Any workplace safety program is only as good as the safety training provided to employees. With that in mind, we asked safety professionals what their biggest safety training headaches are.
Here are the results:
scheduling safety training (around production, for example): 33.1%
We also asked safety pros to rate each of these responses on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being “this isn’t a headache at all,” and 10 being “a major headache.” (The first number is the average score; the second number is the percent who ranked it an 8, 9 or 10.):
getting employees to remember what they learned: 6.25, 33.5%
scheduling it: 6.22, 39.5%
keeping it fresh/new ideas: 6.04, 31.7%
keeping up with what training OSHA requires: 5.32, 25.4%
developing it: 4.85, 17.5%, and
doing/presenting it: 3.70, 8.4%.
Headache relief
One out of three safety managers said scheduling around production was their No. 1 safety training headache.
And one of the main complaints about this from Production: Do experienced employees really need this training again?
While the answer is, “yes,” there is a way you can make scheduling easier when it involves experienced workers: Take their experience into consideration. Let them show you during the safety meeting that they know the rules. Ask employees to tell you about the safety topic. If they can do that, their safety training doesn’t need to take as long as that for unseasoned workers.
One in four safety managers told us their biggest safety training headache was keeping the sessions fresh and finding new ideas on how to present material.
Here are some ideas from other safety pros:
Take short, one- to five-minute videos of employees at work. Play the clips at your safety training and ask employees to identify potential hazards and then explain how they would eliminate/reduce them.
Don’t have time to make videos? Ask some employees to demonstrate a safety situation for the group. You could have one worker do something incorrectly, then have another demonstrate good safety mentoring – the best ways to give constructive criticism regarding safety practices. Go ahead and let the employees have a little fun with it. It will help keep attendees’ attention.
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Behavior-Based Safety Training Module 1: The Managers Role
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