Back to the classroom
April 1st 2007 The ability to deliver training is considered an important requirement by employers and a core skill in health and safety. Jo Banks, recruitment, consultancy and training consultant at Principal People looks at why many of us might benefit from reassessing our training skills A health and safety professional may be persuasive, assertive and diplomatic. He or she may have an encyclopedic knowledge of employment law and health and safety legislation. But, if presentation style in the training room does not engage the audience or make the message memorable and motivating, their appeal to an employer and their effectiveness in the job is bound to be compromised. The importance of presentation skills in health and safety is clearly dependant on the emphasis placed on training delivery in a particular health and safety role. Most health and safety professionals have to give training at some time, if only a basic induction course for new employees, but for many of us the planning and delivery of training is a significant part of the job. In a survey conducted by Principal People of 102 randomly selected health and safety professionals, 87% delivered training as part of their job. Almost a third had never received any training in teaching skills or classroom presentation, and 60% of the survey sample believed that most health and safety professionals lack the necessary skill to deliver effective training. BAA is one of Principal People's training clients, and the company's Heathrow-based HSE training manager Ian Hanson has also experienced problems in securing good trainers. He says "It is almost accepted that health and safety training is boring and very much the poor relation to other learning and development training. "Having good HSE experience does not mean you will do well in the classroom. You need to be aware of different training media and different learning styles, use all the ways of getting the message across and filling the room with energy by really engaging people in the process. Too many health and safety trainers simply stand in front of a projector and commit death by PowerPoint!" Ian Hanson manages health and safety training for 4500 Heathrow staff and is responsible for the training of all 12,000 BAA staff in environmental issues such as hazardous waste, clearing spills and environmental compliance. He explains "We are making our courses much more interactive; we get people moving about in the training room and use games and other inter-active techniques, and see how we can engage the many different learning styles." IOSH lists trainer training in the learning objectives outlined in the accreditation of university health and safety courses, and the subject is also included in the National Standards in Health and Safety, which are followed by all the mainstream health and safety training organisations. Health and safety professionals who have been trained to post graduate level should therefore have some training in this core skill. Hazel Harvey, IOSH Director of Professional Affairs, comments "'We would say that someone who is required to do training who felt that they needed to increase their professional effectiveness should undertake trainer training as a CPD activity. If they did a specific course in presentation skills it would not need to be IOSH accredited because it is about training and not about health and safety, but this would be recognised as a CPD activity." There are many trainer training and presentations skills courses available, including the City and Guilds Teaching Certificate, which are suitable for health and safety managers. Sharon Cave is one of Principal People's trainers currently providing manual handling and hearing protection training to BAA workers. She has an MSc in ergonomics and is a CMOSH, but also holds a City & Guilds Further Adult Education Teaching Certificate (FAETC) which covered such topics as course preparation and classroom presentation. She says "The course was invaluable to me because it covered the many different learning styles. When you study for a degree all you experience is lectures, and so when you go out to teach the inclination is to lecture and talk at people, because that is the only thing you know. This style can be very ineffective in something like health and safety, where you need to stay active and keep people fully engaged. The City and Guilds helped in things like course planning and timing, and many of the tricks of teaching which would otherwise take years to learn, or may not be learned at all…Health and safety can be such a dry subject, and it has to be presented in a lively and engaging way." More articles from Principal People: | 
