PROBUILD HSE RISK VIDEOS
Microlearning, massive impact.
How a new approach to risk training dramatically increased engagement and attendance for Probuild.
The Background.
Probuild is a national tier one construction company headquartered in Melbourne. With 1,000 employees and 10,000 subcontractors, they deliver high-end commercial and residential structures.
The company is committed to building a strong culture that deeply values safety in all its forms: physical safety, psychological safety and environmental safety.
This is imperative to them living their goal of ‘Building Greatness’. And in a fast-paced, ever-evolving, high-risk environment, they need smart solutions when it comes to engaging their people at the right time with the right information to keep them safe on the job.
With thousands of people on sites each day, ensuring everyone is on the same page is fundamental to effective safety communication. Probuild identified the need and desire to change the way safety training was delivered to their employees.
“By embracing technology and the art of storytelling to innovate our training approach, it’s been game-changing for the way we train and educate everyone at Probuild. Because of how well this video series was received, we’ve made significant other investments in innovating our training processes. ”
The challenge.
From restraints to flexibility – changing the way people access training.
Probuild was ready to update the way they delivered risk training.
Previously, training comprised a half-day face-to-face course run by a facilitator, supported by powerpoint slides. These would run sporadically, dependent on the trainers’ availability and the amount of people able to attend to make a half-day course viable.
This offered little flexibility or accessibility to those in need of this training, and the content was dry and involved a lot of technical ‘safety-speak’. The feedback from employees was this made the risk training a dull and low-impact experience. Training also didn't include assessment, which made it difficult for Probuild to ascertain its effectiveness. Given the importance of the subject matter, Probuild needed to make the learning experience more engaging, memorable and measurable.
To improve their training outcomes, they needed the training experience to be consistent across the board, delivered in everyday language, and elevated from a dull presentation or bland policy document to an experience with impact. To achieve this, they engaged Everyday Massive to help them deliver game-changing risk training.
The shift.
Making training content memorable through context and storytelling.
Due to the critical nature of the subject matter — the top risks experienced on site and at work at Probuild — the training needed to be delivered in a way that it was easily accessible by anyone at any time.
To cater for lower literacy and English as second language workers on site, it was essential that content was easy-to-consume, contextualised with visuals, and brought to life through a narrative lens.
To achieve this, EM’s team of strategists, writers, animators and designers applied adult learning principles to the content.
The approach.
Ready to go training, right when it’s needed.
The medium of video was chosen to make training memorable, but also because of its suitability for on the job training.
Videos could be played during toolbox talks, or brought up as a quick safety check if a Probuilder was about to encounter one of the high risks areas: traffic management, civil works, temporary structures, fall prevention, plant and equipment, office environments, electrical and demolition.
To give the videos the most impact, we integrated them into Prostart, Probuild’s digital onboarding program. From the moment a new employee starts with Probuild, Prostart supports them for the first 365 days of their employment.
By looking at the 365-day journey of an employee, we could map when it would make sense for the risk training to be critical versus non-critical, and send the employee an alert to complete the micro learning. That way we could ensure a new employee received all the necessary risk education requirements without it feeling like they were being overloaded with information at the start of their new job. It also meant Probuild could keep track of where every employee was up to in their training.
Initially, training was intended only for Probuild employees, but by taking a new approach and bringing the training into a digital space, Probuild could also share it with subcontractors and the broader public as well.
The videos were housed on Probuild’s public-facing safety culture site, Building Safety Greatness, making them accessible to everyone.
The Impact.
Seeing training attendance and completion soar.
Through this new approach, the quality of the training outcomes improved significantly. Probuild dramatically increased their training attendance and completion rate, which currently sits at 80%, in contrast to the 20% they previously had in some states.
According to Sarah Cuscadden, Group HSE manager: “Immediately we saw the vast improvement and benefits of executing training in this more innovative and engaging way. The exceptional uptake and completion result (70%) within a month of launching the first training session, proved this style of training worked. The engaging, educational video followed by procedure information and a multi-choice assessment was a process our people could effectively learn in, and a way the HSE team could keep track of our employees assessment progress.
By making the series of microlearning videos available online and mobile-friendly, it also meant the training lasted beyond the ‘classroom’ or assessment period. Probuild’s people could revisit the key information about risks at any time they needed to, becoming an ‘in the moment’ support tool as well as an assessment tool.
“In the field assessing a safety issue, now our people can access the videos to use as a reference point and help guide decision-making. The videos highlight the risks and controls, enabling people to assess situations within a matter of minutes — they’re also incorporated into toolbox talks to educate subcontractors and site visitors about risks in an easy, effective manner.”
This has been revolutionary compared to the previous process of finding and reading a lengthy procedure, which took much longer and was far less effective in reaching an appropriate decision quickly. One HSE manager, Walter Caoduro, told us: “It made it easier to understand the rules and what’s expected of me when on a Probuild site”.
