There’s so much that needs to be done to run a business properly. It’s easy to overlook certain areas, especially if you’re doing everything yourself! One area you don’t want to overlook, however, is that of safety training.
Training is one of the most essential parts of general workplace safety. Your team needs to be up to date on all of the latest safety practices as they relate to your place of work. Every time you bring new employees on board, they need to be taught how to operate with care in the space and what to do in case something goes wrong.
How can you make sure your team is engaged and learning what they need when going through this training? Read on and we’ll walk you through everything that you need to know.
Ensure Everyone Understands
Often, it can be difficult to convey the ins and outs of every safety topic to your team. These things can be complicated, after all. It is your job at the end of the day to ensure that information that you cover is presented in a way that is palatable to all.
You will have failed to do your job if any of your team leaves training without an actual understanding of all the information presented.
You will need to approach your training in ways that help to make things easier to understand. There are many ways to do this and how you approach it might depend on the kind of industry that you work in.
You could create a checklist of things that important to remember about safety in your workplace and keep copies of this checklist around the office after your training. Having a summary and reference guide such as this can make things a lot easier to manage.
You can also utilize a lot of interactions and questioning in your training to ensure understanding. Ask questions of your team as you work through things and ensure that anyone on your team is able to give a correct answer.
If there are practices employees need to do as part of their safety training, have them do it during the initial training. Allowing for some hands-on work will help to cement these practices.
Provide Creative Learning Opportunities
If you drone on in front of your team, they’re not likely to become very engaged in any of the safety training topics that you are discussing. You need to get creative with your approach and speak to them from a few different angles.
What angles might be worth considering? Instead of just speaking to your team, consider visual resources. You could show a film, create graphics, or create hands-on activities to promote learning.
Anything you can do that will help to increase engagement in your audience will be beneficial for their learning at the end of the day.
Make it something that your team looks forward instead of dreads and they’ll be more likely to take it seriously as well. Bring in some coffee and donuts that morning or lead it into a party after work. Have catered lunch on the day you plan to do your training and even allow your team to pick out where it’s from.
If you can get the team engaged in a different way it’ll be easier to get them to take in the information you really need them to take in.
Training Never Ends
One helpful way to make training stick? Don’t approach it as a one-time-only affair. If you think you can get your whole team perfectly capable within one 1-hour session, think again.
Creating an actually safe working environment will require you to continually observe your employees and the work environment. There may be problems that arise that you hadn’t even considered when you had your initial meeting.
Employees may have continuing concerns or even ideas or solutions to potential risks in the workplace. These can be valuable.
A lot of what you and your team learn will need to be reinforced over time. Correcting poor handling of a task or situation needs to be pointed out and rectified. This might need to happen ten times before it finally sticks in the brains of your team.
You can even hold emergency drills and other such things to ensure that your employees are really ready if a safety emergency were to occur. You might also want to consider a reward system where those who exemplify the safety protocols get some sort of treat or reward.
Make sure your entire team is involved in this process. That means everyone from as high up as your managers to as low down as your part-time employees. Everyone needs to be involved in getting on the same page about office safety.
It can be even more important that managers and those in leadership positions take safety training seriously. If those at the top show that these things are important, it’ll be more likely that the rest of the team will follow suit.
If everyone is equally invested in safety education there will be a much lower chance of anything going wrong.
Implementing Safety Training Successfully
It can be difficult to determine how best to teach your employees about safety. However, safety training is an essential part of running a business and it’s a challenge you’ll need to meet head-on. The above advice and information can be hugely helpful in working towards this goal.
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