RECOGNITION = MOTIVATION
Safety training courses can have a huge positive motivating effect on the employee. After a decade and thousands of employees and managers that I have trained all over this country, I have learned a couple of lessons, also.
Employees want to have a good and learned experience in these training courses. They want to participate and they want to show their knowledge and experience in the topic. Employees take pride in what they are doing and in what they consider crucial to the task. They don’t always show this pride on the surface but it is still there. They often have no compunction to show managers and peers that they are capable and competent.
As a current training practitioner, however, I understand that many workers these days are hungry for deserved recognition of their workplace achievements. This type of recognition is valuable and without including monetary incentives, or pizza lunches as the symbol of recognizing the employee. The safety course must be completed for compliance reasons and the participants/employees must attend the training session. The cost of the training will be incurred whether the outcome is a favorable training session or one that is not so favorable. Therefore, the conditions are there to capitalize honestly on the achievement of the worker by demonstrating that you have recognized their efforts to complete the course.
Formal or even “semi-formal” employee recognition is a main point I try to make in my train-the-trainer courses because of what I have experienced and witnessed in the past. I would hand out the certificates as an afterthought and the attendees would be very emphatic to inform me when I misspelled their name or hadn’t gotten their name on the roster and, therefore, did not have a certificate created for them when the other attendees received their certificates. In fact, some were openly hurt and distraught by this. In several cases, I have seen participants dial up “grandma” and tell her how they just got “certified” and how happy and proud they were about it. I’m not making this up, folks. One gentleman asked me what he scored on the final test of the course and when I told him he scored very well at 95%, he smiled and asked if he could get a copy of the front cover of the multi-page test. I asked him what he wanted it for and he replied that he wanted to hang it on his refrigerator for his children to see………..not making that one up, either. In a few cases, I even got hugged from attendees after they received their certificate………..totally shocked me according to my staff!
TAKE ADVANTAGE OF A NECESSARY EVENT
These incidents and many more, in fact, demonstrated to me that many companies are shorting themselves when they don’t show any recognition for employees who attend and complete these courses, successfully. Yes, the safety course is normally not graduate level material and much of it is common sense and knowledge obtained as a practitioner on the job. However, even though you may not relate or may not see it yourself, the employee is serious about achievement and takes the recognition as one of the things that keeps him coming to work every day. Frederick Herzberg’s two factor theory of motivation would categorize this certificate ceremony a “motivator” when it comes to motivational theory. According to Herzberg, compensation, benefits, working conditions are the “hygiene factors” but not the motivators. Hygiene factors keep a worker from feeling dissatisfied and generally unhappy with their employment situation but they do not positively motivate the worker to improve or work harder or longer.
The intrinsic values of recognition and a few other factors are what make the worker want to achieve, learn and develop themselves to be more productive and offer more value. Some organizations are diligent in recognizing their employees in this manner. They do so very diligently and specifically and the outcome for them has produced a safety culture of achievement and self-sustaining safety prevention success. Moreover, the pride instilled by this type of culture motivates workers at these companies to not allow an untrained or unauthorized worker to operate or conduct tasks that require completion of the safety course. This is an excellent outcome because many industrial accidents occur each year involving untrained and unauthorized persons (truck drivers, visitors, contractors, temporary workers and office workers) working near and operating potentially dangerous equipment. The insightful companies issue stickers on hard hats or ID tags or wallet cards that indicate the employee’s qualifications including their achievements in safety courses. The employees at these companies have no hesitation for reporting or even stopping an otherwise unqualified worker or person from putting themselves and others in danger. Needless to say, such companies have excellent safety performance records, year over year, which normally coincides with consistent high marks in production and operations, too.
ENJOY THE RECOGNITION EVENT
In summary, if you are looking for something to drive a positive change in your approach and delivery of safety training courses, try planning a short 5 minute ceremony including the department manager or even plant manager or his surrogate, if possible, at the end of the course when distributing the certificates. Have the manager shake each hand and congratulate them. (I’ll bet the manager will get a huge positive “rush” in doing this, too.) Unless you are dealing with robots, I can guarantee, you will start to see a whole new culture appear and one that encourages employee safety while turning attitudes to a positive perception of the safety training session. Lastly, don’t worry about issuing these certifications and the employee taking it somewhere as a qualification to get another job. The wallet cards and wall certificates that we issue, for example, include the name and logo of the employer on the wallet card and certificate and any other employer should understand that your cards have no significance at another place of employment……………in other words, they are not transferable.
Good luck and have fun with this!!!
Dennis Diamond- President, Master Safety Trainer