Accidents—Training Isn’t Always the Solution
People have accidents for all sorts of reasons, not necessarily because they don’t know
how to work safely. Training is useful for developing awareness and skills for productivity
and safe performance. However, before deciding training is the solution for safety
problems, determine whether there is a skill deficiency or another reason for unsafe
performance.
Do the employees have a skill deficiency? To find out if the employees know how to do the
job safely ask “Could the employees do it if their lives depended on it?” If the answer is yes,
then look for the underlying reason for the unsafe performance. Are you inadvertently
rewarding unsafe work practices or punishing safe practices? For example, do you
overlook skipping safety procedures to gain productivity, such as praising the employee with
above average output even though he took the guards off his machinery to speed up the
process? My favorite example is the employee who won an award for climbing down an
industrial compactor to dislodge a jammed item. No one even listened to the co-worker who
wanted to take time to shut down, do lockout-tagout, and follow confined space entry
procedures. There are a lot of ways of rewarding unsafe behavior and punishing safety.
Think about what the employee might gain by the behavior. If you are rewarding unsafe
practices, stop.
Sometimes there is no down side to neglecting safe practices. If there are simply no
consequences to sloppy work habits, arrange consequences. Consistently point out unsafe
practices to employees who are working unsafely. Don’t wait until an accident occurs. On
the other side, praise employees who take proper safety precautions.
There could be obstacles to safe performance. Obstacles can be work conditions, such as
faulty equipment or awkward positioning of equipment. Obstacles can be attitudes or
routines, such as “that’s just the way it’s done here.” Obstacles can be inability to perform
due to illness or drug use (including over-the-counter and prescription medications). As
soon as you become aware that there may be an obstacle to safe performance, identify it
and eliminate it.
If the answer to the question, “Could the employees do it if their lives depended on it?” is
no, then training may be the answer. If this is something new for employees, arrange for
formal training. If the employee used to do the task, but doesn’t do it often enough to hone
skills, arrange regular practice or job checklists/instruction aids. If the problem area
involves a task done often, give extra supervision and feedback, so employees can learn
safe practices through experience.
The following flow chart will help you deal with unsafe performance and assess your
training needs. Please feel free to contact Michael Lary at 360-792-0639 for assistance
with performance and safety matters.
Describe unsafe
performance
Yes
Skill
deficiency?
No
Yes
Arrange formal
training
No
Arrange
practice
New skill?
Punishing safe
practices?
Yes
Remove
punishment
No
Rewarding
unsafe
practices?
Used often?
Yes
Remove
rewards
Yes
No
consequences?
Yes
Arrange
consequences
Arrange
feedback
Yes
Obstacles?
Remove
obstacles
Select best solution(s)
Implement solution(s)
Information and graph adapted from Analyzing Performance Problems by Robert F. Mager and Peter Pipe