Health and safety training in the workplace is one of the most important things you have to put your team through. Creating the perfect working conditions also includes teaching your employees how to act responsibly in the workplace. Of course, the problem is that many believe there’s nothing to learn from training and that it’s useless and boring. This increases the risk of a work injury, as employees are often unaware of just how much danger they’re in. Thus, it’s imperative to engage your employees and show them that health and safety training can be fun as well as extremely useful.
Encourage safe behaviour
The first thing to remember is that training is only part of having a safe workplace. As well as that, you’ll need to encourage safe behaviour on a daily basis. Your supervisors and managers should observe employee behaviour after training sessions and see how well they’re coping with the changes and how well they’re employing safety methods. Those who are doing well should get positive feedback, a pat on the back, or even a reward.
This will show employees that being safe at work isn’t for nothing. They’ll see that this is an actual and important matter, as well as that their effort to stick to the new rules is appreciated. The more employees see that you’re encouraging safe behaviour the more will follow the rules. After all, everyone likes knowing they’re doing a good job.
Maintain good communication
Training sessions are usually extremely one-sided. The employer says what they need to say, the employees listen, and the session is never mentioned again. This makes the employee feel like what you just talked about isn’t of much importance and that they shouldn’t ask you anything because you’re not mentioning it anymore. You need to be the one to keep the communication channels open at all times. Trust and talking are very important for maintaining a healthy and safe work environment.
Always ask your employees how they’re feeling about their skills, if they understood the safety procedures, and if anything needs revising. It’s important for them to feel like they can openly talk to you about what’s troubling them in the safety department. This way they’ll be more confident and ready for anything, as they’ll know they always have someone to talk to. That also minimizes the risk for injury, as your employees will come to you in advance, before they hurt themselves, to double check procedures. It’s also very important to tell them as soon as something changes in the way you run safety measures in the office.
Pick the right timing
For people to pay attention to training, they need to see why it’s important. The easiest way to make sure this happens is to choose the right timing for your training. Often enough, the training seems useless because it’s hard for people to imagine that an injury can even happen at work. This is especially true if you’re working in a tamer environment where work injuries aren’t common or so obvious. Thus, the best time to commence training is after an injury or after a near injury.
Of course, employees should be trained before, but the lessons will only really take root when people see that the danger is real. After an incident or a near miss of an incident, they’re bound to be paying attention to what you have to say with both eyes wide open. Make sure to cover the topics thoroughly and set their mind at ease by giving them concrete pieces of advice on how to act in certain situations. This will make them feel more confident and more in control over situations they would otherwise be lost in.
Make it compelling
One way to engage your audience is to make what you’re saying compelling. You can’t do this with just a training video or a slide show- you’ll need to walk the extra mile. In Australia, employers have found that hiring professionals to help with training tends to be extremely compelling. The way it works is that firms like Sydney Rescue Consultants offer training courses that would be useful for your crew.
This way, the employees see first-hand how and why they should act a certain way and how to handle any obstacle at work. It’s also much more effective than videos because they need to actively participate, and therefore learn. Firms like that are also there for any kind of advice you need and will even provide state of the art equipment just to make the experience better. There’s no better way to be compelling than when you’ve got someone entirely backing up what you have to say.
Be methodical
Safety training can often be very abstract and confusing. This is what makes it so boring and foreign to employees, and so reluctant to participate and interact with the programme. In order to engage your workers, you’ll need to be methodical and break down the process for them. This way, they’ll be taking it small bits of information at the time, allowing them to store it properly and actually remember something.
The best way to achieve this effect is to be methodical and break down the training process into steps. Present one step at a time, make sure the steps are in the correct order and don’t be afraid to use visual aids. Not only does this make things simpler, but it also makes it them easier to remember and apply. As well as that, you’ll notice that your audience’s eyes aren’t glossed over with boredom.
Conclusion
Even though it may be hard to get your workers initially interested in what you have to say, it’s absolutely necessary. Being safe and healthy in the workplace is grounds for productivity and increased motivation. When employees are safe, they’re also confident and can tackle work tasks with much more determination and better success rate. With these tips, your employees are bound to be engaged and paying attention to every step of the way.