Page 60 - Occupational Health & Safety, June 2019

TRAINING
Education, Skill Development, and Behavior Change
They’re not the same, but it’s all called training. . . .
BY LARRY WILSON
56 Occupational Health & Safety | JUNE 2019
www.ohsonline.com
When people talk about safety training, they can easily be referring to educa- tion or skill development. They can also be talking about what they really want out of the training, which is a change in behav- ior. Sometimes education alone will be enough to change behavior. And skill development is typically going to change behavior, but it’s more about learn- ing how to weld or how to parallel park in the first place. Changing existing behaviors to something new or better is much different and, unfortunately, much more difficult.
Think about driving. The education part is rela- tively straightforward: This is how the pedals work, this is how the lights work, this is how the turn in- dicator works, the steering wheel, etc. Skill develop- ment, like learning how to parallel park, is going to take practice. How much practice will depend on the individual, but education alone will not be enough to develop or master the skill.
Now let’s look at changing your spouse’s or part- ner’s driving behavior. Perhaps you’ve tried? How did it go? Were you sleeping on the couch or did you have to go sleep in the car? And yet, as mentioned, the purpose of almost all safety training is to achieve “safe behavior.” Rarely is it to merely inform the people about the hazards, although that can be part of it. But just getting people to pass the pencil and paper test on air brakes or confined space entry is not the end goal. The real purpose is to get the person to actually check the brakes before driving the truck or to test the atmosphere before going in. But many times, unfor- tunately, the only accomplishment was the passing of the test.
Many educators or teachers think (at least when they start out) that education is the most important thing. But when they go to conferences, the sessions they attend are almost all aimed at changing the be- havior of students or difficult students. Consider some of the more popular sessions: How to deal with cyber
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