It?s five minutes past the start of your training course and ¾ of the class still hasn?t arrived. Those participants that showed up on time fidget in their seats and look impatiently at their watches. Somebody runs to a phone and fifteen minutes later you finally get started to a class a third of the size it should be. Sound familiar?

Let?s face it, many companies do a poor job of safety training, the participants rarely retain or apply the things they learn, and except for complying with government regulations little is accomplished. Safety training is required to protect workers, so why should we have to fight with people to get them to complete the training?
The most common reasons given for resisting safety training include: the training is boring, the material is common sense or doesn?t pertain to me, and we only do it because we are made to go ? not because we expect to learn anything useful.

Safety training boring? How could anyone say such heresy? Well, the reality is that most people are turned off by someone reading off PowerPoint slides that literally contain a government regulation. And as for the training not containing information that applies to them, I challenge participants to find a safety topic that doesn?t apply to them.

Years ago I worked seasonal help delivering packages for a postal delivery company. I had a one-hour course on lifting and carrying packages. Now, given that I would only be working a maximum of six weeks and would not likely be pursuing this work as a career, it would have been easy enough for me to dismiss the class as pointless compliance. Instead, I was surprised to learn useful skills that I remember and use to this day.
What was the difference between this course and the hundreds of safety courses I?ve been made to endure over the years? Simple: This course was effectively designed, expertly delivered and, believe it or not, you can do the same with your safety courses by following some basic rules.

RULE 1: WRITE GOOD OBJECTIVES
Good course objectives are like a checklist of the topics you want to cover. The more time you spend writing strong objectives, the easier it is to write the rest of your course. When writing course objectives, ask yourself two questions: ?What do I want the participants to be able to ?do? when they leave my training course?? and ?How will I know the participates are able to do the things I presented??

Note that I said ?do? and not ?know?. The best objectives are measurable and observable behaviors, and while it?s pretty easy to measure what someone can and cannot do, it?s darn near impossible to tell what someone knows, unless there?s an accompanying observable behavior.

In broad strokes: when we talk about imparting knowledge we are talking about ?education? and when we talk about teaching a skill we are talking about ?training?. Put another way, you may be in favor of your fifth grader getting sex education, but probably wouldn?t be crazy about him or her getting sex training. Every good instructional objective will have three elements:
1) Identification of the skill expressed using action verbs
2) Criteria for success
3) Measurement parameters

Identification of a skill, using action verbs, may seem fairly obvious. But when you sit down with pen and paper and try to write an objective that clearly identifies the skills you want to impart, it can get difficult, even frustrating. Action verbs denote a person doing something, which is important when you are trying to provide skills training because when you train someone, you really want them to DO something. So when you write an objective, it?s crucial that you use an action verb to describe what you want the participants to be able to do. Table 1 is far from an exhaustive list, but it?s a good place to start.

Establishing a criteria for success also seems easy, but it can be even more difficult that describing the skill. Once you?ve determined what actions the participants will be able to perform, you need to identify how good is ?good enough?. The perfectionists among you will demand 100 percent and that?s laudable, but it also sets up an unrealistic expectation plus the likelihood that you will end up retraining a boat-load of participants who will never pass with 100 percent accuracy.

I like to use the 90-90-90 rule. This rule holds that the course will be judged effective when 90 percent of the participants are able to demonstrate 90 percent of the skills with 90 percent accuracy. And as good as this rule is, it?s a stretch for a lot of courses. But it?s still a nice target, and when we are doing safety training, I really think it allows us to set the bar a little higher than we might ordinarily.

Okay, so now you?ve decided what you want the participants to do, and how well they have to do it, you must establish some way to evaluate how ?good? is ?good enough?, and for that we need clear measurement parameters. Defining measurement parameters can be a lot trickier than it appears at first blush. Let?s say you?re putting together a course in ?Right to Know? and you?ve decided that you want the participants to be able to understand their specific legal rights. It?s impossible to observe a person?s ?understanding?, so you will need to write an objective that identifies behaviors that you can observe, but that also demonstrate an understanding of the content. Using our action verbs you might write something like:

RULE 2: FOLLOW A SIMPLE COURSE DESIGN MODEL
If people think safety training are boring, then they haven?t talked to a lot of Instructional Designers. These clods will bury you in hours of jargon and complex models largely developed by academics for academics, but if you listen closely and are able to stay awake long enough, you just might find that some of the things they are telling you are worthwhile.

I?ve taught many Train-the-Trainer workshops where the participants follow a simplified course development model that seems to work pretty well for subject matter experts who are pressed into doing training. The model I teach in these sessions is simple (?it? refers to a skill you are trying to teach):
1. Introduce it. Adults need to understand why they should learn the skill you are trying to teach, and believe that learning this skill has something meaningful and valuable in it for them. When you introduce a skill quickly and convincingly let the audience know the WIFM (?what?s in it for me??).
2. Define it. When you define the skill, be specific about exactly what the skill is, and ? where appropriate ? is not.
3. Explain it. Once you have defined the skill, you need to explain the context in which the person will use the skill, and provide the participants with criteria so they can judge whether or not they are correctly applying the skill. Far too often skills are defined in such vague terms that the participants what they are expected to learn.
4. Illustrate it. Using examples, visual aids, or other means, illustrate what the skill looks like when being properly applied. Here is where drawing on your experience and telling war-stories can help you to get the point across. You can also share how you came to understand a concept or tricks that you used while learning a skill.
5. Demonstrate it. Demonstrating a skill is crucial, both in building a skill and maintaining your credibility. Demonstrating a skill allows the participant to see how the skill is correctly performed and can ask questions to clarify things that they may not understand.
6. Allow people to practice it. Once people have seen the skill, they are ready to try it themselves. While they practice the skill you should be providing guidance and coaching so that people are able to refine the newly acquired skill in the safety of a supervised situation.
7. Evaluate it. If you wrote a good objective, evaluating the participant?s progress should be very easy, all you need do is to compare the participant?s demonstration of the skill with the criteria for success you established in the objective.

Remember: Not everyone will be successful the first time they try to demonstrate the skill. As a successful safety instructor, you must repeat the demonstration and practice steps until you are satisfied that the individual is able to correctly demonstrate the skill. By following these seven steps for each of your topics you should be able to effectively build the skills that you are supposed to be teaching, of course designing a course around these simple steps is a lot harder to do than it first appears.

Now some of you are probably thinking, ?yeah right, sounds good on paper, but those steps really can?t be applied in a Health and Safety training course. Okay, let?s say you?re teaching a course in ?Right to Know? or ?Hazard Communication? and you?ve written an objective something like this:

For our first step, introducing the topic you might say something like, ?a Material Safety Data Sheet is a document that contains important information about the characteristics and actual or potential hazards of a substance.?

You might describe the reading a by saying ?Material Safety Data Sheets are often referred to simply as an MSDS and they identify the manufacturer of the substance (with name, address, phone, and fax number). MSDS sheets typically include (1) chemical identity, (2) hazardous ingredients, (3) physical and chemical properties, (4) fire and explosion data, (5) reactivity data, (6) health hazards data, (7) exposure limits data, (8) precautions for safe storage and handling, (9) need for protective gear, and (10) spill control, cleanup, and disposal procedures. You must be able to read and interpret an MSDS so you know what measures you will need to take to protect yourself from the hazards associated with working with the substance.?

A nice way to illustrate the importance of being able to read an MSDS is to pull a spray bottle half-filled with iced tea and ask for a volunteer to drink it. When no one volunteers, ask the group why. The most likely responses will center around not knowing what the substance in the spray bottle is, or what potential harm it may do to someone who drinks it.

You can easily demonstrate the skill using an oversized MSDS as a visual aid. I recommend not using an overhead projection, just because I like to vary the media and methods to better hold the attention of the participants. Using the oversized MSDS you can read to MSDS to the class pointing out where each bit of information is located on the visual aid.

Using a second oversized MSDS you can then ask participants to answer questions about the substance that is described on the sheet and evaluate their responses. Once you are satisfied that each participant is able to demonstrate the skills to your satisfaction you have successfully achieved your instructional objective.

RULE 3: KEEP THE LEARNERS ENGAGED
Far too many safety courses focus on content and ignore delivery. Instructors drone on and on, oblivious to a room full of participants who have completely checked out mentally. A good safety course should keep the learners engaged by employing some simple instructional methods.

Estimates of the average attention span of an adult American range between 10-15 minutes. That may seem hard to believe until you think about the way the brain works. Our brains take in information for about 30 seconds and then spend about a minute and a half processing the information. This cycle continues until the brain feels the stress of concentration and moves on to a new subject. The times I use are purely to illustrate the dynamic, and the fact checker for this article should recognize that the veracity of the exact timing has the veracity of a poorly researched Wikipedia article or your average doom and gloom email warning.

Irrespective of the exact timing of this processing, if an instructor throws too much information at an individual too quickly, the brain simply can?t keep up and shuts down. Conversely, if the brain receives information too slowly, the mind tends to wander and seek out other input to process; a phenomenon is commonly called day dreaming.

There are ways with which you can hold people?s attention longer. First, vary your delivery methods. Many safety instructors have one delivery method: lecture. Lecture is very useful and widely used in traditional education and it certainly has a place in safety training, but it shouldn?t be the only method an instructor uses.

Lectures are popular among safety instructors because people tend to model the methods most familiar to them, and since most safety instructors sat through numerous lectures in college, they gravitate to this delivery method. A ten-minute lecture that introduces defines and explains a topic is an excellent way to provide the participants with a lot of information quickly, but then a good instructor should use another delivery method to illustrate the point.

I like to use question-and-answer or a group discussion to illustrate the skills I am trying to teach, but you might also consider a case study, a video, or a simulation exercise to illustrate. I prefer to save case studies and simulation exercises for the demonstration and practice steps of the instructional process.

A case study is typically an in-depth examination of one specific situation that is representative of the circumstances under which the learners will apply the skill. A good case study should have a dilemma that the reader is asked to solve. When you write a case study, be sure you provide enough information so the participants can draw correct conclusions but don?t provide so much information that the solution to the problem is obvious.

Writing a good case study is similar to writing anything worth reading ? you have to keep the reader interested and engaged ? except that case studies differ from written descriptions in that case studies are designed to teach a lesson of some sort. But a well-written case study is only part of what makes the tool valuable. How you facilitate a case study is at least as important as how well the case study is written. While case studies can be used as part of individual or group work, I prefer dividing the class into small groups and having the participants engage in discussion.

When facilitating a case study, have the participants in each group read the case and discuss the questions you?ve either included in your handouts or posted in the room. (You don?t want to just pose the questions unless you want to have to keep repeating the questions to throughout the exercise.) Once each group has discussed the questions and arrived at a consensus, have a group spokesperson share their responses with the entire class. The discussion of the case study in the entire group will allow you to gage the participants? understanding of the points you?d hope to make by using the case study.

When it comes to evaluation, there?s no substitute for a good experiential exercise (or simulation). An experiential exercise/simulation is a controlled environment, where the learner can perform the skills without exposing themselves to real-life dangers that might be associated with performing the skills under the actual conditions that the participants will ultimately be expected to perform the skill.

Years ago, I worked as a security guard in a nuclear power plant. You can imagine how important safety was, and can probably understand how much safety training we had to complete. One course was on the PPE associated with entering a radioactive area. Obviously the instructor couldn?t take us into an actual radioactive area for training. The situation was even more complicated because while there were over 25 participants, there was only two sets of PPE available.

Despite these challenges, the instructor managed to train us in the procedure for putting on the gear and taking it off. The instructor accomplished his objective by using a simple simulation. The instructor took us to an adjacent room where he had used masking tape to mark an area as ?Radioactive?. He instructed us (in pairs) to demonstrate the proper procedure for putting on our imaginary gear, and then for removing the gear.

The procedure for doing so was painfully specific, with each piece of gear needing to be put on in a specific order. If, while removing the gear, we made a mistake, he would say, ?congratulations, you are radioactive? and tell the offending participant to go to the end of the line. I still remember how much fun we had, but more importantly, 20 years later, I still remember how to don and remove a radiation suit! The exercise was more than just engaging, it was meaningful and effective.

RULE 4: SET UP AND DEBRIEF YOUR EXERCISES
?Okay, I?m gonna show a video? is typically training-speak for ?nap time?. Remember the only reason we do anything in a training course is in support of a corresponding objective, so whenever you present a topic you need to set it up and debrief it.

Let?s take that video for example: Why are we showing it? What objective does viewing the video accomplish? Why should I as a participant watch the video? If you don?t have answers to these questions, then you probably shouldn?t be using video.

When you set up an activity begin with the objective you hope to achieve. For example, if you are showing a video about confined space entry, you might introduce the video by saying, ?We?re going to watch a short video on confined space entry. I think this video does a particularly nice job demonstrating the correct procedure for entering a confined space. A little later in the course we will be practicing entering a simulated confined space so you may want to pay particular attention to that portion of the video.?

After the exercise, it is crucial that you debrief. A debrief is a way of deepening the participants? understanding of the point you are making and helps them to retain the skill longer. When you debrief, make sure you focus on the lesson that you want the participant to take away from the activity. A good debrief should encourage participants to interpret the exercise and to analyze what they have learned.

I like to start with an open-ended question like, ?What did you think of the video?? The problem with a question like this is that you are likely to get an emotional response like, ?I didn?t like it? or ?It was stupid?. Or you might get someone who critiques the production values. While these responses may not seem appropriate to our purposes, it allows the participants to get those feelings off their chest so that you can talk about more substantive topics.

I like to follow with another open question like, ?What did you learn from the video?? Unless you ask the first question (what did you think?) you are likely to get answers like ?nothing?. It?s not that people will always react negatively to your activities, but allowing a vent question will relieve the stress of the people that did react badly. If the group seems to have missed the point, you can gently steer the group back toward the concepts you want them to take away from the exercise.

RULE 5: DO TRAINING TO PROVIDE SKILLS, NOT MERELY ACHIEVE COMPLIANCE
A lot of safety training is seen as a necessary evil by the organization and major a pain in the butt by the individual. How can you ever train people who honestly and ardently believe that they aren?t attending your training, they?re being subjected to it?

But we have to do safety training to comply with the law! We don?t have a choice; we must present it and people must attend it. While compliance is certainly an important part of why we do training, it must be secondary to protecting workers. There can never be a trade-off between imparting skills necessary for workers to be safe and complying with a regulation.

Before accepting my current position, I spent many years as head of training for a large, international manufacturer. Because we had locations in Asia, Europe, and throughout North America, we were beset by varied and, sometimes, contradictory compliance requirements. In addition to governments, the executives over our operating units had training courses that they would decide were mandatory for all employees. It was often tough, because I would disagree that the part-time receptionist at a plant in Montreal would need 16 hours of Problem Solving training, and yet, that was the requirement.

I finally realized that compliance was not the anathema of skill building and, in fact, with a little thought, compliance can be your friend. Never tell an adult that the reason they are in your safety training is because the law says they have to be. That may well be an accurate statement, but it sets a tone where the participants are being treated as convicts or children.

Take Hazard Communication training. Haz Com used to be, for me, the symbol of pointless compliance training. I believed that we did it yearly, not because it was necessary, or valuable, but plain and simply because the law said we had to, and if we didn?t we risked a big fine. Can you imagine how effective I was teaching a topic that I was just presenting because I had too? How receptive do you think the adults who were dragged into the class against their will were to the course?

The evaluations of the course accurately derided the training as a waste of time. Having such a fragile psyche, I really took the criticism to heart and decide to do something about it. I sat down and did some soul searching. When I started to focus on the skills I wanted the participants to learn, instead of the compliance box I was going to check, I was able to make some significant and important improvements to the course.

I started by asking why OSHA required the course. I reasoned that the course was probably required because people were getting injured because they inadvertently exposed themselves to hazards, and did so because their employers ? either out of ignorance, maliciousness, or negligence ? never warned them of the dangers.

This realization helped me to retool the course to meet the goal of warning people about dangers in the workplace and informing them of their rights under the law, instead of merely checking the box. Overnight, the participants got more excited, did better on the post-tests, and were more involved in the course. For my part, I enjoyed presenting the course and felt the time I spent was worthwhile.

RULE 6: STAY FOCUSED ON THE ?NEED TO KNOW? AND GET RID OF THE ?NICE TO?
A fair amount of safety training was developed by Subject Matter Experts (SMEs). SMEs often have difficulty separating the ?need to know? from the ?nice to know?. Many of them are convinced that a skill can only be required once an individual fully grasps the scientific principles behind the skills and has a complete understanding of the topic presented.

These courses bog down in technical minutia that does nothing to increase the proficiency with which the participants will apply the skills being taught. I once worked with an engineer to develop a course on the operation and maintenance of a machine that made magnets. The engineer insisted on an 8-hour course that covered every conceivable element in the magnetizing of strontium ferrite. He insisted that the participants learned all the fine points of magnetism, the physical and chemical properties of strontium ferrite, how compounds and alloys are made, and a host of other information that had no direct connection with the operation of the machine.

So much information was shared in this course, that many participants could not perform the four skills associated with operating the magnetizer.

RULE 7: OPEN WITH AN INTRODUCTION AND CLOSE WITH A SUMMARY
Like any good presentation, a good safety course follows the simple structure of (a) tell them what you hope to accomplish and why they should listen to you, (b) tell them, and (c) tell them what you?ve told them. There are five elements of an introduction:
1) Housekeeping
2) WIIFM
3) Establishing Expertise
4) Establishing Expectations
5) Ice Breaker

Housekeeping
Housekeeping is a catch-all phrase for basic information that doesn?t really fit neatly into any other category. It?s important that you model the behaviors that you expect from the participants, so you should always start a safety course with safety information such as emergency evacuation procedures or similar information. When sharing the housekeeping information, don?t take it for granted that people will know where the restrooms are, how long the course is, and if breaks will be provided. Be sure to get the participants to sign the sign-in sheet, and in many workplaces housekeeping may include a pre-evaluation of some sort.

WIIFM
I?ve already mentioned how important it is for adults to understand the ?What?s In It For Me??, but it?s important enough to briefly revisit. To be truly effective, a training course must provide irrefutable value to the participants. The participants are asked to sacrifice their time and attention and they need to know up front what benefits they will derive from this sacrifice. If the participants don?t find the WIIFM particularly compelling, they are likely to leave the session . . . if not physically, then mentally.

Establishing Expertise
Almost as important as the WIIFM is the speaker?s credibility. Subconsciously (if not consciously) the participants in your class are wondering why they should listen to you. Specifically, what makes you such a darned expert? Until you establish your credibility on the topic you are presenting, many in the audience will check out and stop listening. You needn?t go to extremes to demonstrate your expertise, but a short explanation of your background and familiarity with the topic will go a long way to getting people to listen to what you have to say. You should keep your explanation of your background short, but be clear and specific ? as hard to believe as this may seem, not everyone in the world knows what a CSP is or what being one has to do with lock out!

Establishing Expectations
A good introduction will quickly and definitively establish the participants? expectations of the course. The simplest way to establish expectations is to cover the objectives. Many instructors will read the objectives to the participants quickly and without comment; this is a mistake. In addition to being the blueprint for your course design, the course objectives are a important part of establishing expectations, both by what they say and in how they are presented. Instructors who rush through, dance around, or skip over the objectives nonverbally convey that the objectives really aren?t all that important. So instead of seeing the slide with objectives as a necessary evil, take some quality time and explain not only the objective, but why it?s an objective as well.

Icebreaker
I have a love-hate relationship with icebreakers. An icebreaker is intended to relax the participants, help to further establish expectations, and transition from the introduction to the main body of your course. A good icebreaker can prove a point so strongly that the participants will take it with them and retain it for years. A good icebreaker can also provide a shared experience that can become the foundation of the course and a useful reference point.

Poor icebreakers (and man, have I seen plenty of them!) waste time, come off as cutsie and dumb, and turn off the participants. The difference between good and bad icebreakers is in the course design. To design a good icebreaker, take a look at your course goal (which is really the common theme of your objectives) and work backward. What short, attention getting, and impactful activity can you use to drive home the point of your course.

Years ago I learned to juggle and have used juggling as an icebreaker. In fact, truth be told, I?ve probably over used juggling. Why use juggling? Well, first of all, it?s not because I can, nor is because I made an impulse-buy years ago and spent $10 on three bean-bag juggling toucans, although you have to admit those are pretty compelling reasons. No, I like to use juggling because it: is a highly active activity, is a highly visible activity, is entertaining for the participants to watch, builds tension and anticipation, and it?s a metaphor for many of the skills that I brought, from time management to importance of training.

You can use a wide range of activities as icebreakers, but unless you debrief the icebreaker completely and demonstrate a credible point, people will see it as a waste of time, irrespective of how enjoyable it was. Whenever I selected juggling as an icebreaker, I started with a point I wanted to make and found that juggling made that point particularly well. I never started with the idea of juggling and tried to force fit a point or metaphor.

Closing your presentation with a summary is also important. A summary ties the course together and give you with one last chance to drive home those important points. There are four elements to an effective summary:
1) Review
2) Call to Action
3) Conclusion
4) Post Evaluation

Review
A review is a quick overview that reminds the participants what has been covered in the course. A review is useful in establishing parity between the topics and lets the participants know that each topic was equally important. A review also transitions the participants? attention toward the course conclusion. Without an effective review, the course feels truncated and the participants feel as if the instructor ran out of time and didn?t adequately cover the material (even if the participant thoroughly covered each point.)

Call To Action
Throughout the course you?ve been reinforcing the importance of the topics presented and the how they will be used. Now, using a call to action, you need to sum up in a sentence or two (max!) what you want them to do with the skills you have taught them. A call to action could be as simple as, ?I want you to get out there and work safely.?

Conclusion
A conclusion is different from a review, in that the conclusion is a subtle announcement that the course is winding down and that the participants will soon be free to leave. Keep your conclusions short, but while concluding your course, be sure to thank the participants for their time and attention.

Post Evaluation
Most of us work in places where at least some form of course evaluation is required, so be sure you have your participants complete all the necessary forms ? post-tests, course evaluation sheets, and the sign in sheet ? before they bolt out of your classroom like a prison break.

RULE 8: EVALUATE YOUR EFFECTIVENESS AND IMPROVE
Safety is a dynamic topic and, fortunately for us, it is typically revisited yearly. Always evaluate the effectiveness of your course (ideally through formal pre-and post-tests, but if that isn?t an option then use informal, observational evaluations) and the effectiveness of your presentation. Evaluate the content at least once a year to ensure that it is still current and complete.

Most people will probably never look forward to safety training. But by following these eight rules, you can ensure that people won?t dread coming to your course. And who knows? As word gets around that your training courses are focused on skills building, are entertaining and interesting, keep the participants? attention, and provide at least some useful information, you might just find that people show up on time, turn off their cell phones, participate, and make your time together more worthwhile.

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Phil la Duke is the director of performance improvement at OE Learning, Inc., 2125 Butterfield, Suite 300N, Troy, MI 48084, 248-816-4400, www.oe.com.