Safety knowledge normally remains the core strength of safety professionals in any typical industry. The flip side is that most line managers remain safety illiterate. The reasons are manifold – lack of accountability, weak regulations and not treating safety with the same seriousness as they treat their business.
A direct consequence of this situation is that the responsibility of training the company staff, contractors and workers lands in the lap of safety professionals. This is where organisations unknowingly plant the seed of training failure.
1. Every safety pro may not be a good trainer: Training is an art and a skill. Just because someone has the requisite technical safety skills does not naturally qualify him to be a good trainer. Organisations need to choose and cultivate good quality trainers in- house using a long term training strategy.
2. Poorly designed training modules: Most of the modules that I have come across in companies are nothing but word documents converted into PPT slides. Such poorly crafted slides loose audience engagement instantly. Added challenge comes from lack of formal computer knowledge to create and design effective modules. Unfortunately this weakness never goes away as it is not even seen as a weakness by the so called trainers
3. Poor communication skills: Most of the safety professionals are technically qualified but hardly trained in any kind of formal communication skills. Conducting training in English poses an added burden. It is assumed that technical skills are all what it takes to deliver. The role of good communication in mainstream business transactions is well understood by managers but when it comes to safety trainings it is somehow pushed aside. And this may have a subconscious level connection somewhere - that safety is an unavoidable burden. The trainings have to be done because they have to be done to comply with legal norms but why bother to investigate the quality of trainings unless something majorly goes wrong. Nothing can be farther from truth.
4. Poor creativity: Safety training is unfortunately taken as pouring of technical information on hapless attendees. It severely damages the cause of training. The purpose of education is not delivery of the content but “LEARNING” by the participants. If no learning takes place then education has not happened. But the learning in safety becomes more visible only in the field. The concepts in the classroom seem simple because of examples so far away from the reality. Take for example – stoppage of work when safety compliance is compromised. In the classroom a perfect answer is – Never compromise safety for the sake of progress and everybody endorses it but the reality of management behavior could be so very different if real work progress takes a hit due to compromised safety leading to work stoppage. It is these situational answers that must be given to the attendees and not just any answers.
5. Quality of attendees: I quite often come across wrong kind of people sitting across me for the training. When I try to extract the reason, I get any of the following:
a. My boss asked me to attend
b. HR wanted more people to attend the program
c. I was asked to fill in since the original nominee is not available
d. HR wants to complete the yearly manhours target
e. I have recently joined (irrespective of the role he/she will play)
Filling the room will anyone and everyone will only aggravate the problem. What organizations need is trained staff on subject specific safety.
Max Safety has observed safety culture at sites of various reputed clients onsite and provided them constructive inputs on making their training & trainers more effective resulting in improvement of their training capabilities & outcomes.
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