Nothing Changes if Nothing Changes

Can’t teach an old wildebeest new tricks

‘What does a wildebeest do?’ I ask this question in every single health and safety training course that I deliver now.

I get a lot of puzzled looks. Often, it’s answered in the same way; ‘What do wildebeest have to do with….abrasive wheels, manual handling, forklift driving, working safely etc etc?'

The simple answer is that the day-to-day life of a wildebeest is to; wake up, eat, follow the wildebeest in front of it, eat some more, drink, continue following the wildebeest in front of it and then sleep. In fact; when wildebeest in the Serengeti migrate, they will literally travel 500 to 1000 miles every year in a big circle in huge single file herds.

What does this have to do with training or health and safety?

Another question I ask a lot is ‘why?'. I like to know why people or an organisation do what they do. I like to know why a person in that business does a task that specific way. And the majority of time, the answer is a shrug of the shoulders and ‘that’s just the way we do things here…’. This is usually when the penny drops with the wildebeest analogy.

Does a wildebeest ever ask ‘why?’ or question the direction they are walking in? Do we want to be wildebeests? We can sometimes become far too dependant on the traditional ways things have always been done. Businesses and staff can fall into doing things the same way because that's how we've seen it being done or been told how it's done. It's just accepted as 'the way we do things.' and never questioned challenged.

After a long time of watching or hearing about unsafe practices within countless working environments and asking the people doing the job ‘why?' and getting the same old answer. I decided to look at my own industry. Had I also become a wildebeest; following others doing the same old thing and going round in circles?

The answer sadly, was yes. It seems I haven’t been practicing what I preach at all. I’m still going out to businesses day in day out, week in week out, every year delivering the same manual handling, working at heights or some other health and safety based course in the traditional classroom environment as we have been doing for decades. And I’m doing it because that’s the way it’s always been done. And that's the way a lot of people assume is the only way it's done.

Why are training providers still turning up with PowerPoint presentations and booklets for classroom based, off the shelf courses that only require trainees to turn up, remember enough information to pass a multiple-choice test and then not have to worry about it again for another year or two?

We still seem to value training activities over business performance. Instead of recognising where the training and development of people is needed and then developing the workforce, we send them out on courses or bring in training instructors. We stack certificates up and rarely actually check if there have been positive outcomes.

If you invest time, effort and money into learning how to speak a language or play a musical instrument, the desired outcome is being able to speak to someone in French or play Wonderwall on the guitar. So why does this not transfer into workplace training? Why is collecting certificates more important than continually monitoring staff performance? Especially in health and safety.

Nothing changes if nothing changes and now I’m stepping out of the long line of wildebeests in the training industry and moving in another direction.

I want to know about performance. I want to see outcomes and improvements. I'm no longer setting the learning objectives, my clients are.

We have to start looking at the data, people analytics and the business needs of our clients instead of delivering standardised courses. Scrap the old days of how much training we can cram into a year or a budget and focus on performance outcomes. We should encourage in-house training and support with this instead of competing with it.

Encourage our clients to stop following the traditional received wisdom around training/learning and development of staff and start looking at new ways to enhance individual and business performances. Instead of learning in classrooms, learn on the job. Instead of sending staff out to training courses, create a learning environment within the workplace. Find metrics that encourage organisations to understand what actually drives and creates better results.

Integrate training technology into the learning environment and analyse the data. Speak to staff and ask what their learning needs are. Experiment with new ways to get information to people. It’s become a training trope that ‘some people learn differently from others’. So why are we not catering for these people? Looking at staff and trainee behaviour, relationships and traits will allow organisations to establish the best ways to enhance business outcomes through the delivery of training in the most effective ways.

Nothing changes, if nothing changes. Can we break from the herd and start learning new tricks?