Episode 2
OH&S SafetyPod: A More Effective Safety Training Experience
You can hear the audible groan when employees are told they need to go through safety trainings, but with the number of hazards on the job workers cannot go without these vital trainings. When an incident happens, employees must be able to refer back to their training—and fast.
- By Sydny Shepard
- Nov 19, 2019
You can hear the audible groan when employees are told they need to go through safety trainings, but with the number of hazards on the job workers cannot go without these vital trainings. When and incident happens, employees must be able to refer back to their training—and fast.
In the second episode of OH&S SafetyPod, Editor Sydny Shepard sits down with Mike Holmes, Product Marketing Manager at Honeywell and Chris Waeir, Gas Detection/First Responder Expert at Honeywell. The two regularly find themselves fighting the stigma against the “boring safety trainings” and spoke about how emotion, hands-on training and technology can change the way workers interact with safety.
I met up with Mike and Chris at Honeywell’s Safety Training and Customer Experience Center in Pasadena, Texas, just outside Houston. Thousands of people have been through the Honeywell Safety Institute since it was built in 2013. The facility was built to give those attending training classes a more virtual training experience.
"I think any time you deal with training, you have to be passionate about it and you have to believe in what you're doing," Waeir said. "It's more so than just trying to sell a product. Safety is critical, it is paramount and every time I lead a safety training I feel like I leave a little bit of myself with those folks that I've trained. I want to ensure that they are as prepared as they can be so that they do go home to their loved ones at night."
Within the center is a gym filled with nine simulators: an aerial life, cat walk, roof-top simulator, lockout/tagout simulator, climbing tower, oil derrick, wind turbine, confined space vessel, confined space simulator and drilling pipe rack. The hands-on training available at the facility is coupled with online training, micro training videos and on-site visits for a more blended training approach.
"Sometimes sitting through all those PowerPoints and lectures you realize you have learned the theory and now you need to go connect your brain with your hands," Waeir said. "There is no better way to do that in this world than to ensure we give them the best world class hands-on training that they're going to experience when they are out there in the field. We need to immerse them in the environment that they are going to work, behave and perform in. The more realistic we can make it, the better prepared they are going to be."
Listen along as I discuss training, technology and more with Mike and Chris in SafetyPod’s second episode available on Apple Podcasts, Google Podcasts, Stitcher and more.
About the Author
Sydny Shepard is the former editor of Occupational Health & Safety.