The Safety Training Ninja

Scott (host): Effective training is a key element in occupational safety and health. Being up to speed on the latest best practices for keeping workers safe is crucial for the continued development of both safety professionals and the workers themselves. But what are the best methods for training? How do you know that the knowledge provided will stay with people once the training is over? Joining me today to talk about that very topic is Regina McMichael. Regina is a certified safety professional and president of The Learning Factory, which offers safety education and training. She has 29 years of experience in providing safety and health education, training, communication, and leadership, and is the author of the new ASSP publication, The Safety Training Ninja, which I must say is one of my favorite book titles of all time, and the subject of today’s podcast. Regina, welcome. Thank you so much for coming on.

Regina McMichael: Thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Scott: So when we talk about training, and safety training specifically, what to your mind are the keys that make someone an effective safety trainer? What makes someone not just a safety trainer, but a safety training ninja?

Regina McMichael: Well, it’s a whole lot of things put together, but certainly one of the most important things is the passion for what you do. To be a great trainer, you’ve got to love to train. You’ve got to want to be a part of that learning process. And that comes naturally for some people, or it’s a learned skill for others. And I think it can be a learned skill. It’s about taking the passion that you already have for safety and then converting that further to learning more about what great training is, how to develop it, how to deliver it, so that you can be the very best trainer out there.

You know, Scott, people talk about training, about all the roles and responsibilities, and just about every single person in the safety profession at one point or another in their career has to be a safety trainer. Some of them are safety trainers every day, or a good percentage of the work that they do. And yet we don’t necessarily give it the time and the energy that we should to become even better at the job. We go and we do extra professional development so we can be smarter about a new OSHA regulation, but we’re not developing our skills as trainers, even though that’s a huge part of the work that we do. And it’s a real part of the work that we do. So that’s one of my goals in my professional career, and certainly the latest: trying to give people those skills in the easiest way possible so that they can get really good at what they’re doing.

Scott: That’s a very good point. Now, for those listeners out there who may be just starting out in safety training, or may be looking for new ways to reach the learners that they’re educating, what are some of the best methods they can utilize to truly engage with the people they’re training, to make sure that that training sticks with them long after the actual training itself is over?

Regina McMichael: Well, obviously, the perfect answer would be to read the book. Or to come to one of the training sessions that I offer through SeminarFest every year. But the real answer, and what I truly do follow in the book, is that there is a systematic approach to developing, through what’s called Instructional Systems Design, ISD. And the classic one, the most known one, is a system called ADDIE, which stands for Analyze, Design, Develop, Implement, and Evaluate.

ADDIE is a systematic approach. Safety people, this should make sense to you. We use systematic approaches all the time, whether it’s in ISO 45001 or in many of the other facets of regulations that we follow. And so linking the development of safety training to the ISD world and to accepted practices should help some folks make sense of it a little bit more. It also would be helpful because it can justify to your managers and bosses why you need to get better.

But the ADDIE process is truly a process, and what it does is it breaks down the component pieces of great training development. We’ve got to figure out who our audience is. We’ve got to figure out what their knowledge gap is. Then we’ve got to figure out the best way to get the information into their head and make it stick, just like you said. Then we’ve got to make sure that the whole experience is awesome and it stays with them afterwards, and what the other components of the work are in order to make it apply and make it relevant after they leave the training class. And then afterwards, how do we evaluate that it was effective and that it is serving the business needs of our employers and the organizations that we work with?

So the ADDIE model is new to almost everyone in the safety training world. Not every single person, but generally it comes as somewhat of a surprise in most situations. And it’s just because no one’s been introduced to it before. I was a safety trainer for a good twenty-some years before I took some professional development in training design. And there I was, sitting in a classroom, and they’re saying all this amazing stuff, and it’s stuff that I do. And I’m like, oh, there’s a name for that. I just thought it was a good idea and it worked, so I kept on doing it. And I find this with a lot of people that I work with: they’re doing a lot of these elements already. They just didn’t know that it was a systematic approach. So now we’re plugging those pieces in, and then getting even stronger on the areas where there are opportunities to build that strength or to learn new elements of ADDIE.

Scott: So this really gives them a framework to build from when they’re carrying out their safety training activities.

Regina McMichael: That is the exact plan. And everything that I try to do is to equate that systematic approach to the safety world, not only to the realities of what it’s like to be a safety professional, but some of the challenges we’ve faced, from getting a training budget to having your boss actually go, wow, yeah, I want you to learn more about this instructional systems design so that our training will be better. Our people will like it more. They’ll want to go to the class. They’ll want to learn. You know, that’s a good investment to make. And that disconnect has prohibited us from moving forward in the industry. And it’s such a phenomenal opportunity for us to build a skill set where we’re touching the workers, we’re touching the stakeholders, we’re touching all the different people that we come in contact with, and the opportunity to do it better so that they learn better and they perform their work better and safer. That’s a pretty cool concept.

Scott: Definitely. Something else you mentioned in the book is developing learning objectives that meet your stakeholders’ needs, and the importance of that. I’m sure every training situation is going to be a little different, even though some may be in similar industries and similar environments. So I wondered if you could speak a little to that, and how the safety trainer can get a good understanding of the expectations prior to conducting the training.

Regina McMichael: Absolutely. So learning objectives are one of those things that I’m a stickler about. If you’ve attended one of my courses, if you read the book, if you’ve had a chance to talk to me, I like to get outside the box and really enjoy some of the fun parts of training. But one of the things that I don’t deviate from is the classic learning objective design and development. And the reason for that is really quite simple. If you can’t write a good learning objective, how on earth are you going to train to one?

Scott: That’s a good point.

Regina McMichael: Right. When I challenge people with that, they’re like, oh, yikes. Okay. I wasn’t seeing that coming. So the idea of the learning objective is that it’s in the second stage of ADDIE, in the design stage. And the learning objective is based on what you’ve determined is the gap in the knowledge or the behavior that you need from the workforce, the employees, the volunteers, whoever you’re working with. What is that gap? What do they know, and what do they need to know? What are they doing, and what do they need to do? And it’s that gap in between that helps you develop your learning objectives.

And it also helps you keep all that extra junk out of your safety training that you don’t need. Because if you focus just on filling that gap, on solving that knowledge or performance gap, then you’re going to go, oh, well, I don’t need to tell them all this extra stuff, because the only thing they’re not doing right is this small thing. So that’s all I need to fix.

So the learning objectives are really your outline. They help you design the program. And it’s very funny, because when I work with people and I’m teaching them how to write learning objectives for the first time, everyone’s like, yeah, yeah, okay. And then we do an activity and they write them for the first time, and a lot of people really struggle, because getting that officially down on paper can be somewhat challenging. You’re like, you know, I want them to be aware of confined space hazards. And I’m like, but what does that mean? So forcing ourselves as the trainers to write great learning objectives, with action verbs that clearly describe the outputs, what the learner will be able to do at the end, because that’s the purpose of the learning objective, to be able to actually get that down on paper. Sometimes you have to kind of struggle through the process, but once you get a couple down on paper, you’ve now got an outline for what your training program looks like. And then you start going through the rest of that ADDIE process, that ADDIE cycle.

It’s really funny, because people are like, yeah, these won’t be hard. And then they’re sitting in their working groups and they’re like, we need some help. And I said, you know, it’s not brain surgery, but the first time you do it, you’re like, oh, darn it, this is a little bit trickier. And it’s just because we haven’t done it before. So it’s certainly not that I don’t think every single safety professional can do it simply. You’ve just got to practice it a couple of times.

And then what’s truly awesome is once you write a good one, and you’re brainstorming about it, and you’re really putting some thought into what the learning objectives are based on that analysis stage of your learner capabilities, what they’re doing, what they need to know, what happens is you start to write those really great learning objectives and you start to visualize what the training program is going to look like. Instead of saying, you know, understand confined spaces, instead you say, identify all confined spaces within the structure that you operate. Suddenly you start to visualize, well, what would that look like? How would someone prove to me that they can identify all the confined spaces, if that’s the first learning objective? And then all of a sudden it’s not a lecture anymore. You’re starting to go, well, they could walk around the shop and show it to me. They could pick it out of a set of pictures, so that they could prove that they knew all those things. And suddenly the training becomes richer, with the content and with the output, because we start to visualize these things during the learning objective process. You can see I’ve got a little passion on the learning objective.

Scott: Most definitely. That’s great.

Regina McMichael: If we can get through that part, we can do anything after that. That’s always the roughest part.

Scott: Sure. A question I was just thinking about, something you mentioned, whether it’s confined spaces or something else: regulations are changing so fast and there are so many things to stay up on. What are some of the best ways the safety trainer can stay up to date and knowledgeable themselves about the materials that they may be offering trainings around?

Regina McMichael: Well, certainly the easy answer is head on over to OSHA’s website and look at all the training requirements. And the great news is those remain relatively static over time. But what’s great is once you’ve knocked those regulatory requirements out, because they exist whether they’re that much fun to train or not, that’s another discussion, but you know, we’ve got to do them, we get through them. Then what you do, during that analysis stage of ADDIE, is you start to step back and you say, okay, I’ve done all my baseline training. I’ve met all my checkboxes. But you know, I still have people who may not be behaving safely all the time, or I might still have injuries or illnesses that are outside the scope of some of the training requirements of any of the government agencies that might regulate you.

And that’s when you go, let me look at my workers’ comp data. Let me look at the suggestion box about safety that we have at our plant. Let me go walk out on the shop floor or on the construction site and talk to people and say, what do I need to do to help you guys? How can I make this better? And so there’s a progression of our professionalism and of our skill sets: we get those things checked off the list that we know we have to do, and then we go, okay, I’ve done it all, but I still have accidents. I still have unsafe behaviors. I still have near misses. And that’s when you go, okay, so what are they doing, and what do they really need to be doing? And that’s that gap analysis again.

And all jokes aside, in the book I actually list bunches and bunches of different ways where you can go, okay, what else do I need to look at? What else can be a clue for me to figure out what I should be training my people on? And the list goes on and on, depending on what you do, what industry you work in, the complexity of the work that you do. And there are tons of ways to get help. A great ninja is going to go, hey, I’ve got to do some stuff on confined space, and I’m going to bring in the company that sells us our monitors, because they’re offering some training and they can augment what I’m doing. And that’ll help mix it up a little bit and make it more interesting. Or, I’ve got to do some fall protection, so I’m going to make those guys that I’m buying my equipment from come and show my people just exactly how to wear it the right way. So there are lots of ways to add on to it, lots of creativity.

The key is to not get trapped into the old thinking. And that’s not to say everybody listening has done this, but I think all of us at one point or another in our career have experienced it. And it’s that eight hour class where an incredibly intelligent and dedicated individual reads every single word on every single slide, and at the end of the day wants to give you a quiz about it. And all you’re thinking to yourself is, I don’t remember anything they said, because it was pure torture. And so the idea of the ninja is that there are other ways we can do stuff to make stuff stick. It can be more interesting. It can actually be fun. People will walk out and say, wow, that’s the best safety training class I’ve ever been to. And that’s where we need to be going as a profession, because that’s when we know that we can actually protect them.

Because otherwise we’re just saying a bunch of stuff and putting a bunch of junk on the screen, and it doesn’t stick. And then later there’s an accident and they’re like, wow, why didn’t the training work? Well, because it was really boring, or it was too long, or it didn’t make sense to them. I mean, there could be a hundred different reasons why it may or may not have stuck. So there are so many things that we can do as training professionals to make ourselves better, so that information does stick, and we can make the workers a part of the process. We can even make them part of the training process.

People will come to me like, oh, you know, Regina, I’ve got this team and I train them all the time, and one of the individuals just really isn’t a very happy person and really kind of brings the class down. And I’m like, well, get that person on your team. Instead of dreading that they’re going to be in the room, make them a part of the solution. Because once they start to help you, they can’t blame you for bad products, because they’re part of the solution now. And they may actually turn out to be your best learner, because maybe what they wanted was a little validation. And we don’t know until we ask.

Scott: Sure. Yeah. So to really make it about not only just providing the information, but really engaging with the learners to, as you said, make sure that knowledge stays with them long after they’ve received the training.

Regina McMichael: Absolutely critical. And one of the things that we have to add to our thought process, and this is a big jump: first get your training skills awesome. And then the next step is, how do we help the supervisors who are managing these workers on a day-to-day basis? How do we help them make sure that the training sticks? What tools do we give them? Do we help them with some checklists? Do we make sure that the supervisor is as well trained as the worker, so that they can evaluate the skills right there on the spot and provide some feedback back to the safety department, to the training department? You know, a lot of times we’re just like, okay, thanks for showing up, here’s some candy, thanks for being here. And then the poor supervisor’s like, I don’t know if they’re doing it right. And so what are we doing to help the rest of the team be successful in the safe behaviors?

Scott: Right. That’s great. As we close out, you touched on this a little bit, but I want to make sure we talk about the ninja tips. You’ve got some tips in the book to help readers become the best safety training ninja they can be. What are those tips that trainers can use to become a safety training ninja, and then a better safety training ninja as they move forward?

Regina McMichael: Oh, there are so many. Basically what I did is I compiled lots of questions that I’ve gotten over the years. One of the tips is about the rule of proximity. People go, Regina, what do you do when there’s a whole bunch of people in the class and there are two people over in the corner and they won’t stop talking? And I talk about the rule of proximity. I generally move around the classroom as I’m teaching anyway. I have a lot of energy, so it’s no surprise if I show up on one side of the room or another. Never teach behind a podium. But I kind of laugh, because if you physically start to move closer to those individuals who are perhaps not engaged, or might be almost too engaged, sometimes folks get kind of excited and they start making jokes, and that can be great, but if you’ve got a tight deadline, you’ve got to achieve it. One of the tips I give is the rule of proximity: if you just physically get closer to those people, you don’t even have to say anything. Just standing near them, they’ll feel your presence. And it’s usually pretty amusing, because the whole class will kind of turn towards the instructor at that moment. And then all of a sudden the two people chatting on the side will look up and they’ll be like, oh, we’re supposed to be quiet right now, aren’t we? You don’t have to say a word. You just smile and go, thanks. And then you go back to it.

So there are lots of tips like that. How do you engage the grouchy learner, the disengaged learner, the individual who is perhaps a little bit behind compared to the other people? We’ve got tons of tips like that in there. I talk a lot about the passion and the energy that the facilitator, the trainer, has to show. If it doesn’t stick, if it doesn’t work, if the training wasn’t good, it ultimately has to come back on us. We can’t blame the learner, because we were the ones in charge of everything. So a lot of the tips are really geared towards some of that kind of stuff. What is a great way to re-engage people? How can I use icebreakers to get folks involved?

One of the ninja tips is, you know, I’m teaching a class and suddenly the whole class just tunes out and everybody’s suddenly looking at their phones. And I’m like, okay, what happened? And somebody looks up and says, oh, we just got word that we’re not going to get bonuses next year. And that’s called learning interference, by the way. And I said, okay, was that expected? And they’re like, kinda. And I said, okay, well then let’s move on. Back to the training. Acknowledge it. And that’s what you’ve got to do. If suddenly everybody’s just gone, take a break. Accept that. People are like, oh, my class is crashing and burning, what do I do? Take a break and ask a trusted individual in the class, hopefully you’ve got one at some point, and ask them, why is this crashing and burning? And maybe they’ll tell you something really surprising, like, we had this training last week, I’m not exactly sure why we’re in this class again. And then you’ll be like, wow, that’s really important info nobody gave me. So there are lots of things like that, of just trying to connect with the learners every way possible, and then using that information in any way you can to make sure that you connect with them and that the learning sticks.

Scott: Okay, great. Anything else you’d like to add or highlight that we didn’t talk about?

Regina McMichael: You know, just that this has been a big passion of mine for several years. Recently I did an eight hour class, and we had some pretty big names in the room, pretty big heavy hitters. And at the moment it just kind of struck me. I’m like, wow, we’re talking about a lot of people that we’re touching in this room. And so I asked the folks in the class, I said, sometime during the break, come up to the whiteboard and just write down how many workers, employees, contractors, volunteers, whatever your constituency base is, whoever it is that you train, write down the number of people you touch through your training.

Scott: That’s a really good idea. I like that.

Regina McMichael: Well, the number literally brought several of us to tears. The 25 people in that room impacted 1.7 million. And then this guy in the room, he goes, that’s not all. Don’t forget the families. And I was like, wow, talk about an opportunity to save some lives. So pretty cool stuff. If we keep in mind that we’re not just touching that one worker today, we could be affecting and impacting their behavior, and what impacts their family, for the rest of their lives. That’s a pretty cool thing that we can do.

Scott: Definitely. Thank you very much again, Regina, for joining me today. If you’d like to purchase a copy of The Safety Training Ninja, it’s available now at the ASSP store. We’ll see you next time.