Safety Training New and Veteran Employees

Jun 23, 2021 | Safety Training

Learn from the Sponge

Ever notice if you run water on a new sponge, most of the liquid just runs off until you push out the excess air from the blank spaces? Likewise, with an older sponge, it’s hard to get the fresh water in because it has become less productive with residual materials from the work it has done for you. Providing safety training and refreshers to our workers can be very similar.

Loading a new sponge to make it productive

New employees often have, little or no understanding of what the company’s safety goals or process are. Or, they may have pre-existing ideas of what safety is, based on previous employment. In either case, to get new safety information in and usable, the trainer should first make room by removing existing expectations (the blank space in the sponge) by explaining that there is a company safety process:

The process is, even if it is similar to other programs, specific to this employer’s needs and goals.
It is a good clean start for everyone.
The information or process is to fill the void of old ideas or blank spaces.
The information will be kept refreshed and useful to keep employees safe and productive.

Always fill the empty sponge before expecting it to work.

Once a space for new information is made, the safety instructor may then present new information to fill and prep the sponge for action. New, empty sponges need more volume to get started. Initial employee training is usually more involved and filled with lots of information. Some of that usable resource will stay in the sponge and some will be lost as the productivity starts. Shortly after initial training, workers should receive key “bullet point” information to reinforce key needed concepts. (Refill the sponge regularly to replace lost resources.)

What to do with a “seasoned” sponge

Veteran employees already have part of their sponge filled with previous training and experience. Even the best of sponges leaks a little of its valued resources due to productive use. Often they become a bit tainted and need to have the unusable materials rinsed off or removed before being refreshed. (No need to remove usable resources that are still in the sponge, just wring out the bad and add what is needed) A clean sponge is a productive sponge, a dirty sponge just makes a bigger mess.

When preparing veteran workers for updated or refreshed information, the instructor needs to “empty the sponge” a bit by addressing safety issues, bad habits, processes, or policies that are not working well or that are outdated. Once the sponge is emptied of any waste, it again has room to be refilled and to perform at the peak of productivity.

Refilling the Sponge

Once the sponges both old and new have been initially filled, they will need to be “topped off” periodically, but not so much as to take away from their intended productive work.

As educators in Safety and Health, refreshers may be most effective at “topping off” the information using passive education tools such as bullet point information that keeps employees in the production, and safety in sight and in mind every day.