Back story

Clearly, not all safety training is a life and death matter. While ignorance about or failure to follow the rules of safety can certainly be life-threatening, such negligence is more often life-altering. Even so, employees’ attitudes about mandated safety training are usually negative. Since many approach such training negatively predisposed, their attitudes overpower the experience, eroding and obscuring its value. It’s not a new problem or an easy one to solve.

Giving learners a new way to . . . think about a subject earns a fresh chance to teach them something.

Purpose

Maestro’s client, Dannon, was determined to explore new territory and brought us this simple challenge: Make mandatory safety training interesting, engaging and memorable. Clearly, the modules also had to cover all the mandated content and be compliant with regulatory requirements. After reviewing available safety training materials, Maestro reshaped the challenge into an opportunity—for both Dannon and our company.

It became obvious that the frustrating reality facing Dannon also confronts countless other companies. The scenario is re-enacted again and again in firms of every size and type: How do you make safety training interesting enough that people will pay attention, take it seriously and use it as a basis for changing behavior? Clearly, the stakes for not taking it seriously can be dangerously high.

Maestro agreed to partner with Dannon to create a family of safety courses as a joint venture. The courses fulfill Dannon’s immediate needs and also provide packaged modules Maestro can sell to other companies with the same needs.

Action

Maestro believed that shifting perspective offered a way to differentiate the safety training. Changing perspective alters—and often sharpens—one’s point of view. Giving learners a new way to view and think about a subject earns a fresh chance to teach them something. Maestro’s concept for the safety training was to include all the content required by regulatory agencies but to present it through a quality-of-life filter.

This approach presented learners with a premise that was crystal clear and impossible to ignore: “If you don’t want to do this for yourself, do it for those who are important to you—to the loved ones whose security and well being depend on your ability to stay safe.” This perspective transformed on-the-job safety. While it may have been a private pet peeve previously, repositioning the subject made it a very public family priority and the mark of a conscientious breadwinner.

How we will measure success

The client is still setting up the measurement framework, but we would certainly expect to see measurable improvements in areas such as:

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