The learning retention rate for safety training varies between abysmal and outstanding. This wide range means that in many organizations — and for many individuals — there is an excellent opportunity for improvement.
The less that is retained, the higher the risk of injury or death. It’s much better to be at or near the “outstanding” end of the spectrum rather than at the other end. So how do you get there?
Types of retention
With any kind of training, students experience two kinds of retention:
- Immediate retention. Instruction is given. What does the student remember at its conclusion?
- Retention over time. Knowledge degrades over time, so what you remember days or months after training is almost certainly going to be less than what you remember right after training.
If immediate retention is low, then retention over time will also be low. So one key to retention over time is to start with more that you can lose. Suppose in your organization the average loss after six months is 10%.
- If students retain 30% of the training at its conclusion, six months later they will retain 27%.
- If students retain 90% of the training at its conclusion, six months later they will retain 81%.
Boosting immediate retention
Here are some reasons immediate retention can suffer, and what to do for each one:
- Students are disengaged. This could be because the training is boring and/or the value of it has not been properly communicated. Start by emphasizing why the particular training matters. You can use visual aids such as injury photographs, or even have a guest speaker who suffered injury. For example, a Chicago-based electric utility had a lineman who had lost both arms speak on electrical safety, and those in attendance were fully engaged.
- Too much distraction. Have people shut off their phones. Make it clear they need to focus on the training. Reward them for this focus by keeping the training fairly short. Keeping it short also helps them stay focused, because for most people, the “focus muscle” tires out after about 20 minutes.
- It’s treated as an afterthought. Is the training held after a long work day when people are tired with no real preparation? Schedule it at a time and in a place conducive to learning. Prepare for the session as if someone’s life counts on it (because that may very well be the case). Refuse to engage in “death by PowerPoint.”
- The material is poorly arranged. When training is divided topically — perhaps into modules — a student can more easily focus, more easily build on one point to understand another point, and more easily remember information because (in a given session) it’s related.
- Too much detail at once. Break it down into digestible chunks. Focus a given session on one or two major concepts. Use as many sessions as you need rather than rushing to check off the box. Break the more complex topics into multiple sessions and revisit already covered topics (in brief) as you go through the series of sessions. It is better to sip from a glass than try to drink from a fire hose.
- The training is a boring lecture. People learn best when they are interacting with the instructor. Get them involved by asking them questions, giving them problems or challenges to work out, and calling on individuals to ask questions or give comments on what was just said.
- Where applicable, require practical demonstrations. A practical demonstration allows the student to move understanding from the abstract to the real world. In the real world, the student’s other senses will also be brought to bear, and that is yet another way that learning sticks.
A practical demonstration allows the student to move understanding from the abstract to the real world. In the real world, the student’s other senses will also be brought to bear, and that is yet another way that learning sticks.
Reasons for low immediate retention can vary by subject, location, instructor, and individual. Identify the existence of low retention by giving a short quiz and/or asking for a practical demonstration.
Find the reason for low retention by asking students and instructors for their input. Use the input to improve the training. Then rinse and repeat with each subsequent session. Do this process with a teamwork attitude rather than an attitude of blaming someone. The idea is you work together to bring training retention as close to 100% as you can — regardless of who needs to make what adjustment or change.
Boosting retention over time
One obvious way to boost retention over time is to conduct training more frequently. A word incorrectly used for this technique is “retraining,” but retraining means you repeat the training — and it does not connote frequency. Using a combination of both will yield superior results, especially if the retraining is done with the idea you will cover the material but not aim it at the uninitiated.
The way you retrain a previously trained person should differ from how you train a completely new person. The person being retrained already understands the concepts and principles but may have grown a bit fuzzy on the details.
Retraining on lockout/tagout, for example, doesn’t need as much time on concepts such as why lockout/tagout is important or on principles such as “always verify.” It doesn’t need as many examples to illustrate the typical workflow. Retraining might, however, entail new information (such as how to handle an atypical workflow based on something that actually happened in the plant).
Some other ways to boost retention over time:
- Hold to the standards. If people are trained to do things a certain way but in practice see them done to a lower standard, then that is the standard to which they will most likely drop. If you teach that a fall harness must be inspected before each use and people are not doing that, the training will not stick.
- Make people responsible for each other’s safety. This is a common practice in diving, climbing, and other dangerous endeavors. If you are charged with keeping your buddy safe, and it’s part of the way things are done, then you will be mentally rehearsing your safety training on a routine basis.
- Give people authority. It isn’t enough that every worker must have the authority to stop work if something or someone is not safe. They must have that authority if something just doesn’t seem safe. There’s often a reason for those prickly neck hairs or that nagging “I can’t put my finger on it” doubt. When those arise, the worker must have the authority to stop work and the responsibility to methodically address the issue. Maybe it’s nothing. Maybe it’s something. They can’t know until they check it out. As they check it out, that training kicks in and gets reinforced in their memory.
- Do random spot checks. For example, Mike and Jeff are performing a lockout/tagout. So stop Mike and ask a question such as, “Once this breaker is locked out, I will know the circuit is dead, right?” Mike should respond in the negative, and then tell you that you don’t know it’s de-energized until you use a three-step verification process with a meter. If you get any other kind of response, rephrase the question.
- Address near misses. Why do near misses happen? It is not because people properly executed the work in the way they were trained to do it safely and they just had bad luck. It is because they made one or more safety mistakes and escaped injury due to good luck. It’s those mistakes that need to be identified. It’s unlikely a supervisor will witness a mistake as it happens, so how can this valuable information be shared and learned from? Establish a penalty-free safety mistake reporting system. It can be an anonymous system similar to a suggestion box, or whatever people are comfortable with. But get that information to people so they learn from mistakes rather than die from them. Update both initial training and retraining accordingly.
Be specific
While general safety awareness is never a bad idea, it is not sufficient for retaining the specific safety information that workers must use to perform their work. It’s often easier for managers and supervisors to rely on passive means because they never have to confront someone “who wasn’t doing anything wrong, he just forgot.” But when someone forgets, the consequences can be tragic.
Carl might be able to recite “Safety is no accident” due to having read it on the shop entry floor mat several times a day, but that’s not going to help him remember the correct way to do a voltage check versus another method that creates an ionization trail. If Carl’s workmate Julie sees him start to perform the voltage check the wrong way, she must have the authority and responsibility to stop Carl, address the problem, and report the near miss.
