Prestart training

Often health and safety legislation will require employees to be trained for the work they are undertaking. Associated with this prestart training will be a socialization processes (sometimes referred to as an on-boarding or induction processes) which have general objectives, such as introducing the new employee to the organizations safety policies and procedures. As with recmitment and selection processes. 

The Influences of Socialization and Prestart Training on New Employee Safety... 

Table 6.1 Relationships between perceptions of prestart training, trust, risk-taking, and compensatory behaviors...

Study Sample Correlation between trust in prestart training processes and Oust in new employees to work safely Correlation between trust in new employees and perceived safety risk from new employees Correlation between perceived safety risk from new employees and compensatory behaviors to help ensure new employee safety... 

The research findings in relationship to training shown in Table 6.1 can also be explained by Wilde s risk homoeostasis theory (RHT) (see Glendon et al. 1996 Wilde et al. 2002 Simonet and Wilde 1997). RBTT predicts that as safely features are added to a system, individuals will increase their risk-taking. It is easy to see how perceptions that prestart training will make a new employee work more safely can be associated with a reduction in perceived risk from the new employee, and result in employees taking more risks around them than are justified by their status as a new employee. While the research reported above (e.g., Burt et al. 2009 Burt and Stevenson 2009 Burt and Hislop 2013) did not question employees about socialization processes, it seems reasonable to predict that similar attitudes might form about socialization processes. As such, the next section briefly examines research on new employee socialization. 

As noted, socialization processes are likely to be perceived in a similar way to prestart training. That is, if an organization has a socialization process where new employees are introduced to safety policy and procedures, it might be reasonable to assume that this will have a positive impact on the new employee s safety-related behavior on the job. A study by Mullen (2004) supported this proposition, finding that early socialization processes could have a positive influence on safety behavior. Of course, socialization processes may have no effect at all. A new employee, who is asked during socialization to learn the organization s safety policy and procedures, understand the organization s emphasis on safety (its safety culture in the form of norms, beliefs, roles, attitudes, and practices), and learn how to complete appropriate forms (such as hazard sheets, near miss reports), may simply not achieve these expected outcomes. To help increase the chances that socialization will have a positive impact on new employees safety, best practice should be adopted. 

Another important issue to communicate in relation to prestait training is that whereas safety training may attempt to ensure safety, new team members will still lack familiarity (see Chap. 7) with the specific equipment used by the team, their specific work environment, and the specific way members of the team do their job. Thus, prestart training generally, and always, has a limited potential to ensure new employee safety. 

Burt and Stevenson (2009) and Burt et al. (2009) examined employees perceptions of organizational processes and how these are associated with their reactions to new employees. Perceptions of recruit and selection processes are discussed in Chap. 5, and perceptions of socialization and prestart training processes are discussed in Chap. 6. Both chapters note how a perception that organizational processes helps ensure safety can be associated with a lowering of risk perceptions, a decrease in behaviors which should ensure safety, and thus an overall increase in workplace safety risk. Scales used to measure perceptions of tmst in selection process, trust in induction processes, and employees reactions to new employees (compensatory behaviors) are published in the appendix of Burt et al. (2009). 

Acquiring Information During Induction and Prestart Training... 

Assumptions About Induction and Prestart Training Processes... 

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