Will your Refresher Training Work?
July 14th, 2009 | by Dr. Saraf |
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In the last two years, I have traveled significantly…have an elite status on three airlines and lots of frequent flyer miles. There are quite a few aspects of a trip that are routine and boring. One such thing is the safety announcement or video at the beginning of each flight. Why do they have it?
Now imagine you are on the US Airways flight that had to be crash-landed in the Hudson. Wouldn’t the instructions about emergency landing on water have been useful? I guess there is a reason landing on water is one of the scenarios in the airline safety announcement.
Source:
The reason frequent travelers ignore the flight safety announcement is normalization of deviation… you have seen the message so many times that it begins to lose impact.
I’m therefore very surprised that organizations believe they can achieve effective safety training by having “canned” refresher e-courses.
These refresher courses are equivalent of airline safety instructions!!! Unless refresher courses are made more engaging, they cannot be effective. If a worker is asked to take the same refresher course year after year, I’m afraid he will fall into a “listen-and-ignore” mode.
In follow-up posts, I will discuss ways of increasing learning impacts from training courses. As an example, take a look at a recent safety instruction video from Virgin America that is different from routine safety announcement.
Did you find the video engaging?
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5 Responses to “Will your Refresher Training Work?”
By KK on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
Here is another interesting safety instruction video from air new zealand:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gF8AY_IfTo
By Jim on Jul 15, 2009 | Reply
Dr. Saraf, excellent observation on recurring training efficiency. One of the key deficiencies that I have found regarding refresher training is the ignorance to such simple concepts as Bloom’s Taxonomy and his related research as well as the ‘knowledge lifecycle’. I look forward to your follow up on this topic.
By Linda Tapp on Jul 21, 2009 | Reply
At ASSE’s PDC in San Antonio a few weeks ago I delivered a presentation titled “Freshen Up Your Refresher Training” which is directly related to this post. Refresher training very often is terrible and if it is, no one will pay attention. If you get trainees involved and active from the start, especially those who already think they know everything, training will be much more effective. Activities related to class content are a great way to do this.
By Bob on Aug 5, 2009 | Reply
I am looking to determine if an electrical substation inside a refinery falls under the OSHA Construction PSM standard?
Any help would be appreciated.
Bob
By Cynthia Barnes on Feb 23, 2010 | Reply
Slightly above average due to visual variety. However, the card reminds me of how engaged my adult daughter with Down’s syndrome find the safety card, over and over again. Quick, graphic, and no monotonous voiceovers.
If you really want to reach the ones who “know it all” you have to use an interactive quiz giving immediate feedback on the accuracy of the answers. This might facilitate a belief that the airline need not give the refresher if the passengers knew the info–thus violating the FAA rules.