Experience in Class

One of our largest and most popular classes is our Basic Process Safety Management classes. We have about 50 people in each class and we teach it twice a day every day of the week. This class is for brand new people into the petrochemical and refining industry. Before anyone can work on any refinery or in any plant, pretty much in the entire US, they have to attend this class first. Your comment made me think of this class because in this class everyone is in the exact same boat. They are all coming into a new industry and have no idea what to do in terms of safety onsite at a refinery. All of the common terms like "confined space entry" and "lockout tagout" are all brand new to them and confusing. Our job is to help provide an introduction into the industry to sort out the confusion and help them assimilate into their new roles. It's fun to see that process happen each day and for these folks to go on to become career employees in the industry. 

The second training I thought of was our supervisor leadership training that we call Foundational Leadership. So often in our industry leaders are promoted because they are able to complete projects on time and under budget. If a worker can clean a heat exchanger on time every time, he will probably be promoted to lead a crew or two in doing heat exchanger cleanouts. The problem is, he may be great at cleaning heat exchanger tubes, but horrible at relating information to teams. In many cases, these untrained leaders fall back on leaders who have led them in the past, and in many cases, these leaders lead through the volume of voice and intimidation. With no other role models, these new leaders adopt that brand of leadership, and the cycle continues. We believe by giving these new leaders some simple tools and techniques, we can help them become better leaders. Helping them with conflict resolution, feedback models, situational leadership techniques, we can give them some help in leading rather than just hoping they develop a style on their own. Just like with Basic PSM class I described above, the Foundational Leadership class is filled with leaders all at about the same level. Crew Leaders and Supervisors who have had no formal training, but who are now asked to provide leadership to teams of other workers, many of whom might have been their colleagues and equals until the day they were promoted. 

I will say this, the "importance of being aware of everyone's experience level" in a classroom, it is so much easier to have an effective and worthwhile class when everyone is there for the same reason and needs the same instruction. Without that commonality, I think our training would be far less worthwhile and not close to being engaging.