How to Conduct Safety Training - Tips and Motivational Techniques

Whether you're a safety coordinator or an unwilling audience participant, you can appreciate the need to motivate people to learn about and apply safety techniques. I was a safety coordinator for over 4 years. During that time I was able to reduce accidents, increase participation in the programs, and motivate people to be safe at work. This eHow article will discuss some of the techniques I used and how you can apply them in your work place.

Instructions

• 1

  Get Their Attention and Respect -
  Before you can teach anyone about safety you must get their attention and respect. You need their attention so they will hear you and their respect so they will apply what you tell them.

  I conducted training once a month and it was always a pain for me to round everyone up for training. My company suggested going to an electronic training system. That may work to an extent, but not 100% of the time. You must have that one on one with people. Workers are not going to listen to you if they don't respect you and respect isn't automatic just because you have a title of authority. So if you do electronic training, try to meet with people in a group at least 2-3 times per year. This will allow you to develop a working relationship with people, learn about them, they'll learn about you, and respect will be fostered. Remember this will not happen overnight.

  To continue gaining a worker's respect you will need to show concern about the person's well being. Most workers will not hesitate to say that your job isn't to keep them safe, it's really to save the company money by placing burdensome rules and safety guards everywhere. In fact, I've heard countless time the statement, "Do you want me to work or be safe?" This is often the mentality induced by authority figures who are not aware of the worker's job details and place rules or safety guards in place that slow production. To combat this time of battle of production and worker versus safety coordinator and rules, use responsibilities to get people more involved. One way is to develop dialog with a team of workers and ask for their input on how you can reduce a hazard without slowing down production. You may have to drag the first team to their meeting, but after offering pizza and a company baseball hat for participants you'll never have to drag anyone to the next team meeting. Also, once the first team spreads the word you'll be bombarded with volunteers for the next meeting. A second way to gain respect is find a safety feature that eases the workers burden while speeding up or keeping production the same. Then communicate that you did this just for them. A good example is when the company pays for a steel toed shoe program, tinted safety glasses for workers to take home for summer time yard work, or NFL or Baseball team hard hats or bump caps.

• 2

  Now that you have their attention and respect, you will need to keep it. Training is probably the worker's least favorite thing about safety next to all the rules. To ease this dislike, you must think of yourself as the teacher of any safety class. Remember back to college or high school? When students failed a particular teacher's class it was the teacher's fault for being to hard and trying to "trick" the students on a test. Don't be that teacher! Keep training simple. Teach the worker techniques that apply to them and their job. For instance, an office employee needs to learn how to behave around fork trucks, but they don't need to know how to drive one or inspect one. So don't make them sit through the same training as someone who will be driving one. You can guarantee they will not like it and will spread the word about how horrible your training was. Another example is slips, trips, and falls. You don't need to go into a lot of detail if it doesn't apply to them. If they work around liquids be sure they understand to importance of not running, keeping spills cleaned up, etc. If they work around powders and don't handle liquids at all then there's no need to spend a lot of time on liquid spills or clean up.

  Next, keep them coming back. Have a drawing during training for something they can take home or use at work that applies to safety. Some examples of giveaways I've used are a home fire extinguisher or smoke alarm when training for emergency response, a nice pair of mirrored safety glasses for use at home when doing yard work when training for PPE, and even BBQ grill sets and bird feeders during the spring just for fun. Also, keep your audience entertained by handing out candy or treats for answering questions or participating during discussions. Lastly, don't spend more than 1 hour for each training unless it's fork truck or respirator training. Otherwise you will lose your audience's attention.

• 3

  Lastly, get workers involved. Include them on a safety inspection team, a safety improvements team, or a safety video training team. Let them pick out their own training material. You can even choose some to be guest speakers during your training to offer their advice on things that pertain to their job.

  Another way to get people involved is to make a small part of every work related safety training relate to home or family safety. If you train on respirator training, make sure they understand that respirator safety at home and proper ventilation while painting or the importance of wearing ear plugs at work and at home while mowing the yard this summer.

  Next, make the tests user friendly. Don't try to trick people. If there's a method you use to help you remember terms, share it with your workers. They will learn more if it's an activity or rhyme rather than information thrown at them to regurgitate onto paper.