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Safety training is not an end unto itself. Rather, it is one tool among many in a manager’s toolbox to ensure that the esteem with which safe operations are held in the hearts and minds of the management team are effectively communicated to the workforce.

Note the verb, "communicated." In practice, communication is a complicated thing, but the many moving parts can be divided into two main categories: 1) That which is said; and 2) that which is understood. Unless both sides of that equation equalize, communication does not exist. Noise has been made, and conclusions have been drawn, but there will likely be a chasm of difference between the two.

Let’s start with the new employee orientation. A checklist is not training. When a human resources manager—or whoever doubles as such in your operation—merely runs through a list of personal protective equipment the employee is expected to wear (along with the fact that he’ll be expected to pay for his own), the true safety message resounds loud and clear, and it’s not a good one. Despite the words you use, the message will be heard as safety being only slightly less important than FICA withholding forms that he likely filled out during the same meeting. Your words may say something like “safety is important here,” but the words will be rendered mute by your actions.

Only slightly higher on the effective communication ladder is the practice of many yard owners to plant a new employee in front of a computer terminal to learn safety from a machine. Managers tend to like this approach because it saves time, and because it creates a record that the employee in fact sat in his assigned chair and learned enough to pass a rudimentary test that is more times than not designed to be virtually unfailable. While no doubt fully compliant with the applicable training standards under OSHA, the computer does not answer questions, and it does not convey the message that drives every effective safety program—the one that says you care about sending workers home whole and healthy.

By way of illustration, ask yourself what percentage of production procedures are consigned to machine training as opposed to face-to-face communication? Probably not a lot.

There simply is no replacement for face to face training. When a manager sits down one-on-one, or with a group, and walks an employee through the potential hazards of the workplace, and explains the means to mitigate them, communication happens at many different levels. At the subliminal level—the one that impacts our true understanding of things as they are—the employee understands that this safety stuff is important enough to require the investment of time, the most precious and rare commodity in any business.

From the manager’s point of view—or from the point of view of the one conducting the training—there’s an opportunity to assess the seriousness of the worker’s commitment to what is being discussed, and, most importantly of all, to answer questions the employee might have. If the employee then goes out to his workplace and hears those same priorities echoed by coworkers and supervisors, the communication cycle has been launched.

Safety training is not an event, however; it’s a process. And the communication cycle at the all-important subliminal level is only as strong as the next training opportunity. All too often, a good launch from a new employee orientation is torpedoed by lackluster safety meetings that are poorly prepared or poorly presented. See if this rings a bell:

A beleaguered and distracted yard supervisor slumps into the break room where no one wants to be, for the meeting that no one wants to sit through. "All right everybody, settle down. The boss says we gotta go through this safety stuff, and the sooner we get it over with, the sooner we can get back to business."

It happens all the time; if not with those words, then with words that come close.

As an alternative, imagine the same meeting held in the executive conference room. The owner of the company enters, greets everyone, asks a few questions about the workers’ families. After the coffee cups are filled, the big boss says, "We’re here today to talk about the single most important commodity on this facility: you. I know this can be a crazy place, and I know that everyone works very hard, but before we start into the discussion of [insert topic here], I want you to know that my most important priority is to send every one of you home whole and healthy after every shift. I don’t want anyone ever to do anything that might jeopardize their safety."

Big difference, huh?