What Not to Do

January 12 2020
By: Terry L. Mathis

Educators and trainers are beginning to agree that good practice includes using both positive and negative examples of performance. This means good safety training should give workers examples of safe and unsafe performance. However, all too often, safety training is a list of risks not to take and mistakes not to make. Effective training must also provide an example or a model of the desired performance.

We tend to think of safety as "not taking risks" rather than "taking precautions" and that thinking assumes good simply equals less bad. Just as you would not tell an elementary student three ways to misspell a word without also showing the correct spelling, you should not train workers simply to avoid risks but rather to perform work safely. Some training programs already do this. Too many don't!