♪ [music] ♪ - [Mary] My name is Mary Conquest. I'm your host for "Safety Labs by Slice," the podcast where we explore the human side of safety to support safety professionals. We move past regulations and reportables to talk about the core skills of safety leadership, empathy, influence, trust, rapport, in other words, the soft skills that help you do the hard stuff.
♪ [music] ♪ Hi there. Welcome to "Safety Labs by Slice." Almost every safety professional needs to perform some kind of training at some point in their career. There are about a million different ways to train, purposes for training, and tools to get your messages across.
So how do you know if you're doing the most effective training possible? Dr. Susanne Bahn is co-founder of Tap into Safety, a consultancy that specializes in safety training. And she's here today to talk to me about what she's learned about the art of effective training. Dr. Bahn has published over 50 journal articles in her 10 years of research and has worked as a safety consultant for 15 years.
Her specific expertise focuses on induction deafness, risk blindness, and risk management. Dr. Bahn holds a PhD in business specializing in health and safety management, a Masters in human resource management, a Bachelor of Education, and a Graduate Certificate in Higher Education. Sue joins us today from Perth in Western Australia.
Welcome.
- [Dr. Bahn] Hi, Mary. Oh, it's such a privilege to be on the Slice Podcast. Thank you very much for the opportunity.
- Well, thank you for joining us. I'm excited to talk about training. I'm from a family of teachers and education is kind of a fascinating thing to me. So you've been actively involved in safety for a number of years now. And I'm wondering whether, in that time, you've seen any shifts in how training is viewed or practiced in the safety profession.
Have, you know, methods or approaches changed much since you started your career?
- Oh, absolutely. It's a forever-moving feast. So I've been involved in training for, oh, since I was 20 because I started as a teacher as well and then went into my own business, and then we went into a safety consultancy with my husband, my partner, and then decided to do some higher education and do, you know, master's, PhD, and went along the way of looking at safety and adult learning because I really felt we could do things better than what we were doing because what we were doing back then was, you know, death by PowerPoint.
So just putting someone in a room, that was the latest fancy tech thing was just to put PowerPoint after PowerPoint. And no one knew how to prepare a PowerPoint properly. So there was just hundreds and hundreds of words crammed into one slide. No one could read it and listen to someone at the same time. You know, we were just not that good because what was on there wasn't that...
or they'd put it all on the slide and then they'd just read the slide.
- Yeah.
- So what's the point?
- Just give me a book - And then, you know, they didn't pay any attention to literacy or education really, or how adults learn, which we know, as we've gone through, particularly in the last, I'd say a decade, but maybe before that, we realize adults learn differently. We don't all learn the same.
So some of us, you know, are visual. We'd like to see a visual cue and an explanation. Some of us like to listen, as they are with this podcast, otherwise, we wouldn't have podcasts, would we, really? Others like to read, and are quite happy to read volumes of information. Others like a combination of any of those or all of those. And then when you bring in literacy and perhaps English, I'm using English as not a first language and, you know, they're not native English speakers, well, then you've got a difficulty.
And then the other piece is you rely on a trainer to be, you know, upbeat and delivering the same message consistently all the time. And that just doesn't work because when you are training, you actually....depends on the day and it's always different. Every time, it's different.
So yeah, things have changed. So, what's changed? Well, people have become more interactive. They like gaming. Gaming is helping. They like VR. VR's been going for, you know, 30 years, augmented reality, video learning.
Everyone loves to watch a movie. Micro learning, so small bursts so that you get key points across. So all of this is sort of happened in the last... not VR, VR 30 years ago, but, you know, in the last 10 years, it's really changed, really, really changed.
- I would say even if VR existed, I don't think...was it widely adopted within the last 30 years?
- No. And you know what? It still isn't, Mary, because it's so expensive.
- That's true.
- It's so expensive. So, you know, most organizations can't afford to get a VR 3D model drawn because of the hours it takes. And yeah, it's only for the very wealthy industries and pretty wealthy companies, I think. They could work out how to make it cheaper, but anyway.
- Well, I'm sure they will. They have with everything else. So why did you choose to specialize in training? What aspect of training interests you the most?
- I guess we chose to specialize in training for safety, which is where we started way back probably 12 years ago, when I was still working for the university. We noticed that there was just a plateau in injury at the time. You know, for five years, nothing changed. Same number of injuries, same number of fatalities.
We just weren't getting there. And quite frankly, it's exactly the same now. It still hasn't changed. And we're another 12 years down the track. It's pretty well plateauing the same way. We still got the same problem. So my interest was, you know, how do we get really, really boring, legalistic, text-heavy health and safety... because that's what was happening.
Everyone was bringing in a lot of stuff and no one was going back to the basics of just how do we keep yourself safe and others safe on the worksite, and how do we then deliver training that can get that message across, keep the business compliant, but actually educate the worker... and I hate the word worker, so I often say employee or team or something...
safe while they're doing the work that they've got to do. So that was our interest was, you know, just how do we make this more palatable for the end-user, but at the same time, save time for the business and help the business be compliant? Yeah, so we just sort of fell into that area. This was a gap.
- It sounds like a drive to do better, right?
- Yes. Yes.
- You saw there can be improvement here and you'd like to improve.
- I was sick of seeing more statistics, more people being injured, more people, you know, dying on the workplace because of a lack of knowledge. And I was sick of seeing the rise in mental health well-being incidents, if you like, for whatever we want to call them.
I was just really unhappy with how people were not doing well. So yeah. So that's our altruistic view.
- So some people might say that learning is learning and the tool you use, whether it's a lecture, a handbook, a video, or an online course doesn't really matter. Is there such thing as selecting the right medium for each training situation, or is that overthinking it?
- Yes and no.
- It depends.
- Yes. There's a lot of training that requires theory and then practical demonstration. So, therefore, that's that one size. How you deliver that theory is up to you. I definitely don't believe in PowerPoint at all. I think PowerPoints should be used for presentations, perhaps, yeah, just for presentations, which is really what they were designed for.
Just to give you key heading so that you could talk around them really. I think when you place an employee in front of, you know, 25, 48, or 120 slides, which is what I see all the time and just go through slide after slide and just talk and have so much text on them, I actually feel that's abuse. You're abusing the person because you are asking them to sit through something that they just don't even relate to, or simply don't want to, or can't even fathom what they're supposed to be taking in.
And I also think it's high risk because research tells us after the first seven minutes in a PowerPoint presentation, they're already thinking about the weekend. They've drifted. They've gone. You haven't actually got their attention at all. And so really what's the point?
So you're failing.
- Yeah. So you're not saving lives that way.
- No, no, no. You're failing in your duty of care because they didn't understand or listen or hear or know or want to know. And that's what you're actually supposed to do. Make sure that they're okay. So that's not making sure they're okay. That's just getting through the topic because we have to. You know, pointless waste of time, pointless.
Yeah, so you are saying different mediums for different things. Yes, I believe so. If you're trying to reinforce a safety message, I really think microlearning, short burst of learning, video training is a good way. It gives you an example, shows you, hopefully reinforces a message. If you have to do something that demonstrates compliance and capability and competency, well, then, you know, you've got to do something that's face-to-face, a safety observation.
If you need to give them some real heavy information, that's probably as a book or some notes or so on. If you need to do a presentation and show something, yes, do PowerPoint. Put it on with not too many words on those slides and just give them the key piece. So yes, there's definitely not one-size-fits-all to training.
- I would think that more times than not, people could probably simplify the message.
- Hundred percent.
- Yeah. Just based on, you know, trainings and webinars I've seen. One of your specialty areas is online learning. So this is obviously newer, although not that new anymore. It seems new to me. I grew up without it, but more and more workers have, you know, grown up with it. It offers more interaction than straight video training.
What do you think is unique to online learning and what makes it exciting to you as a professional?
- Look, online learning is a good way to succinctly deliver a message, which is what we said, and to simplify it. It also enables you to show really good examples without actually putting someone at the coalface, right in the middle of it before they go. So that's a good thing.
It's often less expensive, which means organizations can do more of it. And therefore, repeat that same message over and over, which is what we need. We need to hear something seven times before we remember it. So that's another piece. And it also allows the learner to have some building blocks, one step at a time, with online learning, particularly if you use a microlearning methodology.
So that helps. If you can bring some interactivity into it, you know, like we use panoramic scenes in a game and, you know, you find hazards and you make it a bit fun because safety's so boring. So you've got to make it fun. And if you could use some AR in there, that's great because that's gaming, again, people engage. That's the key to training, engagement. If you can use some VR and that works for you, that's good too.
So yeah, online's the way to go. It's also, one really key point on online, it's consistent. Everyone's getting the same. So you're not relying on a trainer. You're not relying on the day. You're not relying on interpretation of what's on that slide. It's clearly there.
- Just as we're talking about this and newer technologies, do you ever see a difference, like a generational difference.,in how people take on newer types of learning, or do you think it's just... I mean, we have been using the internet for quite a while now.
- Yeah. I think the way I was trained, you know, because I'll declare I'm 60, we don't learn the same way or didn't get trained the same way as our younger people now. And I believe that younger people don't have the same tolerance of poor training delivery.
- Yeah. Well, yeah, - Yeah. They're not engaged. They're not listening. They're not interested. You know, I believe, it's probably only my opinion, but they're looking for entertainment as well. So, engage me.
Because, I mean, let's face it, they're watching things like Netflix and Prime and whatever else there is there all the time. They're playing games. You know, they're really engaged in that sort of way. If we don't bring the training to the way that they're used to consuming information and so on, and they're all over YouTube and TikTok and all this stuff, right?
They're always there. You've got to bring the training to them, not expect them to come back the way we did it.
- I think they're primed a little bit, especially, you know, when someone wants to learn a new skill, YouTube and TikTok are, you know, the first stop for many people, including myself.
- Oh, and me. Straightaway. Get the YouTube video.
- There's a lot of good stuff.
- How do you put this thing up?
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yes, exactly. And see, look, that's just straight out video learning, isn't it? That's not bringing a PowerPoint slide up and come and sit in the classroom and listen to this. That's I'm going to show you, visually show you, in a video methodology, and then I'm going to make...and you are going to apply that knowledge because you're going to actually do it. You know, and I'm even going to ask you questions along the way because I want to make sure you understand, if you did this, you get that.
You know, so it's an assessment really, believe it or not, but it's a loose assessment. Yeah.
- And the other thing I like about video is you can pause and you can go back. What did they say? Or let me see that again. And I think people are reluctant to maybe ask that in an in-person training. They don't want to take the whole class back to hear the one thing they missed.
- Well, you can't in a lecture, can you? In a big lecture or, you know, presentation, how do you put your hand up in the middle of it while the presenter's doing what they're doing? Hang on a second, I didn't quite understand that. You have to wait to the end. By the time you get to the end, I don't know about you, I can't remember the question I was going to ask. I've forgotten.
What was it that I was worrying about? I can't remember that because I've gone along with the rest of what you've been telling me. So no, that's flawed. It's not the way to go, particularly when it's high-risk stuff, right?
- Yeah, of course.
- Safety stuff, compliance stuff, you know, leadership supervision stuff. You need to be able to go back. You need to be able to question. You need to be able to apply. You actually need to be able to pause for a second and think about it - With online learning, and you've touched on a few of these things, but there are some ways I'm sure to sort of do it right or to do it wrong. Can you comment on what features to look for that would make an online program effective or ineffective?
- Okay. So I'll start with the ineffective. What we saw when we first went on to online was to simply take our death by PowerPoint slides and put them onto a learning management system. And then at the end, give everybody just an assessment which might have been on a piece of paper because often, the LMS couldn't accommodate question and answer.
Or if it does, it's at the end, there's all these questions, which are not great, often multiple-choice, can't-fail type multiple choice. So the problem with that is, once again, you're just relying on people to read these slides and interpret them. And you might have some audio, but you might not.
So it's just death by PowerPoint in a different delivery. And also with the questions at the end, if they're multiple choice like that, where you can't fail, well, what's the point? There's no point. You can't see what they don't know. If you can't see what they don't know, you can't go back and correct or help to coach afterwards.
So to me, that's wrong. And there's a lot of learning management systems out there that say to safety managers, "Hey, you know, build your own training." And all the safety manager does is just load up the PowerPoint slide straight back in because they're not designers, they're not trainers. They're safety managers. That's their role, right? So they have no idea.
So they fail. So the way that I feel that online learning works is using video, AR/VR, using in-built assessments along the way, incremental little assessment along the way, strip it back to the basics. There's no need to have all these words and all this stuff, give them a practical explanation, an example, show them, which is why YouTube works so well.
And yeah, it doesn't have to take ages. It can be done quickly. Microlearning is definitely a way we can do one thing at a time, reinforce a message often and quickly. Yeah, there's just better ways. Gaming, if you can do it, if you've got the ability to do it. But also, you know, using VR and games, that needs a facilitator, it needs a training room, needs someone to help them actually do that training, expensive, very expensive.
You know, organizations, particularly, you know, smaller, medium, even larger, they just don't have the budget. And therefore, what happens is they do this one burst of fancy training as... oh, sorry, VR training fancy, I call it, because it's expensive, and they do that once a year. But wouldn't it be better to do smaller video often, you know?
Because that's how we teach in school. That's how we teach our children, little steps at a time. We're not any different as adults.
- Actually, that leads right into my next question, which was I wanted you to talk to me a little bit more about microlearning. So, you know, what is it, why is it important, and where does it fit into sort of the larger online learning world?
- Well, so there's different thoughts on microlearning. A lot of people think microlearning is just like 10 seconds, 15-second message on your phone as a text. That's one way. That's kind of like an alert message. Others realize that microlearning could be, you know, like a 10-minute course or a 5-minute course, which has got a video and a little bit of assessment to reinforce. And that's how we use it.
Sometimes, it can be a one-minute, two-minute video with a little assessment. You know, those sorts of things. It works really well because if you drill down into a topic, let's just say manual handling, all right? Everybody knows that manual handling, biggest cause of injury throughout the world hasn't changed. Generally, half of the injuries that workers have are around lifting something they shouldn't have lifted and this poor manual handling, the strain, sprain, you know, so on, overreaching, all the rest of it.
If you were to be able to put a two-minute video in front of someone to show them, if they have to lift something, and we hope they don't because we hope they're going to use a mechanical aid, but they can't always, if they have to lift it, how do you do it without harming yourself? And the first thing is you need to assess how heavy it is.
You know, can I actually lift it in the first place? So things like that, reinforcing the basic, basic stuff. If you can do that in two minutes, five minutes, I think that's far more effective than trying to put someone in a classroom and talk about how many manual handling injuries we've had and what the causes of manual handling are. And do you push it, or do you pull it?
It just goes on and on. Just this is how you do it if you have to. Surely, that's just YouTube again, in a way, isn't it really? And so that's what microlearning is.
- Would that be sort of compatible with the idea of an app or...?
- If you could, yeah, yeah.
- I mean, then that might be a bit expensive for some organizations.
- Yes, indeed.
- But it's a thought.
- So you don't need to do that. You don't need to do that because there's training platforms out there that deliver video training, which can show you all of these pieces. However, there's a lot of training platforms out there that do it badly, or they're just a video. So you might as well just do it off YouTube. And a lot of them already are on YouTube and that's fine, except that... and that's good for the end-user, right?
That part's sorted. However, unless you assess it and you have evidence that they understand and you work out what they don't understand, then as an organization, you're not protecting yourself because you don't have any proof that they have been trained, that they understood the message, and you don't have any evidence to show the gaps where you need to now close off that misunderstanding or the piece they might have missed.
So this is a two-pronged thing. It's all very well showing someone a video, here, jump on there, watch a video. But as an organization, how do I show that I actually have done what I'm supposed to do according to my duty of care? So microlearning is different from video because video is video, but microlearning has assessment and it should have reporting, but many of these platforms don't.
- Yeah, otherwise, I mean the only way to find out if you're not being successful is accidents and that's so indirect. And then the question is, what specifically did they not understand? Yeah.
- No. And also, how often did I need to reinforce that message? Well, we know quite regularly. You can't just do manual handling in January and go, oh, yeah, that's it for the year, you know, for example. And you can't just do...like you might have a near miss, for example. There might be an incident where somebody has done something and almost ended in an injury or fatality, perfect time to run them through a microlearning piece on that particular topic as a toolbox session or a safety talk or everyone just get on your phone for the next 10 minutes and do this course to reinforce blah blah because we got really close today, you know?
- Yeah, that's a good way to harness motivation.
- Yeah. Yeah. And look, it's not a blame game on the worker. It's not saying, you know, you're all useless and you're all going to get hurt. It's just trying to be proactive to say, look, we did actually get close today, or we are worried about it, or we can see our incidents rising, heaven forbid, but hey, we want to make sure you're okay.
And as an organization, that is our responsibility. As a safety manager, that is what we are supposed to be doing fundamentally.
- Okay., so now, we've talked about different media and their kind of pros and cons. What about language? You did mention this earlier, but how important is it to get the right voice, the right tone? What does it look like to do it right or to do it wrong?
- It's very difficult.
- I imagine, yeah.
- Yeah. We spend a lot of time worrying about, you know, which voice is appropriate. We believe, when we can, it's best to have the language as the country's language when we can. So we are rapidly translating our courses into different languages to try and make sure that there's good understanding.
It's hard to do as well, by the way. You can't just, you know, put Google Translate on. Google Translate's great for probably about 90% of the time, but you're talking safety here and you're talking nuanced safety terms. And just as an example, we were trying to translate a slip and trip hazard, for example, right?
And Google decided trip was a vacation or a holiday. So we have a slip and holiday hazard, right? But it's not. Of course, it's not. So it needs native language speakers to make sure you've actually got accuracy when you're translating. So that's something people need to watch.
When you see these safety platforms that say, hey, we've translated into 40 languages, well, what did they do? Did they just use Google Translate? And then you look at the disclaimer at the bottom, we've used AI, you know, it's not 100% accurate. And I'm thinking, whoa, well, I wouldn't use that because I've just exposed myself as a business now because I've just said I've trained you, but I actually haven't trained you because I'm talking about a slip and a holiday.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Yeah. What? They are pointless. And that's just one example, happens all the time. But in terms of voice, I believe that training needs to have audio, I believe it needs to have subtitles, and I believe that it needs to have visuals for language to help. Can you have it in different languages?
It would be good. There's not many platforms that offer it. It's very time-consuming, costly for platform to do it. But I think it's the way forward. Do you deliver it with a male voice or a female voice? See, no matter what you do, you're bringing in bias. So it's really hard.
- Yeah. Yeah. You're not going to reach perfection, but...
- No, no. So, you know, do you use a female voice to talk about well-being training and, you know, mental health? I personally think no because I think that it actually makes it too emotional. I actually think it's better delivered by a male. That's just how we've come to it.
Do you have a male voice delivering safety topics and compliance? It's very hard-hitting and there's no room for anything. I personally prefer a female for that because it's coaching. I don't know. That's probably my bias.
- I would agree. I would say definitely a male voice for mental health topics because typically men are maybe not encouraged to speak about mental health as much and maybe coming from a man, it feels more comfortable.
- Relatable.
- Yeah.
- Yeah. And difficult, Mary. I don't know. Do you have two versions? My goodness, can you imagine safety platforms with two versions? You'd have like 500 courses, 1,000 courses.
- Yeah. Exactly.
- It's insane.
- But you do your best.
- Yes.
- What about like the type of...when I say language, I don't just mean like, you know, English, French, Spanish.
- Oh, no. No. As in the content.
- But the type of the words, the dictionary that you use, yeah.
- The content, yes. I personally or the way we've gone is is we go in conversational tone, we use storytelling because we know that, you know, everyone loves a good story. It doesn't change from childhood right through to adulthood. We don't use legalistic terms. The health and safety professional has to do with legal legislation, regulation, and so on, right? That's their domain.
But as a worker on the shop floor, I don't need that. I don't need to know here, Section 2.1.1 of the code says A, B, C. You know, workers need to do [vocalization]. No. All I need to know is this is my problem. This is what I've got to do to avoid that problem. Can I solve that myself?
Do I need help? Do I use this? Do I whatever? It needs to be in my language. It needs to be in my level of language.
- And I would think priority too if you think about like if someone's teaching me to put the blade guard on something, I'm going to be more motivated by the fact that I may lose a finger if I don't than I am that I'm breaking some laws, some regulation, you know.
- Yeah, I think you need to come from the stance of look, we're trying to keep you safe. We're trying to make sure you can see the risks involved here. What can happen if it goes wrong, without getting too carried away. See, that's the other thing. I see PowerPoint presentations and I see video where they're showing people with fingers sliced off and blood and all the rest of it.
There's a clear research showing that if you show a human being something graphic like that, they actually turn off. It's scary. We don't want to see that. So just showing pictures and images of, you know, blood spurting and broken bones, etc., you've got to be really careful here.
So I think that ,along the lines of, you just sort of say that there is the possibility of a fracture or laceration, etc., but this is how we don't get one. I don't think you need to show bloodied hands with stitches and, you know, it's just off-putting. And research shows that's pointless. You shouldn't do that either.
So yeah.
- You've also studied and written about induction training, which, from my experience, I think we call it onboarding here, but that might also just be sort of more of an office thing. But in any case, particularly in the construction industry is where you looked at it. Are there any lessons to be had that are specific to induction training, or do all the same principles apply regardless of why you're training?
- It's probably both. Induction's your first port of call, first time to train. Now, we call the induction onboarding as well in Australia and around the world. But most companies have to do a safety induction or a safety onboarding. If you're an office or you're in a warehouse, it makes no difference. And that is introducing the company to the person ,to start with.
This is the first time they see who they're working for really, you know? It's an opportunity to talk about your values and expectation of what we want from you, you know, as you're working for us. You might have got a bit of that in the recruitment stage, but that's not the same thing as when you're actually starting work for the company.
It's a good time to talk about your vision, mission, values. You know, what do we stand for? Who are we? Where are we going? And so on. It's a good time to talk about fitness for work. Like, you know, as I said, expectation, but what do we mean by being fit?
What do we mean? You know, you need to come to work like this. And what we are going to set out to achieve as an organization. Now, a lot of that is missed in an induction, in an onboarding. They go straight to, oh, we expect you to come to work, you know, free of drugs and alcohol. And this is the PPE you should wear. Let's go back a little bit and just talk about who we are first.
You know, it wouldn't be a bad thing. So then from there, yes, you do need to talk about what are the key issues working in this warehouse? What do we need you to do? What do we need to look out for? What are the hazards? What are the control measures we expect you to use? That's the safety induction.
You can deliver that really badly. And we see countless examples of mining industry that you'll spend a whole week in onboarding and induction training, which is PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint, PowerPoint. How much do they remember? I think about the first seven minutes,. Pointless, you know, pointless. So really and costly, very costly.
So why can't we do that quicker? Why can't we just show, look, these are the issues, this is what you need to do. Just short and sharp, but then don't just leave it at that, as the only training they receive. Let's do a little bit every month. Another piece on this piece, this is, you know, our 10 golden safety rules, or our 10 areas of high risk.
Every month, do a little microlearning on those. So you've just reinforced your induction over the whole year. And then in a 12 months' time, many people do a refresher. So a refresher induction, but that doesn't mean you go and have them sit there right from the beginning and do the five days again. And they're like, oh my God. And that's what they do.
- Know your audience here. Yeah.
- Yeah. For goodness' sake. So yeah. That's what we are finding anyway. There's better ways to induct people or onboard people.
- Yeah, I would think, especially in a high-risk industry. So you've actually just mentioned some, but what are some of the common mistakes you think that safety professionals make when they're designing or delivering? So there's death by PowerPoint, there's these long courses that are essentially lectures.
- I think I'm going to flip that question, Mary. So what are the things that they do right? Yeah.
- All right. Perfect.
- Yes, because we just mentioned them. The long courses, death by PowerPoint, right out, out, out. LMS training that's got just death by PowerPoint on your learning management system, same thing. Just put it online. Same deal. Just not someone in the classroom. I think classroom training should be very limited actually, depends on what it actually is.
And I really think it more should be instructional, not like that. But the things that they do right is regular toolbox sessions, regular training that they do on, you know, bite-size building on the various pieces they're wanting to train, using video, making it short, using microlearning, using evidence-based training as in observation, watching them.
You know, just in-field visits, just getting out from behind their desk and going to see and talk to the people, asking them, you know, not just looking at the incidents. So that's all proactive stuff. Let's get out there. Coaching is excellent. You know, mentoring is excellent. Buddying up is also excellent, but also could be a problem because you can also train them the wrong way when you've got a buddy.
So making sure the buddy actually knows what they're doing is a good one. Yeah, they teach them the shortcuts, which weren't necessarily safe. But yeah, that's more it because if I'm just doing my day-to-day work and you are saying to me, hey, you know, have you considered A, B, C? This is what you're doing right here. Fantastic.
But what about that? You know, we found that this might be an issue, you've just taught me how to do it safely, right there and then. And that took what? Five minutes?
- Short pieces of information, consistency, and holding, yeah.
- Yes. regular. And regular, yeah, regular. Just building that knowledge and so on. And also allowing them to have a voice to be able to explain how they do it, why they do it, and perhaps we've got it wrong. It's hard. We're not doing that job.
- Are there any other first principles or core ideas that you think are really universal that safety trainers should kind of start with at the beginning of designing a new training program?
- I think one of the safety core principles and global principles is our hierarchy of controls. We know that that's a way of eliminating hazards, isolating, engineering, substituting, using administrative controls, and then PPE. And it can be a combination of all of those.
I think if you have an underpinning methodology of how do I get rid of the problem, if I know if I can't, how do I control that problem? And if I can't, do I have to just rely on PPE? And if I do, what is that? We use that as our underpinning epistemology, and that is a global concept and that's just really all about risk and control and highest control for the risk possible to complete the job because we've got to be able to complete the job because we could all just eliminate every hazard and we don't get anything done.
- Yeah. Exactly.
- We're just not doing that. You know, but that's not going to work, right? So yeah, I just find that that's fairly universal. And if people can understand the hierarchy, what is it, then I think we're halfway there as well. And the problem is they don't even know what it is. The shop floor worker doesn't even know what it is. They don't train it.
- No. And it really is a method to question your assumptions, right? Instead of saying, okay, well, we need better PPE, well, let's step back. Do we really need PPE? Do we have to even do it this way?
- That's exactly right.
- Yeah.
- Could we design it out beforehand and, you know, therefore, eliminate the issue in the first place? And that's all about designing the job...you know, looking at the design before you actually do the job. Yeah. There's lots of different, you know, methodologies and epistemologies around all of that. You know, job design is a critical thing, not just in physical safety, but in psychological safety, job design is massive.
- Tell me a bit about that.
- Okay.
- I know we're going off a little bit on a tangent, but just quickly.
- In Australia and I believe in Canada as well and in a few other countries around the world, they're actually starting to have a look at physical and psychological safety as a psychosocial environment, a safe environment to work in. And they're bringing the two areas in together, which they should do because if you're not present at work, as in present, not thinking because you are busy with an issue that's affecting your mental health or your well-being, if you like, it does lead to opportunity of having an incident because you're distracted.
So psychological safety is, you know, really important. So where were we headed with this, Mary? Sorry, what were we thinking? I've just lost what I was going to say.
- We were talking about first principles and then the hierarchy of controls and stuffing about...
- Oh, yes, applying that hierarchy to psychological safety is...
- Designing.
- ...is what they're trying to do. So they're trying to do job design and use the hierarchy, which is a pretty big step, to eliminate the impact on mental health and well-being. And if not, change the job so that we reduce the risk on mental health and well-being. And if not, you know, use administrative controls or policies to try and negate them as well.
So they're trying to apply the hierarchy of controls to psychological safety. So that's a big mental leap even for most people.
- It is. It is. I've never of heard that, but...
- But job design, you know, work hours, flexibility. COVID's done all this as well. You know, they've had quite a lot of us all working from home and now, there's this big issue of do we have to come back to work at all, or can we work from home? Do we have this opportunity to change the way we do things now? Do we have to go back to that 40 hours in the office? And there's a big push from organizations trying to get us back into the office, but there's an awful push back from workers who do not want to go back.
- Yes, I've noticed.
- Because they're far more comfortable working from home. And then the question is, are they productive? Well, in our case, I find actually they're better, but that's my business. But do others have that, or are people just watching Netflix? I don't know.
- Yeah. Yeah.
- Interesting topic.
- Yeah, so that was a little bit of a tangent. So I'll bring us back now to training. You know, it was a fun rabbit hole. So what would your advice be to, say, a listener who wants to look over their existing training program and evaluate it for some of the things we've talked about today? So rather than, you know, redesign a whole program, are there small tweaks that they can make to improve the training that they have?
- Well, yes. A lot of companies have already got a learning management system that they've, you know, put a lot of money in and they've got quite a lot of courses in there. I would just suggest they mix it up a bit. You know, is it such a bad thing to hyperlink out to another platform, just to give a bit of variety? You know, is it such a bad thing, maybe, to have a training provider develop something for you if you have that actual budget to do, just to give you something else?
And if you don't have that, you know, can you produce your own bit of video, or can you get something off YouTube that's, you know, copyright-free? And there's a lot. Can that go into yours, just as a little bit of interest? Can you use apps to cut a video?
There's plenty of tools on there to be able to cut a video yourself and place a little bit in. Yeah, you just have to mix it up. And I also think you need to do things more regularly. So you need a training needs analysis done to see what you need to do for the year, what you're going to focus on, and you actually need to do it. So yeah, just more regular, but variety.
You can't just have course after course after course that's PowerPoint and they're still doing it. Just PowerPoint and assessment, PowerPoint and assessment. Read this, read that, read this. If you're just relying on reading, I think you're losing quite a few of your people because reading may not be their skill.
- Yeah, and I would think that even if you have a program that you've...maybe even inherited it or you think, okay, this isn't great, I don't have the budget to overhaul everything, maybe you could add in. Okay, well, let's start adding in toolbox talks, or let's start adding in these microlearning experiences. Yeah.
- Yes. Let's start adding in a little bit of observation and just in situ visits. Let's just go and chat to people. You know, that's difficult. You've got to sort of get trust because people don't really like you watching them and talking about what they do. But, you know, once you start doing that regularly, they'll get used to you being there. But once again, that's time, how much time have they got?
How much resources have they got? It's really difficult. I understand their dilemma with what to do to try and make it better.
- Okay. Well, now I have a few questions that I ask all my guests. So the first one I'm going to call the University of Sue.
- Oh, okay.
- Okay. It's not Sue for everyone, just for you. What core human skills are the most important, do you think, to develop in tomorrow's safety professionals? Meaning soft skills, that sort of thing.
- Yeah. Okay. Communication. Absolutely. Learning how to listen, really listen, actively listen, how to communicate in a language, which is what we were talking about before, with the person that you're talking to. So it doesn't mean talking down to them, just being alongside them. That's all, just talking.
I think that communication will open up a whole lot of can of worms of all the things that are happening that you didn't know were happening. And that's nothing to do with training. That's just as a human being. It's just communication. Yeah, yeah, talking. Getting out from behind the desk and actually going to talk to people would be good.
- Yeah, yeah. Well, and then you just, you know, as a side effect, you develop trust, right? The trust that you need to do your job.
- Yes, you do. You do. And empathy. That helps not only in physical safety, but psychological safety. They will talk to you about it now. You know, so that is important, really important. And I shouldn't say that, it's being sexist, but particularly with men, you know, they don't talk as much.
So it's good if we can get them to talk. So we know that.
- If you could travel back in time and speak to yourself at the beginning of your career and you could only give young Sue one piece of advice, what do you think it would be?
- Oh, the narky saying, "Just do it."
- That's a good one, yep. Just do it.
- Just do it. Yeah. Just do it. Only because, you know, you doubt yourself all the way through your life. Most people do. Am I doing it right? Am I the right person?
You know, is this the right path? Yeah, it is. Your gut will tell you what you should do. Yeah, just do it. Just do it. So what if you make a mistake, fix it. Yeah, do it.
- Yeah.
- Just do it.
- Sounds good. So let's get practical. I ask at the end for our guests to offer maybe the best resources that they might recommend for listeners who want to learn more on the topic. So could be books, could be podcasts, websites.
- I listen to one out of Australia called "Safety on Tap." That's a podcast. The reason I do is Andrew Barrett just goes around the edges. It's all sorts of different topics. He's very much into learning teams and communication. So it's quite interesting.
It's not the normal way of thinking about safety. Sometimes I listen to it and go, what? But anyway. The other one I find quite interesting out of the U.S. is "Safeopedia." They compete with us with their safety training, but they put out good podcasts as well. Tamara Parris does it. Those two.
In terms of books, look, anything that really takes your fancy. I mean, obviously, as an academic, I've gone through the whole, you know, Hollnagel stuff, the Deming stuff, the Drucker stuff, and so on. It just depends on where you're at. You know, you might want to do lean, you might want to do stuff on psychosocial safety. There's things on that.
Just, yeah, it's too hard to name who and what. There's so much. Yeah.
- Just follow your nose and just do it.
- Yeah, exactly.
- Just do it.
- Exactly. Yeah, exactly. Just do it. If there's a gap, then Google it and find what you should do. There's plenty of books on Amazon.
- Yeah, exactly. Okay. So where can our listeners find you on the web?
- Okay. All right. So my company is Tap into Safety, as the lovely Mary said, and just www.tapintosafety.com.au is our website. I have a LinkedIn profile as well, so Dr. Susanne Bahn. I've got a lot of connections around the world. So you might find somebody in my connections that you know, so yeah, that's us.
Yep, our training platform's there. Please have a look. Please have a try. It's certainly different to other training platforms around the world. And yeah, I'd love to hear your feedback.
- Great. Okay. Well, that's all the time we have for today. My thanks to the Safety Labs team, our listeners, and, of course, Dr. Susanne Bahn.
- Thank you very much, Mary. It's been great fun.
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