We always consider it a safety hazard when there are sleepy or drowsy workers at the work site, right? And do you find that, sometimes, the more experienced workers in your company tend to get a little drowsy on days when they are supposed to sit in on a safety refresher session, where company leadership re-visits the company’s safety program to ensure that all workers are performing teir work safely and in compliance with regulations?
We have all been there. Safety refresher sessions are one of those necessary evils in some ways. Very few workers really want to sit in on these sessions. They already know what to do – they’ve been trained in it, they take the necessary steps before every shift and they do their jobs in the safest way possible. They would much rather go to work than sit in on one of these meetings.
{Photo courtesy of USACE HQ from Flickr via a Creative Commons license]Workplace safety sessions such as this are important in making sure all workers do their jobs safely, but they aren’t always interesting. There are ways, however, to keep workers engaged and involved in ensuring their safety and those of co-workers.
However, as a safety-conscious supervisor or even a safety officer, you know that these sessions are an investment – investing a little bit of time being unproductive on the floor in exchange for increased safety, productivity and morale among workers over the course of the next six months to a year or whenever you have your next refresher session.
While these sessions are important, how can you get your workers engaged and involved in these sessions so that they understand the process and eventually put into the practice the information they gather? John Drebinger wrote a piece in Inside Global Mining recently (you can see a snippet here) that gave 10 pieces of advice about how to have an effective and engaged refresher session – or even a safety kickoff session.
1. Develop an outcome. Each refresher or kickoff session needs to have a specific, achievable outcome or objective. As the saying goes, “If you don’t have a target, you’ll hit it every time.”
2. Audience engagement. This should not just be a lecture; have some give-and-take with the workers, giving them a platform to express their questions or concerns, and also have the leader of the session find ways to make the meetings fun with examples, jokes, props, etc.
3. Teach technique. It is one thing to tell workers how things should be done; it’s another to actually teach them what to do, and have them demonstrate to you that they know what they are supposed to do and how to do it safely.
4. Keep it relevant. Don’t lose some of the audience by talking about things that do not directly apply to them. Keep the content of the meeting focused on what is important for everyone in the room to know. If there are a couple of prominent safety issues to address, focus the meeting on those instead of rehashing all parts of the safety program if 90 percent is not causing problems in the workplace.
5. Content-outcome match. When you know what your desired outcome or objective of the meeting is, you will then better keep in mind the content to cover so it does not stray away from what you want the attendees to get out of the meeting. Without the coordination, there will be confusion after the workers leave the meeting.
6. Peer engagement. Enlist the help of fellow rank-and-file employees to organize and arrange the meeting, and use co-workers to teach each other about safety. Many times, knowledge sticks better when it’s an equal who is helping with the education, rather than listening to a supervisor or manager.
7. Be open with logistics. Communicate openly about the meeting ahead of time and provide ample opportunity for any questions by workers before or during the session.
8. Be creative. Besides props and jokes as mentioned earlier, add in skits or music to help bring home points in the sessions. But dont’ be creative for the sake of being entertaining – make sure that whatever you do drives home the point you want to make.
9. Clear calendars. Set up the session at a time when everyone can attend – usually the first part of the mroning is good, or if you are a business that has hours of operations at all hours of the day and night, set aside time during a transitional period from one shift ot the next. Do it far enough in advance that everyone knows and can plan accordingly.
10. Feed the hungry … or not. If you plan on providing food, let the workers know, and allow them some time at the start of the session to eat before you start. If there will not be food, let the workers know that as well so they can plan accordingly.