The one thing you CANNOT forget in OSHA Training!

Hi, it’s Steven St. Laurent, the Spanish OSHA Guy! Okay, here’s the scenario: You got 10 – 15 employees in front of you and your job is to motivate them to work safely by talking about the OSHA standards! Hmm. Sounds riveting, doesn’t it? 🙂 There are many reasons why people think safety training is boring (or in fact have been in a boring OSHA training). Among them is that they’ve heard it before, the trainer reads off a slide and the people in the room sit there (or stand there) with their arms folded and don’t participate. Wow, a pretty rough environment!

One of the various techniques I use -with great success- to engage people and compel them to participate in activities is Construction Family Feud.  Or -in manufacturing facilities- I change it up and call it OSHA Family Feud.  It is great because everyone participates, I get two teams yelling at each other and disputing the scores.  But the best part is they are thinking about safety and what is relevant to them on a daily basis.

That’s the word!  RELEVANT.  So -with that- a lot of trainers and safety officers fall short and fail to connect with their audience because they simply forget to do one thing:  Ask!

Something I do to create and prepare relevant training materials is ask my audience what they are doing, where their concerns are, what they want to talk about. When any topic directly relates to someone, they are immediately engaged and have something to say. Someone once told me about the radio station WIIFM. It stands for “What’s In It For Me?” This is a simple yet powerful idea that must be employed whenever you give a talk, be it a 5-minute toolbox talk or a 10-hr OSHA training!  The reason why many OSHA trainers and safety professionals often bore their students and employees is because they are not relevant. They don’t ask who their audience is and what they need and want to know.

So, besides your comments below, I’m going to ask that you take 3 minutes or less to fill out this 4-question survey that I created to learn the top safety issues companies are battling with. I think I have a good idea based on the questions I get in my trainings and what I see in companies, but I want to hear it from you first hand. Please take 3 minutes or less to fill out this quick survey. As always, thanks for your time and I’ll write soon!