Today our Safety Training Tips editor gives you the skinny on how to best use icebreakers in safety training exercises.
When should you use icebreakers? Getting a training session off to a good start can affect the success of the rest of the session. Icebreakers may be the answer when you need to build trust and teamwork within your training group and/or encourage interaction and participation. Icebreakers also help energize a training group and prepare them to get the most from the session. An icebreaker may be appropriate when:
- Trainees are from different parts of the organization and don’t know one another very well
- The purpose of your safety meeting is to create a team spirit among trainees—for example, to team up to improve workplace safety—and you need to encourage a lot of group interaction
- Problem-solving is the focus of your session and you want trainees to work together as a group to tackle specific safety problems and come up with effective solutions
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You might also want to use an icebreaker at the beginning of each part of multipart training sessions (for example, when training takes place over a couple of days or has a morning and afternoon session) to bring trainees’ focus back to the topic quickly and reorient them right away to the subject matter.
What are some examples of icebreakers? Icebreakers can range from simple self-introductions to structured games and even physical challenges. For example:
- If trainees don’t know one another well, you could break the ice by having them wear name tags, introduce themselves, and describe something they already know about the topic of the training session
- If you need to build team spirit and get trainees interacting right away, you could divide the group into teams, with each team identifying a way to improve on a safety procedure, solve a problem, or demonstrate a skill.
- If the purpose of the session is to solve a specific safety problem, you could pair up trainees and have each pair list as many possible solutions as they can think of before reassembling the group to compare lists and pick the best solutions.
To get the most from an icebreaker, you should be able to refer back in some meaningful way to lessons, insights, or information gained during the icebreaker and use that reference to reinforce key training points made later in the session.
Aren’t icebreakers really just attention-grabbers? No. Although some people may use the terms interchangeably, they’re really two different techniques. As we said earlier, when you use the word “icebreaker” in relation to safety training, strictly speaking, you’re talking about a method for creating trust among group members, stimulating interaction, developing team spirit, creating an atmosphere in which trainees can work together to solve safety problems, or something else along those lines.
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So you only need to use an icebreaker if you want to accomplish one of these specific goals in your training session. If you just want to grab trainees’ attention at the beginning of a regular safety meeting, you’re better off telling a story related to the topic (for example, an accident story), quoting injury statistics, having trainees identify hazards in a picture, or using some other dramatic or interesting—but very quick—way to kick-start the meeting.
Why It Matters…
- An effective icebreaker can get safety training off to a good start and have a positive impact on the success of the rest of the session.
- For some training sessions, failure to stimulate interaction, build team spirit, or set the scene for problem solving and other group-focused activities can result in failure to reach training goals.
- You depend on safety training to prevent accidents, comply with regulations, and protect your employees and your workplace, which means you can’t afford to not get the most from each training session.