What makes safety training stick? The science behind immersive training
As a Safety Director, you know it’s not enough to provide safety training – you have to make sure it sticks. But what separates the training that actually changes behaviour from the training that’s abandoned the following week?
For safety training to really stick, three things need to be true:
- The training needs to enter your team’s long-term memory.
- Your team needs to be able to easily recall the training when the relevant scenarios arise.
- The training needs to result in behavioural change, not just teach the theory.
When does safety training enter our long-term memory?
Studies indicate that training is more likely to reach our long-term memory when it uses emotion and actively involves us.
1. The role of emotion
Emotion plays a key role in long-term memory formation, which is why it’s easier to vividly recall a happy moment from years ago than a random, more recent one. This is known as ‘emotional encoding’; an emotional reaction makes your brain think the memory is worth holding on to.
Lecture-based training is less likely to trigger this storage method, simply because of how we’re built; hearing about a danger is far less impactful than the jeopardy of it playing out in front of us.
As ATT Co-founder and Director Adam Christopher says:
“We are storytellers, and humans are wired for stories.”
Immersive training provides more opportunity for emotion. As the scene unfolds in front of them, participants empathise with the actors: their fear, stress, relief, or anger. Their body may even react as though they are living the experience, with their cortisol spiking and their heart rate elevating.
2. The importance of active participation
Safety training is also more memorable when the participants are actively involved, especially in decision-making.
Let’s take first aid training, something many of us have done in some form, as an example. Practising compressions on a dummy is more memorable than just hearing someone explain how to do CPR. More memorable still is the leader asking: “Pretend this man has just dropped to the ground. Show me exactly what you would do next, and talk me through each step”.
Immersive safety training isn’t just about acting out a scenario; it should be an active simulation that participants help shape, and that pauses to involve them.
What makes safety training easier to recall?
Some safety measures quickly become habitual, like changing into steel toe cap boots when you arrive for the day, or putting on your hard hat when you enter the site.
Situational risks are harder to prepare for. In high-risk environments, dangerous situations often require quick, decisive action, but don’t happen often enough for a habit to form. The theory is lodged in your team’s long-term memory – but what dictates whether they can recall it on command at the right moment?
The answer to this may lie in how the information entered their long-term memory in the first place.
The widely respected Hebbian theory of learning is often summarised with the phrase “cells that wire together fire together”. It recognises that we form subconscious associations (like associating the sound of meowing with cats), and that tapping into this fact can make learning stickier.
If the environment you trained in replicates the dangerous situation, your brain is more likely to reach for the correct next step – even under immense pressure.
How do you make sure safety training is actually followed?
Every day, ordinary people knowingly risk lives. They push past the speed limit when they’re running late for work, or risk firing off a quick text when the traffic slows. They forgo their chainsaw trousers because they accidentally left them in their van.
The potential consequences of their unsafe behaviour feel abstract compared to the immediate inconvenience. The pressures of daily life – whether social, time, work, or a combination – feel more important in the moment.
This is often the most frustrating part for Safety Directors: why aren’t site staff following safety protocols, even when they know exactly what they are?
That’s why the most effective immersive training follows through and shows what can happen when people don’t take the right safety measures. It makes the risks feel real, emotions and all, meaning the potential consequences enter participants’ long-term memory along with the correct protocols.
Creating a self-enforcing safety environment
As a Safety Director, you need the reassurance that safe practices happen when you’re not there to monitor them. Good training is the essential first step, with immersive training proven to be more effective than passive training for the reasons we’ve outlined above.
But for your whole team to become true safety leaders, leadership teams also need to foster a psychologically safe environment – one where everyone feels comfortable speaking up, and where this feels less personally risky than remaining silent.
When it comes to creating lasting behavioural change, changing safety culture is often the final, forgotten piece of the puzzle.
At Active Training Team, we’ve been running award-winning safety training programmes for high-risk environments since 2007. Our immersive training is designed according to neuroscientific, psychological and learning theory principles to make sure it truly sticks, and also focuses on shifting company culture to make everyone a safety leader. Contact us for more information here, or learn more about our UK Safety Leadership Centres here.
