Situational Awareness in the Workplace
Situational awareness is a skill any one of us can learn. It involves being aware of your environment and the people in it. That way, we can take preventative action to stay safe. Situational in the workplace is just as important as in our personal lives.
As a leader, you can enhance the safety of your own workplace by encouraging your employees to practice situational awareness in the workplace and ensure that they know how to keep their workplace and co-workers safe. One great way for your employees to gain situational awareness in the workplace is through employee-focused safety training.
If you want to learn more about the benefits of situational awareness training, check out our companion post, "The 4 Benefits of Situational Awareness," on our blog. If you are interested in receiving training, email us or submit a contact form today.
In this post, we wanted to share the feedback from attendees at a series of instructor-led deliveries conducted by the Second Sight Team to employees of Benton County, Oregon in April 2023. Benton County is the home of Oregon State University – go, Benny the Beaver!
Benton County had the foresight to recognize the importance of situational awareness in the workplace and bring in our team to deliver our instructor-led Situational Awareness for Safety training. We conducted ten trainings to more than 200 employees across four days. We trained leadership, supervisors, and regular employees from nearly all county departments – from elections, to parks, and mental health. Recognizing that not all personnel might be able to attend the instructor-led training, they chose a hybrid approach, such that anyone who couldn’t attend in-person could access our online Situational Awareness for Safety course.
Evaluating Situational Awareness in the Workplace
The most straightforward way of evaluating training is known as "reaction." Reaction is the first level of training evaluation, followed by learning (Level 2), Behavior (Level 3), and Results (Level 4). Let's take a look at what 183 trainees thought about this event.
In our end-of-course critique, we asked trainees five questions about the perceived benefits of this course.
After taking this course, participants stated that…
More than 90% of trainees reported this training left them better prepared to observe their environment, look for threats, and take necessary actions. Participants also felt that this training benefitted the workplace as well as their personal safety. This is another key finding. Situational awareness in the workplace has dual benefits – employees can use it at work and take it home to keep themselves and their families safe.
In Their Own Words
As shown above, our evaluations indicated high levels of overall support for the course. Now, let's look at what participants say about this training in their own words.
"Great pace, excellent presentation style, appropriate to a wide variety of employment, and trauma-informed."
"This class was great and the instructors were engaging. I really enjoyed all of the videos and the opportunity to practice the skills in real-time. Thank you!"
"Really well done! Definitely will take these skills back to my workplace and my personal life."
"It was very helpful, especially to my work, where I interact with clients/patients on a daily basis.”
Our evaluations show that situational awareness training is a win all the way around. Do you think this would be useful in your place of work?
About Situational Awareness in the Workplace
Our courses are not a lecture. They are designed to engage your personnel, observe, and talk about what they see. After only a short time, your personnel will be systematically observing what they see, looking for patterns of behavior, identifying threatening individuals or situations, and recognize actions to take based on their observations.
Our online training is available right now and can accommodate any number of employees. We cap our instructor-led (ILT) classes at 40 to allow for a high-quality training experience. All ILT participants are given a guide outlining key concepts, which serves as a course workbook. This guide is something they can take home and use in the future.
A majority of our trainees felt that they had enough opportunities to practice the skills (93.9%), had enough relevant examples (94.5%), and felt that our instructors communicated key concepts well (97.8%).
Getting Training
Our Situational Awareness for Safety courses are useful for office personnel, healthcare workers, and even highway maintenance workers. Improving your teams’ situational awareness in the workplace can be done easily via our 1-hour recently-updated online version of the course. Alternatively, we have options for a 2-hour in-person version of the course, or a hybrid approach where you can access both.
We are excited to help you learn more about our offerings. Contact us to learn more about getting situational awareness training in your workplace.
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Kirkpatrick, D. (1976/98), Evaluating Training Programs: The Four Levels (San Francisco: Brett-Koehler Publishers). Retrieved August 2023, from https://www.researchgate.net/profile/George-Alliger/publication/227940409_Kirkpatrick's_Levels_of_Training_Criteria_Thirty_Years_Later/links/5fc69e6b45851568d1321a2d/Kirkpatricks-Levels-of-Training-Criteria-Thirty-Years-Later.pdf