In your experience, what constitutes “normal safety training”?

My definition of "normal" is a PowerPoint slide presentation or the ever-present video.

Why is “normal safety training” inadequate? What are some of its shortcomings?

Normal in my definition has its shortcomings in the facts that they tend to be cookie cutter, cut and pasted from the regulations and then read to the audience. Or you show paid actors portraying situations in the workplace in nice new uniforms and shiny hard hats, trying to fit all categories of industry in one 20-minute video.

To be most effective, the training should be personal to the facility and employees, show relevant materials, use a minimum of words and more pictures and action, be chocked full of stories from real people who have real experiences, and when all else fails, forget about the technology and just sit down and have a talk "with" the employees and not "to" them.

What are some of the elements of your training strategies that “ain’t” normal?

Get the safety message across using a variety of games, puzzles or other employee centric activities. Use personal stories to drive home points. Make effective use of humorous video to help make a particular point. Use various types of candy bars to deliver a sweeter safety message. Utilize employees’ families or children to help bring home the message both figuratively and literally. Use literally any item (pocket lint, lipstick, deodorant, bottle opener, cheese grater, etc.) to help deliver a key safety message or concept. Make a picture take the place of a thousand words. It’s anything you can come up with that is out of the ordinary, that employees would not expect to see in delivering a safety training topic or message. Stay relative to the subject always but the wilder the further out, the better.

A number of employees roll their eyes when told to attend a safety training class. How do you avoid this attitude or reaction?

By not meeting their preconceived notion regarding safety training. Make it different, make it unique, make it personal, make it fun! If you can manage to do this they will approach safety training with a different perspective.

Skipper Kendrick, Skipper.Kendrick@gmail .com.; www.safetybyskipper.com. Kendrick Global Enterprises, LLC was founded with the mission to help organizations achieve continual improvement through utilization of solid principles, processes and systems. Skipper has more than 38 years experience in manufacturing, education, shipyard, construction, aerospace and association management that has produced a knowledge base enabling realistic, cost-effective solutions to a broad variety of problems and issues. A keen awareness of business processes coupled with a continual improvement mindset is a core competency of Kendrick Global Enterprises.

Presentations developed and delivered are engaging, thought provoking, motivational and humorous. Interactive, dynamic presentations make Skipper a sought-after facilitator, speaker, seminar leader and trainer.?