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Mastering effective workplace training |
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Written by by Todd Phillips
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Monday, 03 December 2007 |
 Don Sayers has been in the training game for longer than he’d care to admit. And he’s learned a thing or two along the way about what makes training effective.
Sayers, the principal force behind Don Sayers & Associates, presented a three-hour workshop on effective safety training at the CSSE event in Victoria, B.C.
Wandering effortlessly across the stage, Sayers is clearly comfortable when he’s teaching and training — even training trainers. Get him talking about safety training and adult learning, and you’d better be ready for a far-reaching discussion.
Sayers talked about the benefits of “effective” workplace training, including:
• boosts employee retention;
• enhances skills and knowledge;
• optimizes versatility;
• enables synergy, teams and collaboration.
Canada needs training
Why do we need to boost our training? Because we aren’t doing so well.
Canada’s per capita safety performance ranks 22nd out of 24
economically mature nations, globally, he says, and the United States
is 20 per cent better than we are at workplace safety. Our productivity
is also dropping steadily.
Meanwhile, there are some major shifts to the world of occupational
health and safety that are affecting all practitioners and require them
to keep boosting their skills and be more accountable for their safety
efforts. These shifts include:
• shift from staff to line “ownership” of safety systems;
• shift from blame to systems failure (i.e. risk) causation models;
• shift to integrate quality and environmental elements; and
• shift to leadership from management paradigms.
Staff support services must be seen as adding value to the organization
that directly contribute to organizational goals. Safety is
traditionally seen as a cost, not benefit.
Americans are already spending about twice the amount on training as
Canadians, and it’s coming under increased financial scrutiny. The
reporting relationships for safety personnel are increasingly shifting
to chief financial officers and these are money people, he says, and
training is seldom seen as a strategic investment within an
organization.
He says safety professionals should be prepared to answer questions
such as: Does safety training contribute to corporate goals? How and by
how much? Show me how the training investment pays?
Sayers says effective training provides skills and knowledge so that
employees can be fully-contributing partners with the goals of their
employer.
Sayers then took delegates through things like overcoming the barriers
to effective training, the difference between training and
instructing, the importance of measuring the effectiveness of
training, the need to apply it right away, and for training to closely
resemble an actual working environment.
Sayers advised delegates to be cautious in buying off-the-shelf safety
programs and transplanting them into their organizations. It’s hard to
sustain the changes over time, unless the programs are a fit with the
company’s DNA. “It’s a different DNA,” says Sayers. It’s like a kidney
transplant, he says, hard to pull off and it requires a lifetime of
anti-rejection drugs.
He also said e-learning is playing an increasingly important role.
“There is a lot of suspicion, fear, and angst around e-learning,” says
Sayers. But he says well-designed e-learning results in more measurable learning transfer than face to face learning. “With well designed e-learning,
the learner sets the pace,” says Sayers.
Sayers says 74 per cent of companies in North America already use some
form of e-learning, according to a recent survey. “There’s a lot of
fear and loathing around e-learning and online training. Get over it.
It’s here to stay and growing rapidly,” says Sayers.
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