Continuing industrial accidents and workplace injuries are putting pressure on businesses to improve the effectiveness of their safety training. A book from Europe that was recently made available as an open-source publication examines safety as a profession and how to professionalize safety.
The book addresses whether organizations should incorporate safety training into regular procedures or if it should be limited to high-risk tasks. The authors query whether such an activity will add more value to your safety instruction and make it more relevant and contextual.
To help you get the most out of your training efforts, we present a discussion on who gets the most benefit from safety training: those inside or outside the organization. We explore the necessity to return to basics in order to reflect the realities of day-to-day operations as well as to give training that focuses on high-risk tasks with realistic examples.
Finally, the book advocates two-way communication between managers and employees in order to guarantee that rules and procedures actually reflect practice. You are now on your way to making your safety training more impactful and capable of improving safety.
Putting safety first both within and without the organization
When it comes to security, the primary priority is to keep employees and visitors safe. Indeed, the goal is to ensure that training, in all of its forms, is the proper answer to the type of work that the organization undertakes.
At the same time, organizations must demonstrate to regulatory authorities that they prioritize safety. Furthermore, public perception can make or destroy an organization’s success. Especially if the media reports a negative story about a safety failure.
Because of the requirement to show evidence to others, organizations publicly highlight their efforts to fund safety measures; they ensure that standards, rules, and procedures are followed; and they build a safety culture.
Surprisingly, most day-to-day activities taken to keep employees safe are unlikely to be used as evidence by people outside the organization. Instead, actions that correspond with public perceptions of risk management, such as values, ethics, and responsibility, receive the greatest attention and meet the standards of accountability.
However, it is debatable if focusing on outside duties makes your safety training more effective in providing genuine protection for your personnel. Should you spend more time looking within your organization and concentrating on what you do on a daily basis?
Aligning safety with day-to-day operations
The issue with focusing on others outside of the organization is that we fail to link safety training courses with actual safety. We overcomplicate our efforts, and safety instruction becomes theoretical rather than practical.
Many professional development courses train personnel in “theoretical” settings without adequately preparing them for the variety of conditions they are likely to face in actual life. They fail to teach kids the skills they will require in the event of an emergency.
The safety introduction, for example, meets regulatory training requirements for covering off health and safety responsibilities but fails to prepare personnel to traverse high-risk areas safely (unless organisations use interactive and immersive methodologies).
And organizations must go beyond. One-time safety induction training is insufficient to ensure employees remember knowledge or detect changes in work practices or their environment. Many organizations struggle to improve the effectiveness of their safety programs.
Managing the gap between actual practice and the rules and procedures
It is vital to promote discussion among various safety specialists, supervisors, and employees about the high-risk circumstances they encounter. The way they understand them, the risks they see in them, and the remedies that appear relevant to them should all be discussed.
Following that, any input you receive on the execution of these ideas should be fed back into the discussions in order for them to become a permanent part of each employee’s tasks.
By doing so, you give an excellent chance for individuals in charge of day-to-day operations to report on their real practices and the concessions they make between competing objectives. You must understand how they connect to the standards, regulations, and procedures that you develop. By promoting open dialogue, employees come to accept their duties and develop a code of ethics that makes safety everyone’s business, every day.
How can you make your safety system more effective?
Organizations must build the competence of their managers to deal with safety complaints from their staff in order to make their safety training more effective. Managers must analyze their employees’ work, its limits, and how their teams approach their duties in order to give recommendations to their line managers and their teams.
Improvement tactics must alter how people think about their work, how teams collaborate, and how individuals make decisions. They must lead through a coalition of shop floor line managers and supervisors, safety consultants, and employee input, rather than through a sterile training setting. Interventions in safety training must get to the heart of how we design and arrange work.
Conclusion
It’s difficult to strike the correct balance between training to meet compliance needs and making your safety training more meaningful. Organizations are concerned with supporting safety measures, adhering to standards, rules, and procedures, and fostering a safety culture.
How many of these behaviors, however, contribute to making your workplace safer, particularly while engaging in high-risk tasks?
This article examines a recently published book that argues for organizations to return to basics and focus on promoting debate among various safety specialists, supervisors, and employees about high-risk jobs. to assess the relevance of their safety standards, how they compare to actual work settings, what the real issues are in specific conditions, and how effective and valid they are.
Interventions in safety training must get to the heart of how we create and schedule work, as well as represent the tradeoffs we make owing to competing demands. In this way, we can make safety training more effective and efficient while also keeping our staff safe on a daily basis.