Training: What Works, What We Usually Do, What Can Be Done?

Most EHS professionals conduct training as part of their role:

• Most want to avoid just lecturing and want to make the session interactive. 
• But most don’t quite know what they hope to achieve and how to achieve it.
• Most are very hopeful and want to engage their learners

When I ask trainers what they do to be interactive, I nearly always hear this:

1. “I ask a lot of questions”
2. “I tell stories or give specific real world examples on the issues and the topic”
3. “We talk about what the requirements are and how they should be implemented”

These and other common approaches are, in reality, based in wishful thinking. If the goal is to engage the learners and, most of all, to improve performance and safety on the job, these are likely a “hail mary pass”. Why is that so?

Learners will see how:

• becoming a better trainer has little to do with perfectly crafted powerpoint slides, nor charm or presentation skills
• the “hard work” of effective training is designing the session around performance-based outcomes, using tools to simulate or demonstrate them
• there is a distinct difference between declarative knowledge and procedural knowledge , and how to balance them
• “listening”, “discussing”, and  “watching” cannot represent engagement of learners,
• Most importantly, learners in the session will experience and use engagement tools during the session.   In order to minimize talking about engagement and engagement tools, they will be used, modeling what training should look and feel like to the learner.