Every day there are likely hundreds of tool box talks and safety meetings at our worksite, and even more meetings in smaller groups in which a supervisor is giving instructions to their workers about the job they are about to execute.  But have you ever thought about how effective those job instructions really are?  We often don’t give much thought to this question until after an incident has occurred and the investigation team concludes that the job instruction was poorly done or inadequate.  I think a better time to reflect upon effective job instruction is now, long before an incident and part of the routine self-evaluation that we all should do about our work performance.  For as a supervisor, providing effective job instruction is one of the largest components of their job, and likely the most important one.

Effective Job Instruction

To Prepare for Effective Job Instruction

1.      Have a Plan

• Knowledge of the job to be taught
• How much skill you expect the learner to have, and how soon

2.      Break Down the Job

• List the important steps
• Highlight key points

3.      Have Things Ready and Orderly

• Proper equipment, materials, supplies, and environment
• Arranged as the employee will be expected to keep things

4.      Practice

• Check the effectiveness of your teaching technique
• Review and refresh your knowledge and skills periodically

Essential Elements of Effective Job Instruction

Motivate

Put learner at ease

• Find out what learner knows about the job
• Position learner properly
• Build learner’s interest

Tell and Show

• Demonstrate the operation
• Use step-by-step approach
• Stress key points
• Instruct clearly and completely

Test

• Have learner tell and show
• Have learner explain key points
• Ask questions and correct or prevent errors
• Continue until you know the learner knows

Check

• Tell learner whom to go to for help
• Put learner on their own
• Follow up often; answer questions; review key points
• Taper off to normal amount of supervision
• Reinforce positive parts of performance

Reference: Practical Loss Control Leadership, Third Edition, Frank E. Bird, Jr., George L. Germain, M. Douglas Clark

While the above list provides a reminder of how to prepare to provide effective job instruction and what the essential elements of good job instruction are, it also doesn’t list any tools or techniques about how to review your own actual performance.  So below are some thoughts about how to get some feedback about your delivery and performance on providing effective job instruction.

• Ask your team in a group and individually for feedback on your performance.  You can ask open ended questions and numerically ranked questions about your performance (e.g., On a scale of 1 – 5 how effective do you think I was in conveying the important elements of the job to you?, What additional information do you need to safely execute the task at hand?).  This feedback can be sought after the job instruction and after the execution of the job as well.  Tools such as a survey form (either hardcopy or electronically) can be used to collect feedback.
• Ask another supervisor that you trust to give you quality feedback to sit in the room while you provide the job instructions and then get their feedback on your performance.
• Use a coach to help you prepare and then watch you perform to give you quality feedback.
• Have one of your team members video record your meeting with your cell phone so you can see your own body language, delivery and language that you used.
• Follow up with your team in the field to see how they incorporated your instructions into their work.  If they deviate from your instructions, intervene and ask why they are not following the instructions.  Remember you are looking for feedback on your performance and not looking to penalize or punish a team member; your work instructions could have been incorrect or not appropriate for the specific application and you are looking to find this out so you can do better next time (i.e. don’t only assume your work instructions were 100% correct).

As we get better with our job instructions, we should see our team performance improve and the number of incidents decrease as well.  Effective job instruction is a key element of the work that we all have a supervisors and so it is important to be good at this and that we are constantly getting better as well.