There’s no doubt that safety training is important if you want to reduce the risks of work-related incidents and injuries. It’s best to onboard new employees with mandatory safety training as soon as possible, as well as regularly reinforce existing employees with refresher courses.
However, it’s no secret that most workers hate health and safety training, and let’s admit it, safety training tends to be dull and boring. Even if workers may understand its importance, doesn’t necessarily mean they will enjoy it.
The thing is, if they are not engaged throughout the training, then they tend to forget what’s in it. Studies have suggested that engaging, and even fun training tends to be more effective in helping people learn.
Think about it and try to remember your most fun classroom experiences back at school; quite likely you also still remember the topics being taught back then.
So, how can you keep your company’s safety training fun and engaging? Here are a few tips that you can try.
1. Keep it brief but effective
Avoid providing too lengthy oral lectures: it’s boring, and it’s highly unlikely your workers will remember all they’ve learned in a 3-hour oral safety training.
Instead, it’s best to keep the sessions short but more frequent. This way, you can let your workers put what they’ve learned into practice first before they join another session, so they are more likely to retain the knowledge.
If you want to further improve reinforcements, you can encourage daily discussions on safety topics and encourage your workers to leave feedback and questions.
2. Make it a competition with incentives
Another way to keep your training sessions fun is to turn them into games. You can then offer prizes for these games, which will make the games more competitive and more fun. Just like the old saying goes: competition brings out the best in people. Prizes as incentives allow people to participate more in the training and they are more likely to remember the topics being taught.
The secret here is figuring out what incentives to give: give too much and you might risk turning the training session into a competition for competition’s sake. Give too little, and you might lose interest. It’s important to find the right balance here.
3. Keep it easy and well-structured
Make sure it’s as easy as possible for participants to remember and join the training sessions, as well as for them to access their training materials and submit homework (if any). The fewer obstacles they experience with the safety training, the more fun and engaged they’ll be.
To help with this, you can invest in health and safety training software that can keep your training schedules and modules well-structured while staying in compliance with your local regulations.
Workers can simply download the iReportSource app from their smartphone and they’ll get automated reminders for when a training session is due, and they can access the training material straight from their devices. You can keep your employees engaged this way by providing easy-to-use and well-structured training sessions on-demand.
4. Get veterans to teach
If you can bring in well-respected veterans to teach your younger employees, then it can be a very effective approach in building excitement and encouraging engagement. Your workers will be curious about the veterans’ experience and will be on the lookout for unique tips and tricks.
You probably won’t need to look too far; there are likely experienced workers on your team that are already capable of sharing their established skills with new hires and younger employees.
In this type of safety training session, you should encourage interactive discussions and lectures, including hands-on demonstrations from the veterans.
5. Make use of humor effectively
Incorporating humor here and there in your safety training is an effective way to keep your employees engaged throughout the training session. In fact, if possible, start your training sessions with short jokes to lighten up the tone, and so that the workers can now expect the session to be light-hearted and fun (while still being serious and important).
Again, fun and laughter can enhance learning retention, so design your training lessons by considering the opportunities to include and leverage humor in these safety topics.
Even if your presenter is not good at presenting jokes, you can consider inserting a funny video (for example, about funny accidents at the workplace) as a substitute.
6. Experiment with various training methods
Remember that your team members are diverse, and they will learn in different ways. Some might learn best “by doing”, some others might prefer visual learning methods, while others retain more information via audio.
So, it’s best to also be diverse with your training methods, and if possible, use different training methods in a comprehensive, multimedia safety training module. Training sessions that involve multiple media tend to be more engaging, so you can try diversifying your sessions. For example, include short videos in-between an oral lecture, or even include a hands-on demonstration in your sessions.
7. Use anecdotes and examples
Insert anecdotes here and there to enhance your training sessions. Not only do anecdotes tend to be engaging, but people also tend to remember stories better than pure presentations.
For example, telling an anecdote about how a worker ended up with a deformed leg due to neglecting safety best practices is more likely to stick with your class rather than just telling them that working from heights is dangerous.
In using anecdotes and examples, be as vivid and detailed as possible, and again, use humor when applicable.
