RapidChange tools improve safety performance

By Ruth Skeens, senior faculty and curriculum director

How can we apply the Rapid Change tools to safety in the workplace?  Many of us have experiences around safety situations and associated with these experiences are emotions.  Many times we do not recognize these feelings if they are not strong.  These feelings result in our forming attitudes/thinking which drives our behavior.
Perhaps we attend safety meetings that are boring.  Our experience is that safety is boring and some of the feelings we could have are:  mad because it is a waste of our time; sad because someone has been hurt and it could have been avoided if the information had been presented a different way.  The attitude/thinking that could develop is no one cares about safety and we attend to just get the ticket punched to comply with procedures.  Finally the behavior that is seen is I don’t wear PPE or Lock-out Tag-out equipment.

Safety meetings and safety training are key opportunities in the workplace to energize employees about their personal safety and the safety of their peers.  Rapid Change tools are designed to engage people at a much deeper level in the brain to accelerate learning and take important messages to long term memory.