Safety Training Techniques for More Effective Safety Education

Everyone is in favor of safety training. To put a finer point on it, we’re all in favor of effective safety training.

But knowing what you need and making it a reality in your workplace are two different things. Especially if your workforce, like many workers, comes to safety training with the same attitude: tired, exasperated, and already bored of the proceedings.

We think it’s time to change that. The key is changing the way you conduct your safety training. Here are a few essential safety training techniques to keep in mind when developing your next safety training.

Know and Acknowledge “What’s In It for Me?”

Unfortunately, even if you have the best employees in the world, the reality of people is that we care selectively. With all the tasks and responsibilities that come up in a single day, humans only have the energy and attention to care about things if we consider them important.

Because of this, the first thing any safety training has to address is the, “What’s in it for me?” attitude.

Abstract safety concepts like OSHA regulations won’t help, nor will a review of the workplace safety policy. The best approach is to make it personal for your workers – address how they actually work and how safety can directly benefit them and their jobs.

Use Hands-On Lessons

With that in mind, hands-on lessons are always preferable to the classic college-style lecture.

Instead of sitting around a table in a conference room or standing at a lectern to talk to a crowd of visibly bored employees, get out of the conference room and into the workplace. After all, this is the place where safety will actually happen, so there’s no better place to see safety in action.

Get workers personally involved in the process. Learn to speak the language of the brain (hint: highly visual and vivid). Your goal here is to get your workers to visualize what you’re telling them in real-time.

Let’s say, for example, you’re explaining how something should be done. The best way to do this is to have workers do it themselves so they can see and feel what you’re saying. Complement this with demonstrations of how things can go wrong (safely, of course!)

Encourage Imagination

Finally, if you haven’t caught on yet, getting your workers involved works best if you can encourage their imagination.

It’s been proven that students who use their imagination to visualize ideas do a much better job recalling information than those who don’t.

Also, keep in mind the basic logic of why we love action movies. Even if we think the plot is bad and the actors are worse, our brain is engaged because it is instinctively drawn to information that shows actions and engages when it can connect movement with information.

In other words, the brain retains information better when it is alive and moving, and it does a better job of retaining information that is alive and moving.

Looking for More Effective Safety Training Techniques?

If you’re like us, you know that the old safety training techniques don’t work. You can repeat the same information to your workers a thousand times and it still won’t ping their radar.

We think it’s time to do better. That’s why we built safety training software that can change the way you conduct safety training.

Ready to train your team for success? Click here to get in touch.