As seen on screen

In our everyday lives we don’t often go more than five minutes without interacting with someone, or something. Even if we are simply watching TV we often share reactions and take cues from our companions. In terms of health and safety training, the concept of interactivity is not exactly new, but, say Laura Cade and Natalie Daniels-Browne, some technologies can prove more effective than others.

The Nintendo Corporation’s popular Wii games console has bought about a new physical engagement with technology, and now, even the biggest technophobes have to admit they get enjoyment from the interaction. Every week, Apple releases new iPhone applications for things we didn’t know we had the slightest use or desire for — until they appeared.

This insatiable demand for entertaining, enthralling and useful technology is also creeping into more and more aspects of the business world, as webinars, podcasts and video conferencing become a regular part of working life. Even the Cabinet Office has issued advice to civil servants on how to ‘twitter’. But in the training world, the main aids still have not moved on from the flip chart, linear film or PowerPoint. While each has its place, surely there are now more sophisticated, entertaining and original ways to deliver a message?

With the advent of Web 2.0 and increased broadband width, e-learning — accompanied by the invaluable Learning Management System — has been the latest major advance in the training world. The obvious benefit to the safety world is the ability to ensure and monitor compliance, as the technology allows for the recording of data, including the individual trainees’ scores. Not only can companies now prove that their employees have completed a training module, they can go some way to proving that they engaged with the content and understood it. But does what they learn transfer easily to real workplace situations?

The problem is that a series of multiple-choice questions, completed at the end of a training module, only tests the short-term memory, and, of course, one answer chosen at random in every three or four will be correct. Furthermore, if trainees are based in an industrial environment doing manual work, then computer-based, text-heavy, multiple-choice training will not reflect the workplace situation they are dealing with, nor the skills they need to acquire.

Reality show

The most direct representation of real life available to the trainer conveying information is film, which can replicate a situation just as it would be presented in real life. Film allows a level of intricacy and nuance to be presented and examined that simply isn’t available via a text screen, or a cartoon. As in life, there are no categorical right and wrong answers but a much more complex set of factors that come together in such a way as to stimulate debate and discussion. Intelligently-made film can depict characters and behaviours in a way that other media cannot: a yawn from the victim before he heads off to do the work hints to the fact he may not be on the ball; the immediate reactions of witnesses reveal issues about the company’s processes and culture; etc.

Unlike conventional linear film, which has only a single pathway to follow, new technology can emulate real-life investigations — the trainee discovers things when they explore the evidence presented to them by clicking on clues on the screen to reveal more and more information. Such formats rely entirely on the actions of the trainee: if they sit and do nothing, so will the film. Trainees must use their initiative to decide what to look for next. Where is the next clue? Who might have something important to say? Will a closer look at that tell me something new? It is perfectly possible to miss huge chunks of the available information and still form an opinion about the causes of the accident, but it will be a severely limited one. The skill for trainees and trainers alike is in evaluating the action they see and ‘reading’ it successfully.

At a recent usability-testing day for an interactive accident-investigation DVD five safety professionals from different sectors began exploring the accident scene on their screens. Each click they made revealed new evidence in film, or close-up still images. Immediately, they began questioning the evidence. Why did the victim fall off the ladder? Was he electrocuted? Filmed evidence shows that he wasn’t. Was he knocked off? Witnesses say not. Why was he up the ladder in the first place? Watch the events of the morning unfold. Was he to blame? See what he did and judge for yourself.

As well as the interactivity engendered by the film itself, which might only last 25-30 minutes, the processes of discussion, decision-making and deciding what to explore mean the majority of the training session is spent engaging with the trainees while they are reflecting on the situations they are presented with. This is a training method in which people have to participate; it is impossible to sit through it passively. Even those trainees who are reluctant to speak out in a group will benefit from being involved in the questioning and initiative-taking that facilitates true learning.

As for the trainer, he or she becomes a facilitator, prompting and guiding the trainees, when necessary. By focusing naturally on what is relevant to them, what they have experience of, and what they recognise as key issues trainees can share and reinforce their knowledge and highlight to the trainer areas that may need more focus.

Once the session is complete the findings can be applied by the trainee to their own company’s procedures and protocols, as if the fictional incident had happened in their own workplace. In future, when presented with a safety issue, an accident, near miss or risk assessment, trainees can use the knowledge, skills and experience gained by ‘practising’ with the film to uncover information and draw conclusions.

Of course, interactive film doesn’t work exactly like real life, it gives the participants far more information than they would generally get, and it takes them back in time and into situations that they wouldn’t normally be able to see. However, by doing so it teaches the trainees to look out for the subtle (and not so subtle) actions and behaviours that sometimes conspire together to create a situation where the likelihood of an accident happening gets greater and greater.

Film puts across the safety message in an interesting and engaging way that truly reflects the technology and media of the 21st century. While e-learning has its place, it doesn’t quite get us away from the idea of health and safety as dull and something to be endured rather than enjoyed, and that is something that all trainers must be wary of.

Laura Cade is co-director and Natalie Daniels-Browne is marketing manager of OutTakes Film Communications — for more information, visit www.outtakes.co.uk