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Let’s take that video for example: Why are we showing it? What objective does viewing the video accomplish? Why should I as a participant watch the video? If you don’t have answers to these questions, then you probably shouldn’t be using video.

When you set up an activity begin with the objective you hope to achieve. For example, if you are showing a video about confined space entry, you might introduce the video by saying, “We’re going to watch a short video on confined space entry. I think this video does a particularly nice job demonstrating the correct procedure for entering a confined space. A little later in the course we will be practicing entering a simulated confined space so you may want to pay particular attention to that portion of the video.”

After the exercise, it is crucial that you debrief. A debrief is a way of deepening the participants’ understanding of the point you are making and helps them to retain the skill longer. When you debrief, make sure you focus on the lesson that you want the participant to take away from the activity. A good debrief should encourage participants to interpret the exercise and to analyze what they have learned.

I like to start with an open-ended question like, “What did you think of the video?” The problem with a question like this is that you are likely to get an emotional response like, “I didn’t like it” or “It was stupid”. Or you might get someone who critiques the production values. While these responses may not seem appropriate to our purposes, it allows the participants to get those feelings off their chest so that you can talk about more substantive topics.

I like to follow with another open question like, “What did you learn from the video?” Unless you ask the first question (what did you think?) you are likely to get answers like “nothing”. It’s not that people will always react negatively to your activities, but allowing a vent question will relieve the stress of the people that did react badly. If the group seems to have missed the point, you can gently steer the group back toward the concepts you want them to take away from the exercise.

RULE 5: DO TRAINING TO PROVIDE SKILLS, NOT MERELY ACHIEVE COMPLIANCE
A lot of safety training is seen as a necessary evil by the organization and major a pain in the butt by the individual. How can you ever train people who honestly and ardently believe that they aren’t attending your training, they’re being subjected to it?

But we have to do safety training to comply with the law! We don’t have a choice; we must present it and people must attend it. While compliance is certainly an important part of why we do training, it must be secondary to protecting workers. There can never be a trade-off between imparting skills necessary for workers to be safe and complying with a regulation.

Before accepting my current position, I spent many years as head of training for a large, international manufacturer. Because we had locations in Asia, Europe, and throughout North America, we were beset by varied and, sometimes, contradictory compliance requirements. In addition to governments, the executives over our operating units had training courses that they would decide were mandatory for all employees. It was often tough, because I would disagree that the part-time receptionist at a plant in Montreal would need 16 hours of Problem Solving training, and yet, that was the requirement.

I finally realized that compliance was not the anathema of skill building and, in fact, with a little thought, compliance can be your friend. Never tell an adult that the reason they are in your safety training is because the law says they have to be. That may well be an accurate statement, but it sets a tone where the participants are being treated as convicts or children.

Take Hazard Communication training. Haz Com used to be, for me, the symbol of pointless compliance training. I believed that we did it yearly, not because it was necessary, or valuable, but plain and simply because the law said we had to, and if we didn’t we risked a big fine. Can you imagine how effective I was teaching a topic that I was just presenting because I had too? How receptive do you think the adults who were dragged into the class against their will were to the course?

The evaluations of the course accurately derided the training as a waste of time. Having such a fragile psyche, I really took the criticism to heart and decide to do something about it. I sat down and did some soul searching. When I started to focus on the skills I wanted the participants to learn, instead of the compliance box I was going to check, I was able to make some significant and important improvements to the course.

I started by asking why OSHA required the course. I reasoned that the course was probably required because people were getting injured because they inadvertently exposed themselves to hazards, and did so because their employers – either out of ignorance, maliciousness, or negligence – never warned them of the dangers.

This realization helped me to retool the course to meet the goal of warning people about dangers in the workplace and informing them of their rights under the law, instead of merely checking the box. Overnight, the participants got more excited, did better on the post-tests, and were more involved in the course. For my part, I enjoyed presenting the course and felt the time I spent was worthwhile.

RULE 6: STAY FOCUSED ON THE “NEED TO KNOW” AND GET RID OF THE “NICE TO”
A fair amount of safety training was developed by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). SMEs often have difficulty separating the “need to know” from the “nice to know”. Many of them are convinced that a skill can only be required once an individual fully grasps the scientific principles behind the skills and has a complete understanding of the topic presented.

These courses bog down in technical minutia that does nothing to increase the proficiency with which the participants will apply the skills being taught. I once worked with an engineer to develop a course on the operation and maintenance of a machine that made magnets. The engineer insisted on an 8-hour course that covered every conceivable element in the magnetizing of strontium ferrite. He insisted that the participants learned all the fine points of magnetism, the physical and chemical properties of strontium ferrite, how compounds and alloys are made, and a host of other information that had no direct connection with the operation of the machine.

So much information was shared in this course, that many participants could not perform the four skills associated with operating the magnetizer.

RULE 7: OPEN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND CLOSE WITH A SUMMARY
Like any good presentation, a good safety course follows the simple structure of (a) tell them what you hope to accomplish and why they should listen to you, (b) tell them, and (c) tell them what you’ve told them. There are five elements of an introduction:
1) Housekeeping
2) WIIFM
3) Establishing Expertise
4) Establishing Expectations
5) Ice Breaker