Upgrade Your Safety Meetings
By: Kenny Young, CSP, ARM, AINS, CEAS (Director of Safety Services)
Do you know what worker’s have grown to hate? Safety meetings. Good ‘ol word-filled PowerPoint showing, monotone presenting, no personal touch safety meetings. You know the ones I’m talking about. The safety meeting that starts off with, “I want everyone to be involved and have some discussion,” then the presenter rambles on for an hour without breathing. I’ve been there and done it. In fact, the OSHA 10-hour program is essentially built on that model. I’ve interviewed tons of safety professionals and I constantly hear the same thing. I show funny video clips and pictures to keep my training fresh. I bet they’re the same 2 gigabytes of videos and pictures all of us safety professionals have on our external hard drive. How about the 35-minute safety video that everyone has seen for the past 5 years in a row and it ends with the trainer saying, “any questions, if not be safe!”, followed up by Jimmy tapping John next to him on the shoulder to wake him up. We need to do better!
It’s amazing because after the last 10 years of being in safety (8 of those as a consultant), I’ve worked with hundreds of businesses and they often brag about how many safety meetings they have. Few and far between brag about how engaging or effective those meetings are. A lot of times when I interview employees during safety management system audits and ask employees what they think of the training they’ve received it’s often met with a shoulder shrug and a comment along the lines of “it’s alright.” Sometimes they say they wish there were more hands-on activities. The real problem is that the employees are so conditioned to uninspiring safety meetings throughout their career no matter who their employer was that they don’t know any better. They don’t realize that safety can be fun, interactive, a great learning experience, motivational, and sometimes emotional.
Shame on all of us for letting laziness get in the way. Most professional speakers say that you should spend anywhere from 2 to 5 minutes preparing for every 1 minute you plan to present. Unfortunately, many people in charge of the safety meeting such as a supervisor, HR manager, or even the safety manager don’t allocate that preparation time because they don’t feel like they have it. We all recognize training as being a major cornerstone of the safety management system so why don’t we treat it as such?
Here are a few ways to upgrade your safety meetings:
1. Prepare! By prepare I don’t mean just keep tinkering with the PowerPoint presentation. Research recent events that are relevant examples you can use, think of questions the group may have and answers to them ahead of time, and actually practice giving parts of your presentation. When was the last time you recorded yourself to review your own presentation skills? Give it a shot! Watch your recording, take notes on how you did, and make improvements for the next one.
2. Demonstrations. Google kid’s science experiments and you’ll find a lot of cool stuff. Talking combustible dust? Get a small funnel, flexible plastic tube, coffee creamer, and a lighter. Put those safety glasses and face shield on, take the group outside and blow fireballs. They’ll remember the hazard. In confined space or HAZCOM training, light a candle then fill a pitcher with vinegar and baking soda. Pour the “gas” onto the flame to extinguish it so you can showcase the idea of vapor density. When we talk about cranes and signal persons we have a Lego crane that one person can operate while the other does signals in the classroom. We don’t have a crane sitting around in the parking lot but the law firm next door would love it! Instead of showing the forklift video of someone driving over a turkey/chicken leg and how it obliterates the bone, do it!
3. Engage employees. Eyes commonly gloss over with pie charts and statistics. Horror stories about fatalities or serious injuries are hit or miss. But a guest speaker that’s experienced a life-altering event resonates with people. If you’re doing leadership training, take the time to build characters and events then have members of the team role play. Tape the groups fingers to their hands and ask them to write during lockout/tagout. The ideas can be endless! Adults learn better during experiential learning than just being told.
At Trinity we bring training to life. We’d be more than happy to help you resuscitate your safety meetings. Some of these ideas may sound corny but I’ve learned that corny isn’t that bad sometimes. I’ll share more ideas in the future.