All companies, whether they have just a few employees or thousands, have a legal responsibility and liability for ensuring the health, welfare and safety of their employees.

There are two critical components to essential operational training - Generic and Specific - and any training strategy that does not meet the accountability requirements of both critical components is seriously flawed. Many companies meet their accountabilities for generic training, but fall short of the specific accountabilities that cause incidents for which the company is subsequently liable.

Generic Training:

Our Safety Training, Diversity Training and Procedures Course Development system

The 6 steps to easy course authoring:

Our course authoring system was designed by a trainer - for use by trainers. The input to the system was designed as a series of templates where the data needed to construct a course module is clearly indicated on the templates by red boxes that turn green once data has been entered. Trainers are free to concentrate on analyzing training needs, and collecting solution information from subject matter experts to fill in the templates. The authoring system turns this data into multimedia interactive course modules that evaluate training effectiveness and cost, without any input or programming and scripting knowledge being needed from the trainer. The template format greatly simplifies the gathering of information from managers requiring training interventions, and their staff, as it focuses discussion on the directly relevant information required to construct a solution. When using the system, all that has to be remembered is:

If anything on the template is RED- Information must be obtained or data must be entered.

If everything on the template is GREEN - you're finished.

Making courses using video or a single photograph.

Step 1.

Firstly, the visual multimedia elements must be captured. (This can be done using either a home video camera or a simple digital camera.) The trainer normally works with a subject matter expert to capture a REAL relevant situation in your specific workplace, and saves the video as a file.  Action: Choose the video or a photo to use and click the red flashing 'Select' button. The 'Select' buttons turns green when you have done this.

Step 2.

Action: Enter the background description for the module, and click the red flashing 'Done' button. The 'Done' button turns green when you have done this.

Step 3.

The training software works on a series of decisions and actions to ensure that trainees are accountable for both. Decision choices could be such things as 'Take no action',  'Contact someone' or 'Do something.' Action: Enter the Decision choices you want the trainee to see on the red buttons, and choose which decision is correct from the red options. Everything turns green when you have entered the required information.

Step 4.

When the trainee makes a decision, whether correct or incorrect, immediate feedback is given either to confirm the correctness of the decision, or to indicate why the decision is wrong. The trainee cannot proceed until the correct decision has been identified. If the trainee's first choice is incorrect, the Learning Management System marks the trainee as 'unqualified' and recycles the exercise to the trainee's workload as a pending training module. Action: Enter the feedback information you want the trainees to see when they click any of the decision buttons. Again, red means you need to enter information, green means you've done it. (If you are just training decisions without actions, you save the course here and exit.)

Step 5.

When a module has a correct decision that requires an action (such as decision = 'Tell someone') the the trainee needs to choose the action they should perform. (Such as 'Tell the Safety Officer.') 4 separate Action choices are given for the trainee to choose from. Action: Enter the trainee action choices that you want the trainee to see on the red buttons. They turn green when you have done so. If a commonly occurring error exists, this should be included as one of the potential trainee actions.

Step 6.

When the trainee chooses an action, whether correct or incorrect, immediate feedback is given either to confirm the correctness of the action, or to indicate why the action is wrong. The trainee cannot proceed until the correct action has been identified. If the trainee's first choice is incorrect, the Learning Management System marks the trainee as 'unqualified' and recycles the exercise to the trainee's workload as a pending training module. Action: Enter the feedback information you want the trainees to see when thy click any of the Action buttons and click the 'Save and Exit' button to make another module.

You can also make courses where the trainee selects answers from different pictures using a touch-screen or a mouse.

Step 1.

Firstly, the photos must be captured using a simple digital camera.) The trainer normally works with a subject matter expert to capture REAL relevant situations in your specific workplace, and saves each photo as a file. Action: Choose photos from the list for up to 4 spaces, and enter the background information and what is expected of the trainee in the 'situation' box. (For example: 'One of these ways of stacking a pallet is safe, and one is unsafe. Choose the SAFE method.') Click the 'Done' button. It turns green when you have completed both steps.

Step 2.

When the trainee chooses a photo, whether correct or incorrect, immediate feedback is given either to confirm the correctness of the choice, or to indicate why the choice is wrong. The trainee cannot proceed until the correct choice has been identified. If the trainee's first choice is incorrect, the Learning Management System marks the trainee as 'unqualified' and recycles the exercise to the trainee's workload as a pending training module. Action: Click the red buttons corresponding to the photo positions, and enter the feedback information (in the red boxes) you want trainees to see if they choose that photo.

Step 3.

The automatic course maker needs to know which choice is correct before it can make the course. Action: Decide which photo is the correct answer, and click the appropriate option in the red box.)

Step 4.

If everything showing on the screen is green, you have completed the data input needed to assemble the module. (The system will not allow you to save the module unless all the data has been entered.) If anything is still red, just enter the data or choose the correct options until everything is green. Action: Click the 'Save and Exit' button to assemble the finished module.

Safety Training, Diversity Training and Operating Procedures Training

Click play button to run video. (If the play button is not showing, you may have to "Enable the windows active X controls"  in the Microsoft media player firewall warning at the top of your screen) This operations procedure video module was made by a client for use across 4 countries with different languages, and a need to implement new standardized  warehousing systems.  The 'actor' is a warehouse employee in one of the countries, and the touch screen decision and action button captions, and the feedback information files were translated into the appropriate languages for training in the other countries.

This safety training module again was made for use across different countries. This example is a two-picture "Right / Wrong" safety module used in the induction of new employees, but up to 4 pictures can be used when required. The strategy is not only to teach an understanding of safe and unsafe behaviors, but also to have an accountability record of knowledge of safety procedures for each employee in your specific working environment.

Safety and Operations Training

Every time a change is made in office or production facilities, or when a new employee joins a company, new operating procedures and safety procedures need to be trained. Classroom training is not enough to mitigate the financial risks associated with errors and accidents as employees are only accountable for learning the theory of the new procedures, and are not provably accountable for the on the job application. 

When it comes to fire safety procedures it is considered essential to simulate the real situation by performing fire drills relevant to the specific locations where employees work. The same strategy should apply to all safety training or new procedures training. The Best Practice Transfer Ltd. Safety and Operating Procedures authoring software is a tool for implementing this strategy. Our training software allows anyone in your company to produce relevant Safety and Operating Procedures training courses in-house at a fraction of the cost of generic courses. The only requirements are the abilities to point and shoot a simple video camera and fill in pre-designed templates. We also offer a two-day in-house course for your staff to use our software to learn solution development, essential best practice team building, obtaining stakeholder buy-in, learning management, training budget control, integration with existing systems and course production training.

Safety is everyone's responsibility. Safety Training should encompass not only preventing unsafe practices, but also the recognition of potentially unsafe situations and the knowledge of what to do, or who to notify to prevent the escalation of a potential risk into a real accident. A pro-active strategy for potential problem prevention requires that the training be directly related to the actual environment that an employee works in, or the strategy is doomed to failure as a theoretic exercise. The advantages of an in-house course production facility that can speedily translate line management subject matter expertise in potential problems into immediate training solutions cannot be over emphasized. The Best Practice Transfer Ltd. authoring software is designed to make immediate intervention possible for any company truly committed to safety. 

While it is relatively easy to train equality regulations to prevent Direct Discrimination, it is far more complicated to teach an understanding of Indirect Discrimination, as the occurrences of Indirect Discrimination are often very subtle. What one employee considers as humor, another employee may consider as harassment or discrimination. For this reason, the Best Practice Transfer Ltd. Diversity training system uses full audiovisual situational training to give employees the opportunity to step back and look through someone else's eyes to gain an understanding of when an off-color remark crosses the boundary into discrimination. As trainers make the training modules using staff volunteers, the actual course preparation provokes pro-active discussion and feedback of real situations that have occurred in  a company's specific work environment that need resolving. The training simulation modules are made quickly and economically for computer based training distribution, and the qualification of each employee is captured and recorded by the built in Learning Management System.

Deployment

Deployment of our Safety training and Diversity Training solutions is designed to be practical in real workplace situations. For office staff training, the software can be networked to any available computer, and for shop floor staff, one shop floor office computer monitor is exchanged for a touch screen monitor, and the program is networked there. As all Safety Training and Diversity Training courses are designed as a combination of modules, employees can qualify on training interventions whenever they have a five minute or greater time availability.

If you need assistance to implement training, or need to outsource all or part of the production of a training solution, we offer consulting and outsourcing services to either develop a full cycle solution from diagnostic through implementation to impact evaluation, or to provide support and advice for any of the individual human performance technology steps involved in producing effective solutions.