How to Provide Safety Training for Millennials
According to Pew Research, millennials are currently the largest generation in the U.S. labor force, representing over 35% of all workers. That means that the ability to communicate workplace safety to this generation has a huge impact on the overall well-being of the workforce.
You’ve probably heard that millennials’ safety training needs are somehow unique from previous generations. But how different is millennial safety culture, and how do you use what we know about their quirks to improve safety training for everyone? Let’s find out.
Who Are Millennials?
Before we talk about engaging millennial employees in safety training, it’s important to understand who this generation is.
For starters, while generational date ranges are notoriously slippery, leading researchers define millennials as any individual born between the years of 1981 and 1996. In 2024, that means a millennial is anyone between the ages of 28 and 43.
Millennials have been the largest generation in the workforce since 2016 and will continue to be for years to come. They’re no longer the fresh upstarts – they’re firmly the target audience for workplace safety training.
What Makes Millennial Workforce Safety Different?
A lot of fuss gets made over millennials’ short attention span or reliance on technology. While those are important characteristics, it’s arguably more relevant to millennial safety culture that they’re the first generation to grow up in a helmet-and-pads world.
Unlike previous generations, millennials grew up immersed in personal safety culture. Seatbelts and bike helmets were ubiquitous, and their childhoods were full of continual safety innovation, from airbags to the home alarm industry.
In some ways, this makes millennial safety training a slam-dunk compared to the Silent Generation or even Baby Boomers. It’s not an uphill battle to enforce goggles or helmets. They’re habituated to the value of PPE and protocol. They don’t remember what the world was like before we slowed down for safety.
Unfortunately, this upside also comes with a downside: they don’t have the same awareness of the consequences. Certain safety precautions were common sense in the past due to gruesome personal experience – you knew someone who’d lost a finger to machinery. Millennials, having grown up in a world with built-in precautions, have more theoretical safety knowledge than actual. This can make the dangers seem a bit distant.
Tips for Providing Workplace Safety Training for Millennials
What are the best techniques to use in millennial safety training? Below, we offer a few tips. Luckily, these tactics have proven effective in improving safety training for everyone.
Use Interactive Technology
Tech is the cornerstone of millennials’ lifestyle, so its use in millennial safety training is a no-brainer.
PowerPoint slides and text manuals are a thing of the past. Engaging millennial employees in safety training means using the multimedia platforms that they gravitate to naturally, such as short video clips, animated storytelling, micro-quizzes, and gamification. These formats engage millennials’ interest in their off-hours, so it’s a winning strategy for keeping their attention on workplace safety.
Make It Mobile
Rather than the outdated method of bringing employees into training workshops, why not bring the training to them?
As of 2023, millennials spend over four and a half hours a day on the phone. It’s going to have their attention anyway, so why not use that to your advantage?
Millennials are often equally comfortable on laptops and smartphones, so a responsive training format is best. However, adapting to a more mobile-centric millennial safety culture will position you well for their successors, Gen Z. After all, Zoomers spend 33% more time on their phones, having grown up with them in their hands.
Keep it Concise
Using mobile-friendly, interactive multimedia is a good start for pushing millennial workforce safety, but don’t let it become wordy and embellished.
Millennials live in an era where time is their most valuable resource, and they have little patience for fluff. If the training content is long and tedious, it won’t hold their full attention at all, and multitasking leads to lower rates of comprehension and retention.
Millennial safety training needs to be straightforward and to the point. This doesn’t necessarily mean short – good safety training takes time. But it should be focused and honed.
Emphasize Relevance
When creating safety training for millennials, it’s important to stick to the material that matters most.
Use scenarios they will recognize. Tailor millennial safety training for their role. Consider what to call attention to based on likely risks.
Emphasize the stakes of safety rules. Take steps to make the consequences real to them. As we said above, workplace safety hazards can seem more hypothetical than personal for millennials due to a lifetime of unprecedented safety, but communicating the gravity of the situation can take some extra effort.
Get Online Training Designed to Engage Millennial Employees
If you’re anything less than a massive operation, adapting to millennial safety culture can seem like a waste of resources. It’s asking a lot to drastically change the way you administer safety training when resources are tight.
That’s why the perfect solution can be purchasing existing high-tech courses from an OSHA-authorized provider like us. Our whole job is to keep safety training up to date – not just from a regulatory standpoint but a technological standpoint, too.
Our courses are interactive, mobile-friendly, and designed to engage millennial employees – and everyone else – in safety topics. Students can learn at their own pace using interactive exercises and concise storytelling to make the hazards real.
We offer OSHA 10 for both Construction and General Industry, which is a great way to introduce or strengthen millennial workforce safety knowledge. OSHA 30 courses offer more in-depth coverage for those with supervisory duties.
If your organization isn’t accustomed to online training, we can help there, too! Our business solutions include a platform for assigning, delivering, and tracking these courses. You’ll get bulk rates on a huge catalog of training that ranges from OSHA to HR, and you’ll be matched with a dedicated account manager to help you get the hang of things.
