Safety Training System Design for Student Teams

Many approaches exist for the creation of safety training programs. Systems have been created for both large and small businesses that vary in complexity. Few of these approaches however are simple enough to be used on student design teams, which are made up of young adults who are also full time students. These student teams are student driven and apply classroom knowledge to real world work under limited faculty supervision, specifically when hands-on work is being executed. As student focused organizations, these teams often rely on their university’s or college’s guidelines to develop a set of standard operating procedures. Though these set a base for the team, the guidelines are no substitute for training that is specific to the safety risks associated with the work the team is doing. It is also difficult to convince student team leaders to invest time into training team members who may not participate on an ongoing basis. By developing a hierarchical level based safety training system with the principals of gamification, the needs of all participating stakeholders, regulations, and guidelines are met. Students are required to show certain levels of commitment before advancing in their training and involvement in team activities. They are thus also limited to certain lower risk tasks at each level. This leveled system, with a combination of other factors, motivates students to become more involved with the team and shows them the reward of completing additional training. This process allows the student’s team leads conducting the training to make sure there is commitment from the participating students before dedicating valuable time to safety training. In the case presented the team has had over 100 students participate in the program and team leaders have seen drive to continue their training in order to grow in responsibility ad activity within the team.