Prevent Your Employees from Turning into Safety Training Zombies

What’s Halloween without an HR horror story from G&A Partners? We’ve covered hiring horror stories extensively over the past few years. This year, we’ve decided to break from tradition and take a closer look at the “spookier” side of risk management.

You’re probably wondering what on earth could be spooky about risk management. But if you’ve ever sat through a particularly long and tedious workplace safety training, you’ve seen firsthand how quickly these kinds of presentations can turn even the most attentive employees into slow-moving and open-mouth drooling ZOMBIES!

But it doesn’t have to be that way! Here are a few tips to help you avoid turning your next safety training class into a mindless zombie horde:

• If possible, watch your presentation as if you’re viewing it for the first time. When you give the same presentation over and over, it’s easy to let it become routine and dry. If you’ve started to get bored giving the presentation, chances are your audience will get bored hearing it, and it only takes one infected person to start a zombie apocalypse. Take the time to read over all of your slides and watch any videos you, pretending you’re just hearing the information for the first time. You may even ask a coworker or supervisor to watch you give the presentation and provide feedback.
• Keep your audience engaged with active participation or discussion. For the most part, zombies are not known for their active lifestyles. Make a concerted effort to keep the employees attending your safety training engaged and interested. Use props, have attendees participate in breakout discussions, or ask for volunteers to get up and participate in role-playing scenarios. Not only are actively engaged employees more likely to retain the information in your presentation, but they’ll also be harder to infect with the zombie strain.
• Vary your presentation style. If you find that you use a lot of slides in your safety trainings, consider adding in a video or two. If you use too many videos, however, they might lose their impact. Focus on finding a happy medium that is both comfortable for you and appropriate to each training topic. You’ll having an easier time increasing employees’ resistance to the zombie plague if you can keep employees’ eyes from glazing over in boredom.

Mindless hordes of zombified employees aren’t the only scary aspect of risk management. Unemployment claims, workplace accidents and OSHA investigations all come with their own blood-curdling tales of compliance lawsuits and costly penalties.

These HR horror stories don’t scare G&A Partners. We partner with our clients to provide a safe and healthy work environment for all employees. Our Safety Specialists work with clients to develop and implement safety policies provide access to a wealth of safety training materials and other trainings. For more information on how G&A Partners can help your business with risk and safety concerns, visit www.gnapartners.com.

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