Yesterday, we talked with safety consultant Jeffrey Dennis about the best ways to prepare and deliver compelling safety training content. Today, Dennis will share some tips for engaging your audience.
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There’s certainly nothing funny about the consequences of a lockout/tagout failure or a hazardous spill. But if humor can help employees learn and use strategies to prevent a potential tragedy, go for it, Dennis suggests.
“Humor can be a double-edged sword,” he advises. “It can make you seem very personable, but you have to be careful because it can also offend.” Dennis says he’s more likely to tell a joke or humorous anecdote if he knows the group and has a sense of what they might find funny.
That speaks to the overall wisdom of knowing your audience and keeping them engaged. Find stories and anecdotes that resonate with participants. “If I’m talking to a group of welders, I relate to things they see and do every day and use the terms that are familiar to them,” says Dennis.
He doesn’t like to put people on the spot by asking specific questions. But if he can tell a participant is eager to talk, he’ll call on that person and say, “It looks like you’ve got a story about that—would you like to share it?”
Connect with Your Audience
Letting your personality shine through helps people engage with you and, as a result, engage with the content. Dennis notes that live training affords the opportunity to go off script by encouraging trainees to provide their own relevant stories, ideas, and viewpoints.
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All this adds to the personal connection Dennis considers essential for training success.
- Mix things up. Take advantage of the fact that everyone’s got a phone in his or her pocket and go to a relevant site or check out an app as part of the training.
- Don’t lecture your trainees to death.
- Provide opportunities to apply the lessons, for example, by requiring breakout groups to come up with solutions to real safety problems in their industry.
- Develop a curriculum that reflects various learning styles, including visual, auditory, and tactile learning.
Value of Safety Training
“Training is an investment,” says Dennis. “Every dollar you put into training is going to come back tenfold because employees know how to accomplish their tasks more safely and more efficiently.”
Of course, beyond the obvious priority of keeping people from injury is the need for regulatory compliance. OSHA is increasingly interested in ensuring that employees have been effectively trained and that the training has been documented. Dennis advises, “OSHA wants to ask employees about training, and what they say better match what you’ve written and certified. If it doesn’t, that’s a big red flag.”
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E-Z Training at a Phenomenal Price
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All told, this “trainer’s bible” contains 50 prewritten meetings covering almost every aspect of safety you’d want or need to train on, in a format designed to be taught in as little as 7 minutes. Major topics include:
—Confined spaces
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—HazCom
—Machine guarding and lockout/tagout
—Material handling
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—Housekeeping/slips, trips, and falls
—and dozens more
Just make as many copies as you need of the included handouts and quizzes, and you’re ready to train.
Equally important is that the program ships new meetings every quarter to respond to new and changed regulations. This service is included in the program price, which averages just over $1 a working day. In fact, this is one of BLR’s most popular safety programs.
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