Moving from Operations into Safety or Training
Over the past 50-plus years in production settings of all types, training has been largely made up of new employees spending either specified or unspecified periods of time with more experienced employees. At the end of that period, the experienced employee was responsible for pronouncing the new employee “trained.”
Sometimes, these practices produce an effective safety or training professional. It has been our experience in over more than 20 years of observing and discussing moves from operations to safety or training with several hundred organizations in a number of production industries, including electric utilities, that the move is not automatically successful. Furthermore, it is far less than automatic for some of the individuals that for years have been assumed to be perfect fits for these positions.
It should also be noted that safety and training are not the same. Each is a discipline of its own. However, it is common for the two areas to be run together, especially in small- to medium-sized organizations (with 500 or fewer employees), where several individuals may wear both hats.
Common Erroneous Assumptions
The most common erroneous assumption regarding moving employees into safety or training positions is that an individual who is the “best” or “fastest” or who has the “longest time in service” will automatically be a good candidate for a position. Another is that a person who is outgoing will automatically be effective in a safety or training role.
Conversely, it is also erroneous to assume that an individual who tends to be somewhat less outgoing cannot succeed in these posts. While it is helpful for an individual to be outgoing, especially if he or she is going to facilitate training sessions, safety meetings, etc., it is also important in these posts be an effective listener.
Yet another erroneous assumption is that an individual who is older will be more effective. In reality, age – which in some cases equates to experience – may be helpful, but its full impact depends more upon the individual than anything else.
One more erroneous assumption is that an individual who has been injured at work will automatically use his or her experience to train others to work safely. It is possible that such an individual will simply use the move as an opportunity to talk about the way he or she was injured, or how dangerous jobs produce results and he or she was just “unlucky.”
A final erroneous assumption is the one that suggests that a retired worker will be a perfect candidate to train others. While some retirees make excellent trainers or safety professionals, excellence typically has less to do with experience than it does with a commitment to job effectiveness and other attributes. For example, what if the retiree spent his or her career resisting safety innovations, or constantly complaining about the need for effective training? Realistically, such attitudes will likely reappear and keep the individual from being effective.
Surprises Await
For individuals who are considered a “can’t miss” safety or training professional, there are often a number of surprises, including:
•The change in relationship between the individual and former co-workers.
•The rulemaking process, the revision and implementation of effective procedures in an organization, and the decisions, which seemed so simple from the cab of a truck, are often more complex than they appeared.
•The challenge of communicating what seems to be very clear in the mind of the individual to employees whose ages, experience, education, motivation and learning styles are as varied as the number of employees involved.
•The move to the corporate staff typically removes an individual from the bargaining unit, and he or she becomes a part of management.
Any one of these can dramatically alter the way an individual perceives his or her work, especially if the implications of one or several of them had not been considered beforehand.
Characteristics of Effective Safety or Training Professionals
Knowledge, common sense and physical ability are not the same as being well-suited to a job. Effective safety or training professionals tend to share a set of common characteristics, which not all operations jobs require.
Designing training materials, conducting investigations, adapting training materials to different learning styles, carrying out and reporting on work site audits, completing root cause analyses, planning the logistics of training among varied work groups, and the myriad of other responsibilities that are a part of effective safety or training are seldom easier, regularly unpopular and sometimes flatly resisted to the highest levels of an organization.
It is not usual for individuals relatively new to an organization to discover failure to follow policy, learners who are highly regarded operations employees whose greatest joy is attempting to derail training sessions, or incidents which are the result of a disregard for safe work practices, training materials or both. Safety and training professionals must have the characteristics necessary – including the emotional intelligence, courage and assertiveness – to persuade organization managers and leaders, regardless of how initially resistant, to change ineffective, unsafe policies or procedures. Not every “best” field worker possesses these characteristics – nor does he or she need to.
Fulfilling Role
Safety or training (or a hybrid of the two) can be a fulfilling work area for the right individual. Both are critical to the safety and productivity of employees in an organization. However, a mismatched individual – even one with a great deal of technical knowledge, long service in the industry, or both – can struggle mightily.
The key to an effective match is different than it appears. Individuals’ goals, experiences and characteristics, more than just their service time, should be carefully considered before moving an individual from an operations setting to one involving safety or training. Operations experience can be very helpful and the ability to learn and understand the day-to-day responsibilities each employee in operations has is absolutely critical for effectiveness. However, these are much different than having to be the fastest line-worker, or the longest-tenured employee.
As the electric utility industry continues to move further into the 21st century, organizations are beginning to give additional factors consideration before making this important move. Fortunately, in this important industry, there is plenty of work for individuals with a wide array of abilities and varying characteristics and interests.
The challenge is not the availability of work, rather the effective matching of individuals to positions to achieve the highest degree of effectiveness. This matching in some cases will require thinking differently about who is moved into safety or training.
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