Hiring and Training to Encourage Workplace Safety

Workplace safety is a concern for most construction companies because if workers don’t abide by safety regulations and get injured or break something on-site, they can set a project back months and cost companies thousands of dollars. That’s why hiring or training an employee based on how they deal with workplace safety can help a construction company save time and money. Utilizing training and learning software, such as SuccessFactors LMS (Learning Management Software), employees can learn on the job and not only avoid injury, but also work efficiently, develop their own careers as well as the business and reduce overhead costs for the business as fewer mistakes are being made. Doing the training with someone who the employees know and trust should also be taken into consideration, especially if they want to get the best out of their training session. Subsequently, the anointed trainer may have to look at these “Train the trainer workshop essentials” to see how they can build upon the relevant skills they need to carry out a successful meeting with their employees. This will ensure that everyone remains safe in the workplace at all times. But with that being said, this is just one of the things that you can do. TalentClick is a program that is similar to giving an employee a personality assessment and then using those answers to learn how to approach that person to create a better work relationship – and therefore better, safer working environment.

HealthCare Construction + Operations News talks with Stephen Race, occupational psychologist, workplace safety expert and co-founder of TalentClick, about how construction companies can use the assessment for their benefit.

Q: How does TalentClick work with construction companies?

Race: What we focus on can be distilled down to a better understanding of people, such as candidates considered for hiring or existing employees. We focus on defining what makes people different in terms of personality traits. For example, we know that some people are more careful than others, so we provide information on people, describing them and then linking that to how things will play out on the job in terms of workplace safety.

Q: How has TalentClick assisted employers to develop effective safety training and recruitment procedures?

Race: We’re focusing on individuals. The real difference with our approach is that we look at how people are unique and different and tailor training, coaching and hiring to who a person is. In the hiring process, you can have someone take the TalentClick assessment, which will identify strengths of a person and areas that are of a possible concern that employers can probe into. It’s really about looking at the process person by person.

In the training world, what’s previously been done is that everyone has gotten the same training, regardless of who they are, how they learn or what their work style is. What we’ve learned is that a lot of people learn what they should in training but don’t actually put it into practice and forget about it when they’re under stress. Based on a specific person’s training needs, we can offer up techniques that would work best to approach them before waiting until someone gets injured.

Q: How does TalentClick provide consultation for construction employers and management teams?

Race: Our reports that we give offer interview questions to better understand how a person might handle a situation. Sometimes we get brought in to do training sessions and spend a lot of time running through different scenarios on different types of people.

Q: What personality factors and training do you believe make an ideal front line worker?

Race: The most important one that we found to look at is impulsiveness. That’s around how cautious the person is and whether they think things through before they act. When we’ve done work with construction companies, front line workers that reported highly on impulsiveness were five times more likely to have a safety incident.

Another is the level of anxiousness – if a person is under a lot of stress, under pressure and they’re rushed. Some people can handle that pressure and can be rushed, whilst others’ safety behavior just falls away when they’re under pressure. Stress is, unfortunately, part of all jobs. It’s important that a person can work under some stress. However, if they can’t, it might be worth them trying to find a way to manage this stress. For some people, they find that using CBD products can really help them to relax in stressful situations. There are many companies who offer products like this, which is why it’s good to read some reviews beforehand, such as this CBDistillery review here. Hopefully, that helps other people to cope with stress, allowing them to remain safe in the workplace. Stress is something that will crop up in every job, so it’s always good to be able to manage your stress.

Q: By using a hiring method like this, is there a concern of hiring employees that have too similar personalities?

Race: With this assessment, because it’s specifically around safety, it’s not looking at general personalities. It’s looking at their approach to these situations. It’s just questioning if a person has any risks specifically around safety. Because that’s a smaller part of who they are, we don’t worry about that affecting the hiring process.

Q: How can companies use your tool to determine whether to hire or learn how to train someone that may have poor assessment results?

Race: We never say don’t hire this person based on assessment results. Instead, we may say here’s some potential problems, here’s some additional questions to ask them in the hiring process and keep an eye on them if you’re hiring them. It’s all about tailoring your approach on how to work with them. There aren’t many people qualified for some of these positions, so companies often hire them, but this gives the company a leg up on the training process. This is very important in the first couple months of the job. For someone who doesn’t like rules, you can explain why the rules are there. For an anxious person, you can take more time to build their confidence in these tasks or give them a mentor that makes them feel like they have support.

Q: Can you provide specific examples of the training and recruitment changes construction companies have made after implementing TalentClick’s behavioral assessment tools?

Race: The assessment gives an employer an idea of who they should give the high-pressure work or the competitive work. It gives them an idea of a person’s strong suits and makes them more efficient. The people doing the job are much happier because they’re not out of their comfort zone.

One of our clients started a safety mentor program and we helped them initiate it. They designated people who are naturally safe and have the right attitude towards safety as safety mentors. Then, they got together teams to coach each other. People learn a lot more about each other this way, and it encourages collaboration around safety.

The client’s projection [after using TalentClick] is that they would reduce the number of incidents by eight a year and those were recordable incidents. Preventing two or three paid for our complete program. For their new hires, they project it will reduce incident rates between 25 and 50 percent

Q: What is your general advice for managers and employers when it comes to workplace safety?

Race: For someone to go through the assessment it takes about 15 to 20 minutes, but the return is well worth it. Everyone is skeptical of changing how to do things, but this is a little thing they can do that can make a big difference.

After you have conducted all these methods in the hiring process it will then be time to give them background checks to assure their quality. This can be done with the help of onboarding specialists like WorkBright, who use virtual onboarding services to make sure that the candidates you want to hire are suitable for the job.