How to Engage Field Team Employees in Personal Safety Issues?
From Formalism to Engagement: Why Classic Training Doesn't Work for Field Teams
HSE training for employees working outside the office or production facilities — sales representatives, merchandisers, drivers — often turns into a formality. When personnel are scattered across the country and do not face typical production risks, standard instructions and presentations lose their effectiveness. Alexey Kozyrev, Head of the HSE Department at JSC PC Elektrozavod, analyzes a practical case: how to engage over 3,000 employees located in 150 Russian cities in personal safety issues.
The speaker notes that in conditions of reduced decision-making time and increasing distractions, traditional training methods lose out. Relying on Edgar Dale's Cone of Experience, which proves the high effectiveness of game formats for information retention, the company decided to transfer employees' real work processes into a virtual environment.
Gamification as a Tool: Workday Simulation
Instead of boring tests, a mobile game was developed simulating the workday of a sales representative. Players acted as managers overseeing six subordinates. The main goal was to maximize profit from retail outlets while maintaining a balance between efficiency and safety.
- Risk-oriented approach in the game: Players were given a choice — spend time briefing an employee or take a risk and send them on a task without preparation.
- Visual consequences: If a player chose risk for the sake of quick profit, an accident could occur at the outlet. This clearly demonstrated how an employee's injury impacts business processes: loss of time, the need to redistribute tasks, and a decrease in overall efficiency.
- Content adaptation: Standard production scenarios (machine tools, workshops) were replaced with situations relevant to field employees: safe driving, rules of conduct in retail outlets, road signs.
The presentation details the process of adapting corporate safety standards to a game format. Complex wording was simplified, and tasks were built on analyzing typical misconceptions and real violations.
Motivation and Implementation Results
A key condition of the project was voluntary participation. To stimulate engagement, a motivation system was introduced: team and individual standings with prizes (corporate events, improved working conditions, gift certificates). The game was available 24/7 from any mobile device.
The results exceeded expectations: out of 3,315 users loaded into the system, 1,224 people (about 40%) fully completed the game. The speaker emphasizes that for a voluntary format, this is an excellent indicator. Feedback from participants was also positive — the average score was 4.4 out of 5. The main business result was a reduction in the number of incidents and violations of corporate requirements among those who completed the training.
What you will learn from this webinar:
- How to adapt HSE training for non-production employees?
- Why do game mechanics work better than standard instructions in a remote work format?
- How to visually show the connection between compliance with safety rules and business indicators (profit)?
- What mistakes can be made when launching gamification and how to avoid them (the importance of "warming up" the audience)?
- How to motivate employees to voluntarily participate in safety training projects?
Comments 10
Vyacheslav Pachin: How did you engage workers in the game, particularly blue-collar workers? What tools (technologies) did you use? We have a problem with low computer literacy; not everyone has smartphones and PCs at the workplace.
For blue-collar workers, there are several solutions:
1. Training rooms, but this is for more or less large companies.
2. Using personal phones — if there are some small "perks," people start playing from their own devices.
3. Installing kiosks with password entry.
Note:
There is also an element of deception that people don't know how to use one smartphone or another. This is from practical experience.
Vladislav Khmyrov: Alexey, do you think it's possible to interest top management in conducting such a game if there are no serious accidents in the organization? Where to get the data to confirm the relevance of such a game?
Good question. The solution lies in showing larger production facilities and similar workplaces. Let's put it this way: the more cars a factory produces, the more often they break down overall. This is a metaphorical comparison, but it's the same with people: with small numbers, a lot may pass by without significant accidents, but the larger the sample, the greater the chance.
Advice: take industry statistics or statistics from similar but larger companies with comparable workplaces.
The second point that's important to understand is what your management fears, and based on that and their KPIs, you can sell them various marketing-packaged products.
If HR has never dealt with a workplace accident, they fear fines more, since the labor inspectorate will come to them. Personal fear is inevitably present — because it's a personal threat (Maslow's pyramid, the bottom level works).
Vladislav Melnikov: Alexey, two questions. What results do you want to achieve from implementing this tool?
In this case, the result was primary employee engagement and understanding what the overall engagement percentage was over 2 months of project implementation. As described above — it was 35%. It would have been good if it exceeded 50%, then we could speak about crossing the critical threshold and the second half of employees would start catching up with the first (leading) half.
There are technical mistakes on our part: we needed to more frequently keep the audience engaged with emails and other engaging content. As practice shows, it's a competition for attention among other mailings and messenger notifications.
Alexey Ryazantsev: Is this game integrated into occupational safety training?
This Game can be integrated into the actual occupational safety training process, but not in this case. Some companies adopt it as an integral part of the process; it can be used as:
- annual training;
- briefing;
- tournament to increase engagement.
It all depends on the specific production task. Questions are composed according to regulation 2464 and can be tailored to different target audiences.
Alexey Ryazantsev: How did you measure the change in engagement after implementation?
In this project, we didn't measure it. It was designed for primary employee engagement. 35% of the total list participated. That was the task. But the question is fair and we will take it into account for the future.
Aigul Ulykpanova: There is a good saying: until a person faces it themselves, they won't understand. No matter how much you teach them, even with know-how, it won't reach the heart, as you say, until they encounter this or that incident.
You are absolutely right here. The best "agents of influence" in occupational safety come from those who have witnessed accidents and emergencies. This is proven practice. Moreover, it's not even the victim themselves, but the witnesses.
With games and the training process, you need to be careful. We once conducted an experiment with a first aid game (working title "Angels and Demons") — stress must be at an acceptable level (40-50% of real-life intensity) so that material absorption is maintained and the person doesn't transition into a state that prevents them from learning. And this is under the condition of normal mental health of the trainees.
Inna Sviridenko: Question: did you separate the sample when analyzing training difficulties between those who undergo training and those who organize, conduct, and coordinate it in one way or another? It seems that the answer "formalism" — this is how training participants evaluate the content and implementation of programs, while the answer about filling out journals manually mostly relates to those who implement and are responsible for training. I would like to see the presented diagram broken down by professional groups, job levels, and function performed (training organization or actual trainee)
Within the scope of the task, there was no such separation. The audience can be tagged by any criteria. But we were at the beginning of the journey. Besides, the work "from outside" did not assume this kind of analysis: the task was primary engagement of field team employees. This was the first step.
But I emphasize again that audience differentiation can be done in various ways.
Alexander Mormorin: Alexey, good day! What limitations may arise when implementing gamification in the field of industrial safety?
Limitations in industrial safety, as with other safety matters, are a question of the audience's perception of proposed innovations:
1. There is the fact of resistance to anything new — that's human nature in essence. It's no wonder there's a separate spectrum of change management trainings.
2. The conservatism of the ecosystem itself (the Company) — for example, for Russian Railways you shouldn't propose Games at all, but business simulation or a digital twin of the enterprise are quite acceptable. The audience is divided into:
- innovators;
- early adopters;
- late adopters;
- conservatives;
- laggards.
You need to understand which category the organization belongs to and what format the decision-maker prefers.
Certain limitations may also exist when choosing a training format: algorithms and prohibitions are well absorbed through simple test tasks in a board game, but tactile things (things that need to be done with hands) won't work here (they're hard to describe). A different format is needed.
That is, industrial safety can be divided by types of what needs to be known, and then for each knowledge block, the appropriate format should be found methodologically.
Ruslan Lisitsin: I've always been curious: 1. Why are people not interested in learning about the organization of their own safety; 2. How to reach them so that safety moves "from the head to the heart"
1. People are not interested in learning about the organization of their own safety because there are several reasons, many of which are contradictory: overconfidence combined with ignorance of risks. 2. The mind doesn't want to think about bad things and the "TV viewing effect" kicks in, where people think everything happening is somewhere far from them and doesn't concern them.
2. You can only reach people through proper directing and scripting (training design) — it's like theater and cinema with changing acts and different storylines. In occupational safety in Russia, these methods are not used.
Vladislav Khmyrov: Absolutely agree, people usually sit on their phones and don't listen. Even if they listen, everything is quickly forgotten and nothing remains from such training.
People sit on their phones during training because there is no good training design that implies changing formats across three dimensions (physical, mental, and emotional). One format kills training, and it should change every 10 minutes.
It's forgotten because there is no practical application of acquired skills. Any training should end not only with an exam but also with a time period (a month is a good option) to reinforce knowledge/skills and take the test/exam again.