Be A Safety Leadership Warrior – Part I

July 15th, 2016

Our old friend Robert Pater is at it again.

The guru of safety leadership has been one to provide great insights into developing safety leadership and safety leaders within organizations, and has been active in providing thought-provoking articles in Professional Safety magazine that explore safety leadership in a number of ways and helping us understand the value of safey thought-leaders and the need for leadership in the world of occupational safety.

Recently, Pater was working on a series of articles that focused around the great Japanese warrior Miyamoto Mushashi, who lived in the16th century and had an impeccable record in battles throughout his life – supposedly coming out of all the battles with nary a scar. He composed a book called The Book of Five Rings, which Pater says has nine guidelines to effective martial strategy, and those principles can be adapted to support safety leadership skills in a worksite or at a company.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Michael Coghlan via a Creative Commons license]

The Martial Art of Leadership

To win a war or a battle, you need a leader, or multiple leaders, to help organize a strategy, tactics and personnel in the right positions to bring about the best possible outcome. With no leadership, armies are chaotic and are more likely to retreat and lose ground to the enemy. While safety is not the enemy, and neither are injuries or illnesses on the worksite, establishing and enforcing a safety culture is a constant battle, especially in industries where turnover is high.

While every battlefield has to have leaders in order for a side to have a chance to win, not everyone on the battlefield can be a leader. It’s similar to martial arts in that respect – many people can go through the training to be a martial artist, but not very many end up being highly successful or accomplished. Not everyone earns a black belt in karate or tae kwon do. To be accomplished in a martial art takes discipline, patience, perseverance, and a conviction to continually develop and grow. Real leaders, whether in safety or in an overall company culture, get into leadership positions and are known as effective leaders using the same characteristics.

Mushashi’s 1st 3 Principles

Pater goes deep into Mushashi’s nine principles of effective martial or wartime strategy, and turns the principles into action plans for building safety leadership and a safety culture in a workplace. The first three of these principles are what Pater discusses in his first article of the series, which he describes as important for self-awareness and self-development. The first three principles are important because it is hard to lead others when you are not real sure about what you are capable of doing or what you are aware of in your environment.

With that in mind, here are Mushashi’s first three principles and how they can apply to developing yourself as a leader:

  1. Think Honestly. This is about knowing yourself well and not being in denial about weaknesses and not overblown on strengths. Knowing where you are good and where you are weak can help you find people to work with who have strengths that complement yours. The tough part of this self-discovery, though, is to actually be self-aware; it’s more likely that you will have to do the equally difficult job of seeking out those you trust to give you honest but constructive criticism about your strengths and weaknesses in such a way that you won’t feel threatened or defensive. If you were to ask eight to 10 people about yourself, you can focus on the trend that emerges, because chances are if these people all know you professionally, they will likely say at least a couple similar strengths and weaknesses for you, and this can give you a launching point in helping understand who you really are.
  2. Training is the Way. Very few people are naturally good at a sport, or at playing piano, or acting in movies, or being leaders. Everything takes practice; even walking. We all get better with practice, and the more we train and practice and challenge ourselves to grow, the better we will be. The development does not have to be limited to seminars or conference break-out sessions; learning and growing should occur every day with normal interactions among co-workers and supervisors. And the challenge at that point is not to become elf-satisfied; we should always strive to find ways to improve. The moment we feel we are as accomplished as we should or want to be, we will no longer want to train or learn and that will lead to a loss of development and apathy.
  3. Know All Angles. Surely part of your self-development and self-awareness is to know and understand a certain leadership style that fits your own personality, but the other key is knowing all of the various styles that may be in use in your worksite, and understanding those strengths and weaknesses. As in battle, a soldier and his general must know all of the possible scenarios and be prepared for any line of attack, and that is what you should do as a leader. You should understand the different leadership styles, know what your style is, and understand the other aspects of leadership that are on display and learn how to leverage those pros and cons to your advantage, and provide aan advantage to other leaders as well.  And don’t just focus within your own organization; pay attention to how leaders in other organizations lead, and learn about their culture – especially competitors. Those which are healthy competitors can teach you something about your own organizational strengths and weaknesses, and those who are failing can be a good warning to you to make sure you are not making the same mistakes.

I will follow up in future posts in discussing more of Mushashi’s nine principles to effective martial strategy and Pater’s interpretation of the principles in developing effective safety culture and leadership in your organization. Keep watching this space for these future tomes.

 

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Safety, Business and Greenery

July 12th, 2016

As Kermit the Frog once said, “It ain’t easy being green.”

Believe it or not, we safety officer could add a couple words to the end of that setence: It ain’t easy being green and safe.

Now, I know what you might be thinking. There has been a generally accepted connotation with “green” initiatives in business. It has basically been thought that those companies that go “green” – finding ways to reduce their carbon “footprint” through alternative energy sources and/or eco-friendly building materials, etc. – that the company or building would be safer to work in and work with than other competitors which are not so conscious of the environment. And it would be understandable in the sense that some buildings might have less carbon gas emissions, which make the air in the building healthier to breathe, as an example. But in reality, does “green” and safe really go hand in hand? And does going “green” add to the list of hazards and considerations when trying to run a productive and efficient business?

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Stuart Cole via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Stuart Cole via a Creative Commons license]

Even Greenness Has Riskiness

Green buildings and green energy have their inherent beliefs that what is good for the Earth and good for people in general will be risk-free, but that is not always the case. One of the things you have to consider when going “green” in your company is to weigh the investment in green technology and materials against the new risks that exist. After all, “green” products will be made of different materials, and those materials may have their own risks that might not have been considered with other materials. And do you have a handle on the existing risks that you could replace some of those risks with these new ones and not have it be burdensome to your safety protocols or to your workers?

EU-OSHA has recently put out a fact sheet that covers green building and the new or layered hazards and risks associated with new and alternative building materials, and what factors should be considered when constructing green buildings in the safety through design (STD) concept. The fact sheet also has a pretty comprehensive reference list for further investigation to help further understanding of greenness in buldings.

Risks to Productivity

There are examples that suggest that safety can equal productivity and profitability for a compay. And part of understanding that is understanding the threats to productivity. And if we, as safety officers, do not look at the big picture and focus only on the details of the safety protocols to keep individual workers safe, we will lose sight of some of the broader issues that can adversely impact our company’s productivity and profit success in the long run.

For example, are you consciously aware of the financial risks to a company that stem from work-related injuries and illnesses? Are you aware of the company’s reliance on temporary workers? Do you know how much job-related stress there is, and the impact that has on worker health? These broad-based but important questions are asked and answered in an infographic  put out by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control.

The infographic takes a look at five major challenges to businesses, regardless of industry vertical, and looks at how those challenges impact a business’s overall financial health. It also explores some suggested steps that businesses can take to mitigate these various risks. If you are becoming more safety-conscious in your workplace, or if you are a startup looking to be safe from the get-go, looking at your business from this 30,000-foot view in regards to safety can be a valuable first step.

 

 

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Safety Briefs: Locomotives, Carbon Dioxide, and Eyes

July 8th, 2016

Boxers or briefs? When it comes to safety, I choose briefs.

We have some things to cover, so this occasional installment of Safety Briefs will not have a long introduction, other than to say that there is an interesting mixed bag of information here – something about improving locomotive safety on railroad tracks, a study regarding digital eye strain, and the management of risks involving carbon dioxide gases.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Bob Adams via a Creative Commons license'

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Bob Adams via a Creative Commons license’

Don’t Miss the Train!

Our first safety brief takes us to the American frontier days – workin’ on the railroad, all the live long day.

In response to a 2014 head-on collision between two freight trains in Arkansas, the Federal Railroad Administration – an office inside the U.S. Department of Transportation – has put out an advisory for locomotive safety that referred to what is called a safety alerter, which is an alarm that goes off in the cab of the locomotive whenever an engineer does not have interaction with the locomitive within a period of time. This alerter is meant to keep the engineer engaged with the process of driving the train.

The advisory recommends that all railroad companies ensure that their locomotives have an alerter system installed or modified in such a way that the alerter timing cycle resets automatically without any direction action from the engineer.

Don’t Be So Gaseous!

Carbon dioxide is the latest problem in air quality concerns (replacing carbon monoxide, which was the prevalent thing in the aerosol days of the 1990s), both in the overall environment and in workplaces.  A firm called Onset recently put out a white paper addressing the importance of air quality in indoor facilities, especially in terms of filtration of carbon dioxide gases. In the paper, Onset discusses the research that provides a direct correlation between carbon dioxide levels indoors and the reports of discomfort and loss of productivity by workers.

As carbon dioxide is odorless and colorless as a gas, the paper was geared toward facility managers and construction engineers to be aware of the risks of carbon dioxide and to effectively address the ventilation concerns and needs of the work space, whether it is an entire warehouse or individual office or workroom spaces.

Screening the Eyes

As computer devices have changed in size and beome more portable and thus more available to us over the last decade, an issue of eye strain has become prevalent.

It was always said when we were kids that we shouldn’t sit so close to the television or it woudl hurt our eyes, right? Well, that same old-fashioned principle applies to our desktops, laptops, tablets and even smartphones. While these devicces keep us conencted and engaged in our lives even when on the go, they have had a negative impact on overall vision and eye health.

An annual survey by The Vision Council was released earlier this year, and it showed that increased use of digital devices increases the risk of eye strain and vision trouble among the general population. It was reported in the survey that nearly seven in 10 adults in America use a smartphone, which is an increase of more than 50 percent in just four years. And about three in seven Americans use a tablet computer, which is up about 65 percent over the level of use in 2012.  With that, there are that many more people who are exposed to digital devices and using their eyes to see these screens, and that has raised the risk of a increased number of Americans with vision trouble, inluding eye straing.

Small print and pixelated graphics and images contribute to eye strain, as do blue light coming from the screen, and holding the device at an awkward viewing angle or too far away from the eyes. It is generally recommended that users get away from their devices for a few minutes every hour or two of constant use.

 

 

 

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Uniting the Kingdom Against Construction Deaths

July 5th, 2016

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Matt Brown via a Creative Commons license] Change is virtually inevitable - every day is new. Yet we humans don't take well to changes and we generally get stressed. How can companies manage the stress when change in a workplace occurs?

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Matt Brown via a Creative Commons license]

It is said that the only thing that is constant in life is change.

But change is also said to be the toughest thing to do.

So taking those two statements together, life is tough. But death is tougher, especially when it is something preventable.

 

In the construction industry, advances in safety over the last couple of decades have enhanced worker safety in places where it has been most aggressively implemented. But in some places, change to the status quo has been difficult to come by, and the results have been higher-than-normal incident and death rates in the sector. This seems to be particularly true in the United Kingdom, where more than 5,000 people die each year from construction-related incidents or illnesses (more than 100 each week, or one every 100 minutes).

That number isn’t huge by standards of some countries, but considering the relatively small population of the U.K. compared to all of Europe, or India, or China, or even the U.S., the reality of 5,000 people dying every year is a fairly large percentage of the general population. It is dangerous as an industry in that less than half of construction workers are still employed in the industry when they reach age 60. By that age, they are usually not on a job site, yet the risks were so great that they either quit the industry or died before that key birthday.

To address this concern, the Construction Industry Advisory Committee (ConIAC) Health Risks Working Group and the Institute of Occupational Safety and Health (IOSH) have collaborated on a guide to help the construction industry get educated on the changes in construction safety, and to empower workers to take responsibility for their own safety in order to cut down the number of deaths that occur from construction incidents. The goal of the guide is to educate construction firms and workers about the most common occupational risks, gives specific guidance about managing those risks using best practices, and gives resources to gather more information and help with safety protocols.

Safety should always be a priority on any construction site, no matter where it’s located. Yes, change can be tough, but as the workforce constantly changes, so should we as safety officers and companies change and evolve with the times, technology and techniques.

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Total Worker Health

July 1st, 2016

It is the Holy Grail for safety officers.

OK, besides Target Zero.

Every safety officer is tasked with having a worksite that encourages health, safety and productivity among workers. Every safety officer feels achievement when every single person on the payroll comes to work as expected every single day and works their full shift and is as productive and efficient – and safe!  – as possible. While this might seem unrealistic if not impossible in some ways, when you look at it from a narrower, day-to-day perspective, you can see that it’s certainly possible.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Ron Mader via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Ron Mader via a Creative Commons license]

However, many things in occupational health and safety is siloed and not part of a full contextual picture on a work site, and there might be some opportunities that get missed, and thus some worker health could be compromised even if on paper and in theory you do everything right.

There is a new initiative that looks to break down the silos and barriers and provide better context and a more comprehensive and holistic approach to workplace health and safety, and it’s called Total Worker Health, spearheaded by NIOSH.

Total Worker Health

Total Worker Health, or TWH, is such a big initiative by NIOSH that the organization created an office dedicated to the concept. In an interview, TWH office director L. Casey Chosewood talked about the idea behind TWH as an initiative to encourage companies to use workplace safety and health as an integrated part of a comprehensive business strategy.

Chosewood addressed the growing need to make worker health, not just workplace health, a priority in workplaces and among safety officers. With the way the new economy is nowadays, he said, especially with so many workers working multiple part-time jobs instead of one full-time job, it becomes more imperative for safety officers in companies to make sure that safety and health programs and procedures become portable for the worker to take between jobs and home, since every new place outside of one work site can increase the risk of exposures to various health and safety hazards that a single safety officer can’t control or mitigate.

The challenge is that much of our safety and health  standards are siloed in vary narrow lanes and are often not integrated into the entire context of a worksite, home or other environments, and that can lead to more complex efforts to keep workers safe in every environment. The goal of TWH is to break down the silos and seek a more comprehensive, 30,000-foot view to understand the complexities and conflicts that exist and to bridge research gaps so that these so-called “integrated interventions” will always have a “safety net” under them as workers move through their various environments of work and home.

 

Questions to Ponder

Late last year, the National Institutes of Health (NIH) held a Pathways to Prevention workshop that discussed TWH and the need to develop research that will help the initiative gain traction in the safety community.  What the presenters and panelists in the workshiop determined was that, indeed, much of the safety and health research has been siloed, and there is a greater need in these times for a more comprehensive look at safety for workers and to find better contextual models for developing more realistic procedures, policies and protocols that more adequately fit the new economy.

What came out of the workshop was the determination that several questions needed to be asked and answered as this new field of research – what are called integrated interventions in a contextual environment – starts to take shape over the coming years. The most prominent questions were:

  1. What are the current studies that exist that do assessments of these integrated interventions?
  2. Do we yet know the good and the bad of these interventions?
  3. What are the qualities that go into an effective intervention?
  4. What are the factors that can impact an effective intervention?
  5. Are there evidence gaps, and where are they?

The final report of recommendations that came out of this workshop will be available and published later this year, but there are a host of resources available now – including videocasts, the draft report and an evidence report. There is also information available where you can learn more about TWH and its overarching goals and initiatives.

 

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With Shift Work, Shift Gears Properly for Your Body’s Sake

June 28th, 2016

Life goes in shifts, and often we find ourselves having to shift gears. Why is there shifting in life? Because there are times when we realize that we are not in control of our lives – someone else is calling the shots. We figure this out just as we think we have a plan laid out for ourselves. When that happens, often something gets in the way that makes us shift our plan and adjust.

Shift work is the same way. Many of us currently have shift work, and may othes of us had it at one time or another in our lives. Food service, healthcare and public safety are among the most prevalent industries that have shift work for their employees.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Amanda Kumm via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Amanda Kumm via a Creative Commons license]

And of course, shift work isn’t quite so shifty if you are one of the senior members of the staff. Usually the more seniority you have, the more say you have in working a more consistent schedule that fits into your life best. If you are a newbie, odds are high that you will work whatever shifts on whatever days that you will be needed – which usually includes holidays and key weekends, because the most senior people generally will not want to work those shifts.

Of course, what that means is that the majority of your workforce will be working variable shifts from week to week or day to day, and there has been a growing amount of evidence that varying shift work affects sleep patterns, which leads to workers being tired, more unproductive, with slower brain function and even other health issues such as diabetes or cardiovascular problems.

You see, the body rejuvenates during what is called its circadian rhythms during sleep. When workers are working variable shifts and their sleep patterns are affected so they don’t go to bed or get up at the same time, and they don’t get the same hours of sleep every night – that lack of rejuvenation can adversely affect the body and lead to issues that can impact workers’ overall productivity while on the job.

To help workers with changes in shifts and to b able to offset the impacts with the right amount of sleep, the UCLA Sleep Disorders Center provides us all with some advice about how to get adequate sleep even around variously changing work schedules:

  • If working an evening or overnight shift schedule that is ending, the last several nights you should got to sleep and wake up one to two hours later than usual. If you work 11 p.m.-7 a.m. for example, and you are usually in bed by 8 a.m., stay up until 9 or 10 a.m. and get the normal amount of sleep.
  • On the other hand, before your new schedule starts, make adjustments so that you don’t lack sleep. Allow yourself time to make the adjustments so that the right amount of sleep is your priority, not the numbers of hours you’re awake.
  • When finishing a night shift, wear dark sunglasses or shades to protect your eyes from sunlight or other bright lights.
  • Keep the same sleep schedule every day, even on your days off, during your schedule. This will help your “body clock” line up with the work schedule.

It is generally agreed by many sleep researchers and experts that the fewest disruptions to sleep patterns makes for healthier workers, so teaching and training shift workers about how to adjust to changing schedules can be important in maintaining efficiency and productivity in your workforce. For more, check out this link.

 

 

 

 

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Survey Says: Women’s Health Up in Smoke?

June 24th, 2016

There has been a lot of conversation in recent headlines in the U.S. about women’s health issues and the so-called “War on Women.” And yeah, there is war going on, but it is a war that is on a much different front line that what the headlines tell you.

From a certain perspective, it can be argued that there is a dangerous habit that has actually led many women to declare war on themselves. Now before I get a lot of hate mail, you need to hear me out on this. I’m clarifying my qualifier, the phrase “from a certain perspective.” In this case, the “war on women” is internal and mental, having to do with a dangerous addiction that has been proven harmful to those who engage. And with many women, especially working women, engaging in this addiction, they made a conscious choice in the beginning and have since become imprisoned by their choices.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Fried Dough via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Fried Dough via a Creative Commons license]

Cigarette smoking was a big part of American society and culture until the 1970s and 1980s, when the health effects came to light in various government public-safety announcements (PSAs). Then there were rules that forbade cigarettes being smoked in movies, banning cigarette commercials and advertising  and laws that banned smoking just about anywhere indoors (and even some outdoor spots as well).  Education did help curb the level of smoking in general, but a recent study revealed some disturbing information about working women  and smoking – especially those women who were pregnant or of child-bearing age.

The survey, which interviewed nearly 45 million women and published results in Nicotine & Tobacco Research, found that 17 percent of working women were smokers at the time of the interview, with another 13 percent declaring themselves former smokers. Of the 17 percent that smoke daily, more than half of them had not tried to quit in the last year. Even more surprising, more than three-fourths (76 percent) of the current-smoking group said they smoked every day.

And when it comes to child-bearing, about 3 percent of the women interviewed were pregnant at the time of the interview, with 8 percent of those people saying they were current smokers and about half of those people admitting they smoked every day.

With smoking have long-lasting effects ,even years after a person quits, knowing that in such an extensive survey that three in 10 women are smoking of have smoked in recent years, and that still a percentage of women were doing it while pregnant – thereby putting their child at risk – smoking is clearly still a significant public health problem. Workplaces would be encouraged to implement a program to encourage women to quit smoking, if they have not already done so, and inform and educate workers about the value of the program.

For more about the survey and its results, check out this link.

 

 

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Worker Health: Reap What You Sow, Study Says

June 21st, 2016

Worker health is paramount for many companies. There is little doubt about that. But are companies right for getting into worker health in everyday life, not just with the safety initiatives on the work site?

Why is it anyone’s business what your workers do with themselves outside of work? As long as they are off the clock, they can engage in whatever behaviors they want, right? Our only responsibility is to ensure that workplace environments don’t contribute negatively to workers’ health.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Kullez via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Kullez via a Creative Commons license]

While it is true that we can’t force people to change their general bad or unhealthy habits at home, one recent study showed the value of encouraging better life decisions helps overall health of workers on the worksite. This idea can have a couple of different aspects to it, but the underlying one is that your company can show it cares about each individual as an asset to the company and not just another worker bee.  After all, work is just one part of the everyday life of a worker, and much of what a worker does outside of work can have a large influence on that worker’s health and overall well-being while at work.

The study, published recently in the Journal of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, followed about 2,000 employees of a major company over five years, during which the company presented several employee wellness programs as benefits to their employees. The company’s health and safety record was tracked during these five years, as well as the employee’s overall health and wellness while weight-loss, quit-smoking and on-site fitness initiatives were in place. Over the five-year period of the study – in which theinitiatives were available but not mandatory for all workers – across-the-board benefits were found.

First, overall absenteeism decreased and employee productivity increased. In terms of specifics, company healthcare costs went down by more than 20 percent, obesity rates dropped by almost 5 percent on average per year, smoking rates by nearly 10 percent per year, and overall well-being index scores were nearly 14 percent better.

The bottom line here is, if your company puts forth a proactive investment in wellness for employees, that investment will pay for itself in very short order, when your healthcare costs drop and your productivity increases because your workers are at work. Odd, no?

You can see the full study at this link, if you don’t believe me. But remember, I am just the messenger.

 

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Does Government Care About Its Nomadic Workers?

June 17th, 2016

Depending on how you  think, government is either the greatest thing since sliced bread or it’s the worst threat to human rights and decency. And there is really no middle ground here.

Government can be like the New York Yankees – you either love them or hate them; there is usually no neutrality with them. If you work for the government as an employee, you might have a cerain liking for it because it pays you a salary so you can provide for your family. But while the government pays for your living, does it mean the government really cares about you as a person?

[Image courtesy of Flickr user sebastien lebrigand via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user sebastien lebrigand via a Creative Commons license]

Many government agencies have very mobile (or nomadic) work forces which travel all around the country or the world, and/or have remote locations in which they work outside of their home offices. Workers who travel a lot can find themselves at risk of losing their safety, and if an employer deems those workers as assets, they may have systems in place to keep tabs on the workers and ensure they are and remain safe regardless of the circumstances in which they travel or their destinations.

Based on recent results of a survey of federal government employees, worker safety on the road is at least perceived as not being of high interest or importance to these government agencies. These employees don’t want to be watched all the time, but they do want a hug from their employers when they are traveling safely!

That “hug” is simply a connected and consistent duty-of-care communication system, which many federal employees say is lacking across many parts of government. A recent survey of federal employees by Government Business Council (GBC) and Concur found that more than 80 percent of those surveyed said they experienced interruptions, disruptions and issues  while either traveling for work or working from a remote location. Additionally, less than 20 percent of respondents said that their agency was passing along safety risks or threats, and just one in nine said their agencies provided security for their electronic devices (computers, laptops, smartphones, tablets).

Eighty percent report safety and security issues, and only 20 percent get advance warning, and barely 10 percetn even have secure electronics in their possession. Let that sink in for a minute.

It seems that many federal agencies are still relying on systems that are 15 and 20 years old, such as agency-wide e-mails,one-to-one communication between manager and employee and emergency notification systems (ENS) in regards to safety issues. And it was admitted that only about 40 percent of managers say they have a system that allows them to confirm employee safety within one hour of an emergency situation.

And this feedback seems to be disconnected between more senior-level staffers and the regular rank-and-file workers. Seems that the higher up you are in a government food chain, the more that they feel “cared for” by their agencies – nearly 80 percent of those mid- and-senior level employees surveyed said that their agency was proactive when it came to travel safety, while less than 60 percent of lower-level employees felt the same way.

What to glean from this information is that your own company, no matter how large or complex it is, should have equal care and access to travel safety alerts and communication with all you traveling and remote workers. Every worker is important regardless of pay grade – each one is an asset to your company, and you should treat them all equally when they are out of your office, representing your company.

If you woud like to know the details of the survey and read about some of the suggestions to make safety communicaton more seamless between workers and employers, see the GBC report here.

 

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Learn Something Before … Hey, a Squirrel!

June 14th, 2016

There is little doubt that our attention spans have been found to be … hey, lookie there!

Sorry. Our attention spans have been getting shor … hey! Look at that bright shiny object!

See? The point is, we have to make our points more quickly and efficiently or people will tune us out.

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Arscott via a Creative Commons license]

[Image courtesy of Flickr user Kevin Arscott via a Creative Commons license]

It can be easy to blame our short attention spans on the Internet and how quickly we can get information, photos, videos and other graphics to our eyeballs. If only it were that simple. However, it is fair to say that we have developed quite a need and expectation for stimulation and that because there are so many distractions now, we can very easily move from one idea to another as soon as one idea starts to be boring even for a second.

In that regard, this is why more traditional methods of teaching and learning are going by the wayside, even in an occupational health and safety culture. Health and safety lessons need to be taught regularly, both as new information for new hires and as review and updates for more experienced workers. But even workers are getting shorter and shorter attention .. look! That squirrel again!

Anyway, the challenge for safety officers now is to teach what is needed for workers to stay safe, and do it in a way that fills their attention span yet allows them to retain and use the information. This leads us into the area of what is called “micro learning.”

Micro learning is the concept of teaching a bite-sized concept in a short amount of time (usually a couple minutes). The more you keep the concept within a small block of time (instead of going on for 10 minutes), the more likely your students (or workers, in this case) will be able to retain and remember the concept, and thus the more effective your training will be.

You could still have the one-hour staff meetings that go over safety issues, but the meeting has to be re-structured so it’s not a single lecture or presentation. The broader point you want to make will have to be dissected into smaller pieces that can easily be described in 200 words or fewer. Establishing a building-block approach to your safety instruction should be an effective tool and make your meeting time more efficient and reduce the need for review or re-training sessions in the long run.

But if you have one of these traditional modules put toegether, how do you chop it up and present it in such a way that people will grasp concepts before the next squirrel comes into their sights?

Here are three quick tips to present micro learning to your workers:

  1. Portable. We are a very mobile society, and often our workers aren’t big fans of sitting still in a room for very long. So make your learning modules portable and mobile – where they can be accessed on a mobile device on the worker’s schedule.
  2. Bite size. Break down your module into small two- to three-minute pieces of information or concepts that workers can understand and process more efficiently. This is where you can use photos, graphics or videos to drive up important points.
  3. Engagement. Learning is more effective when it is active rather than passive, so get your workers engaged in your module by presenting it as a game or quiz so the worker participates in the module rather than just sitting there watching it. Engagement helps workers retain information better and more efficiently.

For more information about micro learning and how it can help with safety training for your workers, read this linked article.

 

 

 

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