Third World Countries and Training

My classmate and I had a chance to chat and he asked me a question I couldn't immediately answer about intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation in training. I don’t know if there is a way to completely change the dynamic that we currently see. 

OSHA safety stats are used by owner facilities to judge contractors. Without that standard, then I fear that contractors would revert to the Wild West. We’ve seen that before with sites prior to OSHA’s formation in the 1970’s and at times when regulators are more lax. The results are more injuries and fatalities and super fund sites when organizations try to skirt the rules. There has to be a dynamic of opposing forces help keep things moving in a straight forward direction. 

I will say that I’ve been to many sites in third-world countries and the advancements here in the US are nothing to shirk at. When I was in Costa Rica the pollution compared to a US site was significant, and the safety violations were obvious and workers were in danger. When I visited Guyana, we were forced to realize that the motto for the mining industry in that country was “one death a day is acceptable.” We were there to support a major oil refiner and producer whose corporate guidance in the US refused to allow any work with any contractor with such horrible safety guidelines. It also makes you wonder about the power and privilege that a US company was enforcing its safety guidance on another country and its workers who have different standards. Is enforcing power and privilege on another culture/society okay if it leads to greater safety for the workforce?

Regardless, back to the original question, I don’t know if we will ever get to a point where our training community is intrinsically motivated to train. If refineries didn’t mandate it, and if OSHA didn’t regulate the refineries, then worker training wouldn’t be mandated and contractors wouldn’t come to take safety training. I believe that it’s my responsibility to try and make training as engaging and effective as possible. If a worker has to come to us for training for two hours, the two hours shouldn’t be misery, he should enjoy it and learn something from it.