether it’s a process engineer, quality manager, or other function within the organization, they understand how to anticipate the hazards and risks associated with changes in the work process.”
Training Plan
Johnson encourages workplaces to develop an overarching training plan that goes beyond individual requirements and addresses broader organizational goals.
Your training plan for 2011 should look at:
- Purpose and delivery methods
- How and where training will roll out over the course of the year
- Whether the sessions are time-based or if individuals can choose how and when to participate
Your plan should also include means of measuring the effectiveness of training beyond lagging indicators like numbers of injuries or recordable case rates.
By the way, Safety Audit Checklists has a entire section on assessing and planning training if you’re looking for some more ideas.
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Training Evaluation
Consider these steps for evaluating safety training during 2011 to make sure you’re getting the results you expect and a good return on investment.
- Ask trainees to evaluate training sessions and trainers. Provide anonymous forms to be filled out immediately following each session.
- Use pre- and post-tests to evaluate learning and retention. These could be written quizzes or practical demonstration of newly acquired skills.
- Check to see if training is being used. How well are employees incorporating the safety principles, skills, and knowledge they learned in training to their jobs?
- Evaluate the impact of safety training on overall safety performance. Is your workplace safer as a result of training efforts? Is your regulatory compliance program improved as a result of training? Have the number of accidents and near misses—and related costs—gone down?
Great Trainers
One final training strategy for 2011 is trainer selection. What makes trainers great?
For Johnson, it’s “someone who has the personality and energy to engage the audience. It’s not simply delivery, it’s engagement, and part of the way an instructor effectively engages through real-world examples and case studies.”
Top safety trainers also have:
- Subject matter mastery
- Depth of technical expertise
- Work-related experience
And they know how to integrate “how to do it” with “how to do it safely.”
Tomorrow, we’ll offer tips for training trainers, focusing on delivery. It’s not only what trainers say, it’s also how they present themselves that determines training success.