Skills in Presentations, Toolbox and Inductions

Originally posted on June 21, 2018 @ 2:13 PM

Skills in Presentations, Toolbox and Inductions – Free Downloads!! (available here: https://spor.com.au/downloads/tools/ )

I was recently requested to help an organization with their onsite induction, toolbox and presentations. So, the first thing I requested back was what they were currently doing. I wonder how surprised you would be if I told you their induction was 200 PowerPoint slides with 100 words of text per page in dot points trying to cover off every element of risk and safety at work. This includes everything from: company structure, fire extinguisher types, lock out tag out procedures, legislation detail, regulations, hazard registers and blah blah blah. I know some tier one organisations have 8 hour online inductions exactly like this. It’s absolute meaningless madness.

I wasn’t in the presentation and glad I wasn’t, I was asleep by slide 4 just reviewing it on my computer. Why do we do this to people? What is the sense and purpose of doing this? Please don’t tell me that it is required, because it is not. There is nothing in the regulation or legislation that tells you what needs to be in an induction:

13. TRAINING from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

14. TRAINING PART 2 from Human Dymensions on Vimeo.

Please don’t tell me that somehow this covers off obligations because it does the reverse. Please don’t tell me that it motivates people to be cognizant of risk and safety, because it does the opposite.

Everything I look at in these inductions and presentations that get sent to me, ignore every principle we know about learning, education and risk intelligence. If we did this kind of dumb stuff to our kids in schools the parents who endure this nonsense at work would be the first up to the school to complain. Why is it that people who have no education in education and learning think they can design training, curriculum and learning? There is certainly nothing in the risk and safety curriculum to help.

What I see in most inductions is not Due Diligence but anti-Due Diligence. Rather than help in court these inductions, that cannot be comprehended, will be used against you in court to prove that the outcome of the presentation and induction is anti-safety.

Presentations are not deemed anti-safety just because they are boring and try to transfer the content of an encyclopedia to people but because they turn off people to thinking about risk, confuse systems with paperwork and disable participants in the fundamentals of risk. Unless a presentation and induction is meaningful and has purpose then its just ‘noise’.

There are several things Human Dymensions do to help organisations in induction design and toolbox presentation skills:

1. The first thing we do is help organisations get the methodology (philosophy) right. What is the purpose of the induction and presentation? When asked, most people don’t know. I rarely hear anyone say they are about ‘learning’.
2. The design ‘method’ will make sense once you have got the philosophy right. The reason why many inductions and toolbox are so bad is that people who construct them have no idea of education and learning philosophy.
3. Help with curriculum is essential. An information dump is not learning indeed, it is anti-learning.
4. Multi-media is essential. This is why we have a multi-media company embedded in the work of Human Dymensions called InVision Pictures (https://www.humandymensions.com/services-and-programs/invision/). The days of saturated text in presentations should be over.
5. Learning about the do and don’ts of presentation are essential. This is why we give away the Do’s and Don’ts Presentation Tool  ©
6. We also provide extensive training in Presentation Skills © including a host of checklists that helps with everything from curriculum design, room design, preparation and toolbox technique.
7. When it comes to toolbox presentations that I have observed it is amazing that so many of the essentials in presentation are missing. Effective toolbox talks don’t happen accidentally, they should be strategic and intelligent.
8. It is also important to understand styles of learning and principles of learning, this is presented in Book 6. Tackling Risk, A Field Guide to Risk and Learning and Book 3 Real Risk, Human Discerning and Risk. (https://www.humandymensions.com/product/tackling-risk/ and https://www.humandymensions.com/product/real-risk/ )

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Dr Rob Long

Expert in Social Psychology, Principal & Trainer at Human Dymensions

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PhD., MEd., MOH., BEd., BTh., Dip T., Dip Min., Cert IV TAA, MRMIA Rob is the founder of Human Dymensions and has extensive experience, qualifications and expertise across a range of sectors including government, education, corporate, industry and community sectors over 30 years. Rob has worked at all levels of the education and training sector including serving on various post graduate executive, post graduate supervision, post graduate course design and implementation programs.