On a self-guided tour, you are free to navigate your chosen route without an escort. You explore and learn at your own pace. Well, we want to build on that concept with you to generate more enthusiasm for safety within your safety team.
In fact, we are building out two new ways for you to reinforce your transportation safety policies and procedures with employees during our upcoming website redesign:
- Online learning
- Gamification
We are updating our online learning modules because we understand the value of providing on-demand training. These unique opportunities allow employees to fit training into their own schedules, particularly important during these times, when so many are trying to balance work-from-home responsibilities.
Furthermore, studies show workers are:
- More likely to continue with a program if they know they can consult materials and complete learning tasks at their own convenience
- Often able to retain more of what they learn when proceeding at their own pace as opposed to striving to keep up with the pace of curriculum in a traditional classroom environment
Let’s briefly examine three of the main ways people learn in both individual and group settings:
- Visually (through the use of images and diagrams)
- Physically (think hands-on here: doing it yourself)
- Logically (the use of reasoning to solve a problem)
In the context of providing workers opportunities that break from the mold of the same-old, same-old, we’re introducing gamification. Our aim is to increase employee participation in safety activities and to support your company’s efforts to create a company-wide safety culture that promotes your driver and transportation safety culture. We are using the mechanics of familiar games to build learning opportunities.
Best of all, engaging employees in games modeled after Family Feud, Jeopardy or Bingo challenges them to rethink or reshape their attitudes and behaviors toward distracted driving, speeding and drowsy driving.
Research shows gamification in education can optimize how the brain processes new information and can open a new path for that information to be stored more easily in one’s memory bank. In an age where the attention span of many tends to wane quickly, using technology and more modern teaching approaches also has proven effective in transferring knowledge.
Look for all of these additions coming soon. Then, make use of these free online educational opportunities to ensure your driver and transportation safety programs keep moving forward. It is time to think outside the box and break the old traditional way of learning. To be more effective: engage, educate and equip workers with the tools they need to maximize safety at work and at home.
– Lisa Robinson is a senior program manager with the National Safety Council