Safety: Boring is Good…or is it?

I was just reading a comment on Twitter about how boring Canada is because everything works and most people are satisfied.  Notwithstanding the merits of that concept, the comment got me thinking about the whole safety and boredom thing.

I like to say that, “Boring is good in the safety business”, because the opposite, “Exciting”, generally means that there’s an event that has resulted in a workplace injury and therefore individual pain and suffering as well as organizational disruption.  As many of us know, when an injury or loss occurs there’s a mad rush to get help to the person hurt or to repair the damage and then to gather the facts of what occurred.   Normally it’s the safety person that tries to bring calm to the exercise of the initial response and investigation.

So a good safety day, in my opinion, is the “boring” one without any of the events that cause “excitement”.  I know quite a few emergency personnel who get excited about responding to a fire or other emergency.  In my world I would be much happier if there were less emergency events.

The other side to the safety boredom thing is a real challenge and that is engaging people in the conversation about safety.  Safety is a vital human need, yet in our society there is so much going on it’s hard to get and hold people’s attention.  If you do wake someone up long enough for them to listen to you, you only have seconds to capture them and keep their attention on the importance of your message.   In safety training or discussions I call this “the Hook”.  What are the first 10-20 words that will excite people so that you can get them the information they need to be safe.

In my experience the worst training that I have ever done has to be WHMIS – the Workplace Hazardous Materials Information System.  When I started out in safety over 20 years ago, WHMIS was the new thing.  It was about chemical safety information in the form of container labelling, material safety data sheets and worker education.  Back in the beginning we spent 8 hours on the generic side of WHMIS training and then another 8+ hours doing WHMIS specific training.  I did so many of these sessions that I had to get the participants to wake me up at the end of the session…and I was the instructor.  Today, WHMIS training has been incorporated into computer based learning and is predominantly a refresher for most workers, but you’d be amazed at how many workers still have not received this training; even after being mandatory in Canadian workplaces since 1989.

Today, I realize that there are many ways that people learn and it’s important to mix and match your training style to the learners in your session.  Adults learn best when they are engaged in the content and allowed to come to the learning of their own accord.  The mandatory nature of most safety training can place an immediate barrier between you and the learner.  You’ve heard it before…”Do I have to be here.  Yes…this is safety training.”  A training colleague of mine advised me many years ago that it’s important to recognize  the “mandatoryness” of the training and then quickly get into the why and personal relevance of it’s importance.

I’ve learned some other tricks over the years about modulating my voice, using questions and exercises to engage the participants and how to use my own style of self deprecating humour to keep people awake.  It still is an effort to take the serious nature of safety and make it fun and engaging.

I’ve heard the stories of how people make WHMIS training fun and I’m sure they think it is, but I have trouble envisioning it.  I still have flashbacks to my WHMIS-induced bouts of narcolepsy from the 90′s.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m considered by many to be a great speaker and trainer.  At least that’s what some very nice people tell me.  I have to search for that spark of creativity each time that will hook my audience.

So what about you?  When you’re not trying to experience the bliss of safety boredom, how do you make safety or training fun?

Cause safety fun to happen today in your workplace…Andrew…a Canadian Safety Guy