Effective Safety Training Strategies for New Employees

Safety training is essential to keeping people safe. But it takes many training sessions to cover the necessary instruction and then significant on-the-job experience for it to completely sink in. This poses a problem for new hires.

Probation

New employees are typically on a 90-day probation once they start work. This arrangement creates performance pressure that can depress prior safety training, inhibit your new (to them) safety training, and create a bias toward taking shortcuts (versus being “slowed down” by precautions). Ending the use of a probation period isn’t the answer because that would eliminate several key benefits. One of those benefits is the ability to easily fire an employee with a safety-averse attitude.

The solution involves setting the expectations clearly at the outset and reinforcing them regularly throughout the probationary period and beyond. If any employees think their employment is at risk due to not having “high work output,” you’ll see employees sacrificing other important goals to get there. Here are some tips to avoid that:

• Stress that work must be done methodically, correctly, and thoroughly.
• Repeat mantras such as “measure twice, cut once.”
• Keep communicating the message: “We are not a place where there is never enough time to do it right, but always enough time to do it over.”
• Point out that the company expects employees to do their part to protect themselves from work-related hazards. Thus, we find in NFPA 70E, Standard for Safety in the Workplace, such things as “awareness and self-discipline” [Sec. 110.3(D)].
• A supervisor should accompany the new employee to observe a seasoned employee perform a few steps of a task that involves safety practices (such as setting up a ladder or scissor lift). After the seasoned employee performs a given sequence, the supervisor asks the new hire why that approach was safe and what might have been done differently that would be unsafe. This helps condition the new hire into perceiving safety as integral to the job.

People who understand that their continued employment is contingent upon working methodically and safely will be motivated to do so. For that motivation to always be there, supervisors and coworkers should be repeating that message not just verbally but also by example. If the new employee doesn’t quite get it, have a conversation about how working methodically and safely improves work quality and reduces costs, such as those from callbacks, rework, and injury-related work interruptions.

Initial safety training

New employees may not have the experience with which to properly frame, understand, and incorporate the safety training you normally provide. But you can modify the normal safety training so the learning curve isn’t so steep. Here are some ways to do that:
Focus on concepts. Details take time to learn, but a person who understands the concepts doesn’t have to remember so many details. Traditional job training and traditional safety training focus on steps, procedures, and processes. Those are all important and valuable to learn, but learning them to the point of proficiency takes weeks if not months. Spend most of the early training time on teaching the concepts, and the details will tend to fall into place.

Stress the proper order of priorities. Those are: safety first, environment second, work quality third, and work output fourth. Explain the math if there’s any doubt. For example, someone who knocks out 10 projects but gets two callbacks is not nearly as financially beneficial to the company as the person who does nine projects with no callbacks.

Set clear “get help” limits. Communicate concepts, such as: Nobody expects you to lift really heavy things by yourself or without special equipment. Instead of scoring extra points by doing “he-man” lifting, you might be fired. Check your ego at the door. If you need help, ask. This also goes for not understanding something and consequently reaching out for technical advice. Nobody expects anybody to know everything. The only stupid question is the one you didn’t ask.

Craft OJT messaging for safety. When assigning a newbie to assist an experienced employee to perform a PM, instruct the experienced employee to use the OJT this time to teach the four priorities rather than the minutiae of how to do that particular task. Those details will come with time, and there is normally a do-over possibility if the newbie messes up a minor (non-safety) detail. There is never a do-over if anyone rushes through a job in a way that produces an arc blast, a lethal shock, or a fall from 30 feet onto the concrete.

Quiz. Make a point of asking the newbie about concepts already covered in training. What are the four priorities and why? What is it we always have enough time to do? When should you ask for help?

Break it down

A new hire has a lot of new information to absorb. For example, a new maintenance person must learn things like the plant layout, the maintenance shop layout, how to access maintenance resources, the names and functions of production equipment, the names of various operators, the specifics of working your facility’s maintenance procedures, and how to interact with production staff.

Meanwhile, a new hire at an electrical services firm must learn things like the shop layout, how a service van is arranged, what tools and materials will typically be on the van, the names of customer firms and where they are located, the names of customer contacts, the specifics of visiting certain customer sites, and how to interact with customers.

Additionally, all new employees must learn the general reporting structure (including people’s names), the basics of the company policies, the names and personal quirks of their coworkers, and various written and unwritten rules.

Among all of this, you conduct a four-hour safety training session on the new employee’s second day. How much of that do you expect to sink in? A better approach is two-pronged.

The first prong is to conduct a short safety training session for new employees every day. This has long been standard on construction sites, typically via a “safety talk” conducted at the start of each shift. One effect is that it sets a “safety first” tone at the start of the shift. Another effect is that it gives safety information in small, digestible, memorable bites. You get a satisfying drink from the safety coffee mug instead of trying to drink from the safety fire hose.

The second prong is to shorten the recommended retraining intervals. For example, NFPA 70E requires retraining on lockout/tagout every three years [Sec. 110.4(B)(2)(2)]. That is perfectly reasonable for someone who has done a lot of lockout/tagout over the past three years with no known performance issues. Is it reasonable for a new employee whose prior three years of experience you don’t know all that well, and which may have included incorrect lockout/tagout work? And who is also learning all this other new stuff? What if you had a retraining after three weeks? Or what if you had a weekly retraining along this sort of schedule:

• Week one. This is how we identify energy sources.
• Week two. This is how we coordinate with production.
• Week three. This is how we fill out and hang the tag.

And so on, breaking it down into small, digestible, memorable chunks. After which, the new employee goes through the whole retraining at once, but this time with a solid understanding of each component piece. If you have individual electricians conduct the component training sessions, as opposed to doing that in a classroom, it doesn’t take much time (and you get two people retrained at once). Teaching someone else also teaches the teacher.

Key factors

By now, you have picked up on some key factors that help a new employee to more quickly be a safe employee. Let’s quickly review them:

• Set the expectations. If people think sheer output is what you want, that’s what you’ll get. You want work that is done right the first time, and done safely every time.
• Focus on concepts. People who understand the concepts don’t need to memorize nearly as many details.
• Repeat the message. Among other benefits, doing this shows the importance of safety. If you keep talking about it, they’ll know it must really matter.
• Break it down into small, digestible, memorable bites. It’s much easier to digest a little at a time than to drink from the proverbial fire hose.
• Retrain right away. This reinforces new information before it gets forgotten.

Don’t be afraid to modify a new employee’s training based on what you observe or the feedback from the new employee or more seasoned ones. The important thing is that this particular new employee is a safe employee sooner rather than later.