The answer is really quite simple. The expectations of what can be accomplished with online training are out of alignment with reality. Oh, now that sounds brilliant! Let me explain.
In the past, safety training was most often delivered in an instructor lead format, whereby the information was delivered by an informed person and in an interactive format. Ideally, the instructor designed the course with learning objectives and delivered the content in a fashion that helped the employees learn. During the course, there would be checking questions, and at the end some sort of learning exercise was administered. The instructor was able to validate that learning took place and that the objectives were met. If not, they could provide additional help where needed.
Unfortunately, this isn’t and wasn’t the real world. In most situations safety training does not receive the planning necessary to make sure the course is delivered in a quality fashion. Time is often the overriding issue, though knowledge of the subject may also get in the way. For more than 10 years, and now since the “great recession”, safety professionals and anyone involved with safety training is being asked to do much more with no more time in which to do it. All too often this results in scheduling training, but not really doing any meaningful planning until the last-minute. Then, that planning involves finding the video, making changes to the PowerPoint, and making copies and handout and quizzes. Where is the time to think through discussion points and how to make the training interesting with games or other activities? You guessed it.
So now along comes online training. Wow. You can load the employee names and other information into a learning management system, assign courses and due dates, and then sit back and shift the responsibility for training to those being trained. How cool is that?! In many cases that I’ve witnessed that’s exactly what’s done. The result is very predictable.
Online training fails because you can’t shift the responsibility for learning to the employees. You can, but it isn’t going to work. Oh we can make sure they took the necessary courses that were assigned, when they were to be completed. And we can measure whether they passed the course, but did they learn anything? Were any of the learning objectives achieved? (what learning objectives?) How well was the information retained? And most important, are they following what was taught a week later, or can they react properly in an emergency situation?
Online training can actually increase retention of information and everyone take the same course so there is significant uniformity. From a compliance viewpoint, the retention factor and uniformity features, coupled with the record keeping offered through a learning management system can make the use of online training great. However, if it doesn’t improve safety it’s worthless.
So what can you do to make online training more successful? Think of all the benefits of uniformity and assurance that everyone has taken the training and passed a test. Then, go back to the basics. Provide some discussion points for the supervisors to use in short safety talks. Ask employees to fill out a short description of what they learned. Develop emergency drills that measure how well employees react in an adverse situation. Create a game that you can play one on one to see how people react and how much they learned. Observe how everyone follows the safety procedures and tie it back to the training.
Those who are most successful with the implementation of online training have taken the same approach as those who still use the instructor lead method. They established learning objectives, delivered the main learning content online verses by verbal instruction, figured out the best way to engage the employees and help with learning, and then doubled back to see if the training made any difference. I think that if you follow these simple guidelines your online training will succeed and you will find much better safety results.

NOTE: Earlier this year I wrote a President’s Message for ASSE’s Professional Safety Journal. It received a good deal of positive feedback, so as we reach the end of the year and look to 2013 I thought I would share it with you here.

Do you remember Yogi Berra? For baseball fans like myself, we remember him as the great New York Yankee catcher. He was a 15 time All Star, won the American League MVP 3 times, played in 14 World Series and still holds many records some 50 years later. Beyond his baseball career, Yogi is best known for his off-the-wall statements. In researching quotes on leadership I came across one from Yogi. “You’ve got to be very careful if you don’t know where you are going because you might not get there.” As crazy as it may sound, there’s a great deal of wisdom in his words. I’ll come back to this later.

I love January and the winter season. To me it is a time of new beginnings and hope. Excitement is in the air with the start of a new year. There are feelings of optimism and opportunity. The old year is over and it’s time to refocus, recommit and put plans into action. Many of us make New Year resolutions, often with very good intentions of keeping them. Unfortunately, too many of us bite off more than we can chew and our resolutions often die a slow death. This year I am committing to becoming a better leader. In so doing, I’ve been reading and learning more about leaders.

Do you think of yourself as a leader? In studying about leadership, I found that most of us don’t see ourselves as the leader, but do have hope for our future and want to improve our abilities. This hope translates into optimism. Two thing great leaders have in common is they didn’t start out to lead anything and they exude optimism.

Some people believe that leaders are born that way and you can’t teach someone to be a leader. Either you have the ability or you don’t. I disagree. Granted some people have stronger personalities, greater confidence, or are at the right place at the right time to take on leadership roles. However, through my years of involvement with ASSE and in business most of the best leaders I’ve observed were just like you and me. We don’t start out to be in charge, but over time as we take on responsibility, get things done, help others and as trust builds we gain the knowledge and skills to lead. Others value our assistance and ask “which way next”.

According to the research of author John Maxwell and his books, there are “21 Irrefutable Laws of Leadership” and “21 Indispensible Qualities of Leaders.” Above all, a leader must be able to influence others. Leaders need followers, so if you lack the ability to influence others you have no one to lead. He points out there are plenty of misconceptions and myths about leaders and leadership. In discussing the five common ones; the Management Myth, Entrepreneur Myth, Knowledge Myth, Pioneer Myth and the Position Myth, Maxwell points out that when all is said and done true leadership is influence. Contrary to what we see in business, leadership is not about position, but about the influence on others and their desire to move forward together and with you. Are you optimistic and hopeful about the future? Do you have the ability to create a vision, obtain followers and influence others to follow?

Though he probably never saw himself that way, my father was a leader. A high school teacher and football coach, he not only coached championship teams and is in the Wisconsin Coaches Hall of Fame, but worked to develop boys and girls into men and women. He did this through teaching the importance of strong character, hard work, responsibility, integrity and selflessness. He taught me that “a leader is the one who helps the most”. He was right!

So was Yogi Berra in the earlier quote. Leaders must have a vision and the ability to communicate and share it with others. Great leaders are optimistic and engender positive emotions among followers so they want to join together for a greater good. Thus the famous quote from Margaret Mead, “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, concerned citizens can change the world. Indeed it is the only thing that ever has.”

Other essential qualities for lasting leadership are respect, attitude, and the ability to engender positive emotion. Earned over time, respect involves putting the good of the people and organization ahead of any personal agenda. Attitude goes hand-in-hand with optimism. People who see life as a series of great opportunities and exciting challenges don’t want to be around or hear others who talk about how bad things are all the time. Lastly, you can’t move people to action unless you can move them with emotion.

Recently, I heard ASSE Past President Eddie Greer speak on leadership. “Leadership is about learning to do what is right, because we can never rise above the limitations of our character. If we are going to serve as leaders then we must have the trust of our followers. Character enables trust to exist and makes being a leader possible.” After all if a person isn’t trustworthy who will follow?

As I bring this blog post to a close, I hope you’ve enjoyed my sharing some thoughts about what I have been learning about leadership. In safety, we all can be more successful if we step forward as leaders. First, by educating and understanding what it takes to be a leader. Second, by putting it into practice. I hope you find my thoughts on leadership useful and a wonderful New Year in 2013.

One of the benefits of frequently traveling to conferences as a speaker is the opportunity to attend other sessions and to learn new or different concepts.

Recently, I learned more about the phenomena called “normalization of deviation”. There is a workplace reality related job or task procedures. Work procedures or methods are established with the installation of new equipment or the initiation of a process or new system. These procedures are usually established before actual work is performed. As work begins,the procedures are followed as written, but over time the workers involved naturally tend to deviate a bit from the original steps or methods of the procedure. This deviation is almost always well intended and done to improve efficiency, often based on previous experience and observed outcomes.

Over time, unless procedural deviations are corrected or redirected by supervisory management they become the new norm or normal way of completing the work. Usually, nothing bad happens. Or on the contrary the job is more efficient and workers are praised and rewarded.

Here’s the trap. Efficiency improves, nothing goes wrong, workers and supervisors are rewarded. Now they think they can go faster, take a few more shortcuts, until a momentary lapse or the wrong tool is used, a reach misses it’s mark and a hand is pulled into the machine. Now everything changes because there’s an incident with injury that must be investigated. We need to find out what happened, who was involved, the extent of the injury, what the person involved was doing, and if they were following work rules and procedures. You know the routine. Somewhere along the line we’ll naturally want to determine responsibility and hold someone accountable. It’s usually the injured person who violated a procedure, even though there may have been a new “normal” procedure, condoned by supervisors, engineers and others who may have oversight.

One of the reasons we react to find responsibility and often place blame is something we all do as humans. It is called “Fundamental Attribution Error”, another human phenomena that leads us to explain our behavior by that of others. When we see others in action we assign attributes to their behavior. In so doing we have the tendency to over estimate the intent and underestimate the external factors that result in or explain behavior. Through this window we see errors or mistakes as failures resulting from poor choice. The resulting thought process is to project oneself as better than the person who committed the error.

The combination of our lack of understanding normal work deviation and our tendency to view error as the result of conscious choice, often leads us to an inappropriate response. Unfortunately, this combination starts the blame cycle, feeds the disciplinary process, creates bad feelings and fosters a poor safety climate and negative culture.

What we must continue to strive for is a work climate that recognizes the good in all individuals, their desire to do well, and their need for recognition or praise. This type of climate fosters teamwork and the attitude of looking out for each other, resulting an improved sense of well-being that is more likely to lead to the achievement of higher goals and levels of performance not previously experienced. A culture like this doesn’t look to place blame, but works to define and learn from mistakes. Then when human error occurs and an incident results, an effort is made to define where the system and its defenses failed. The result is better work system design, leading to improved efficiency, increased productivity, and better safety overall. In the end the organization reaps benefits well beyond safety through a better culture that can learn and work to continuously improve, and the workers can focus on doing their job as a valued part of the organization.