ANSI Z490 - Plan, Do, Study, and Act Your Way to Safety Training Greatness
Here’s my first installment in what will be a continuing series on understanding and implementing two important safety training standards, namely. ANSI Z490.1 and OSHA 3824. Our Maverick Train-the-Safety-Trainer Program meets both these standards.
ANSI Z490.1 Section 4.1 states “Training development shall follow a systematic process including needs assessment, learning objectives, course design, and evaluation strategy criteria for completion, and continuous improvement.”
Okay, be honest now. Do you have a well-planned, systematic training development process?
If you’re like most safety pros, you’re spending a lot of your time creating training in response to a scary near miss or serious incident. You want to protect people from danger ASAP, and that pressure causes you to use a shotgun approach to training. You rush to cobble together your slides, assemble classes, race through the content, answer a few questions, and send people back out into harm’s way. Sound familiar?
The expression “death by Powerpoint” usually refers to boredom, but in the case of safety training it might be literal. That approach to training rarely makes anyone safer. In fact, you’ll probably have to repeat the same lecture again (and again) because what you taught the first time didn’t stick.
You Need a Proven Training Development Process That’s Fast and Effective
And we have one for you. It’s called the Plan-Do-Study-Act (PDSA) cycle and it’s been used for decades by thousands of companies around the world. In fact, it’s the basis for our Maverick Train-the-Safety-Trainer Program.
PDSA is the opposite of the shot-gun approach. It’s a laser beam: fast, focused, and powerful. It breaks training development down into four stages:
PLAN - The incident is analyzed. Root causes and missing safety skills are discovered. The target audience is identified. Learning objectives are formulated. Metrics are selected. (Added bonus, this stage fulfills OSHA’s root cause investigation requirement.)
DO - Engaging, activity-based training solutions are created, deployed, and tested. Data are collected. Safety performance and behaviors are observed. Participant feedback is gathered.
STUDY - Training effectiveness is objectively evaluated. Results are scrutinized. Data are analyzed. Observations and feedback are studied.
ACT - Effective solutions are fine-tuned, scaled up, and rolled out. Otherwise, the cycle re-starts with Plan(ning) a better solution based on what was learned.
The goal is to move through each stage of the PDSA with speed and efficiency. Our Maverick Train-the-Safety-Trainer Program has tools and templates to help you do just that.
A Powerful Method That Works for Every Situation
We have used the Plan-Do-Study-Act Cycle to help safety pros create effective safety training in a wide variety of situations:
Drivers correctly lifting cases of beer and kegs during deliveries to bars and restaurants.
Nurses properly reading and interpreting material safety data sheets at a children’s hospital.
Technicians safely operating high-pressure cleaning equipment at a university laboratory.
The Bottom Line
The PDSA Cycle takes a little more time and know-how than sitting at a desk banging out Powerpoint slides, but it delivers. In every case, using the PDSA has resulted in safety training that actually protected people from harm and injury. And that’s a goal everyone can get behind.
