Plumbers: Don’t Let Workplace Safety Training be a Wet Blanket

Plumbers, like all other tradespeople, require safety training to do their jobs. Often, training can be tedious, redundant, and difficult to take seriously. Safety training is often seen as a chore and “check-the-box” requirement; done quickly and forgotten. Rather, it should be considered another important tool in your kit to get you home safely. 

Plumbers regularly face significant hazards. Confined spaces, heavy lifting, hazardous material/chemical exposure, hand and power tools, and live electrical, hydraulic, and pneumatic energy systems that need to be controlled. They work on construction sites, in homes, and are often at heights on roofs or below grade in trenches.

All of these conditions are dangerous, and effective safety training is often the difference between a long career and a life-altering (or life-ending) injury. Plumbing company owners and their technicians need to consistently adopt a proactive approach to safety training programs. This requires managers to make workplace safety training interactive, practical, and consistent with regulatory standards.

This can be challenging, but it will, in turn, promote greater information retention for the team. The following are a few tips for plumbers to get more out of workplace safety training. 

Training Must be Interactive and Hands-On

Workplace safety training is all about retention. You want your team to remember the potential lifesaving processes you are teaching them. However, the modern world of technology does not foster long attention spans or information retention. We live in a world of virtual click-through training, which is convenient for finishing training, but not for ensuring training is complete and plumbers are present and attentive.

Tradesmen typically learn best when actively participating with their team and working with their hands. Plumbers are most impacted by engaging in safety training rather than passively attending a lecture or seminar.

Promote a space where asking questions and participating in demonstrations are encouraged. If you are conducting lockout/tagout training, act out real-life scenarios that require your team to identify hazards, properly use locks and tags, follow procedure, and communicate.

Your team will not remember the three-hour presentation you gave them, followed by a pop quiz, after only a few weeks. They will remember the hands-on training session they attended when putting locks and tags on a multi-lockout device on a “hot tap” operation. What is that, you ask? Maybe your training was insufficient! 

Constantin Geambasu is a plumber and the owner of Water Rehab, a water treatment and residential plumbing company in Gilbert, Arizona. He said that hands-on training is the most effective training tool he has used in his 30 years as a plumber. 

“You know the saying, you can always expect what you inspect,” Geambasu said. “You have to know what can go wrong in any situation, and the only way to do that is to practice it firsthand. In our line of work, so many things can go wrong, and if your only safety training is staring at a computer screen, you won’t know how to handle these situations in real life.”

Create monthly hands-on workplace safety training and see firsthand how much better your plumbers retain information. 

Avoid Marathon Training Sessions

No one’s idea of a perfect day includes attending an eight-hour safety training seminar. Marathon training sessions are not conducive to learning, as focusing on any task for a long time becomes increasingly difficult as the hours pass.

Ideally, you want training sessions to be shorter and more spaced out, as this maximizes consistency, focus, and efficiency, leading to better long-term results. Quality over quantity is always key in training. You want your plumbing team to be fully focused on the safety topic for the week or month. Work with your team to schedule training sessions consistently that align with your team's schedule.

If you commit to once a week for an hour, make sure the sessions happen regularly and on time. Inform your team of the type of training beforehand so they can prepare questions or provide feedback based on real-life examples they encountered on the job site. 

If you can’t avoid a marathon training session, let your team know well in advance so they can mentally prepare and adjust their work schedules. Respect your team’s time. If you set expectations for the length of training, stick to them. Doing so will help keep your plumbers more focused and engaged. 

Let Your Best Teammembers Take the Lead

A good teacher is a good leader, which is why you want to integrate your most experienced and trusted plumbers into your workplace safety training. These plumbers lead by example and motivate your greener contractors to improve and take their jobs seriously.

As a business owner, you know who the leaders in your organization are, and it is imperative that you include them in your workplace safety training. They have been in the trade for years and are perfectly suited to teach from real-life experience, not just from a book. It is essential that you have plumbers who understand what these dangerous situations look like in the real world and teach your less experienced members how to handle them.  

Work with a Local Training Specialist

Most of your plumbing company's safety training will be conducted internally, but every now and then, it is worthwhile to hire someone outside your company to conduct a training program and review your training process. Objective feedback from a third party can help you see issues you might not have considered and suggest new ways to improve the effectiveness of workplace safety training.

However, if you are going to hire someone outside your company to conduct safety training, you need to properly vet them. I recommend working with someone local who knows your market and, most importantly, has worked with plumbers in your niche. It is very different being a residential plumber in Arizona than being a commercial plumber in Minnesota. Work with a local group, ask for references, and find out who their clients are and how long they have been working with them. A workplace safety trainer who has had the same clients for years is probably doing a good job.

Have them take you through their training process. Are they hands-on, or are they simply reading slides? If their program is not interactive and hands-on, I would be wary of hiring them.

Lastly, they should ask you what equipment you use and ask you to send pictures so they can tailor their training program to that equipment. Remember, you want training to simulate real-life situations and using equipment you have never used before does not mimic what you do on the job. 

Think Long-Term

Hiring a safety specialist will cost you more money initially, but it will save you in the long run because you will have a safety training curriculum perfectly tailored to your plumbing company that you can use for years. 

Safety should be a priority for every plumbing company, and the best way to ensure your plumbers work safely is to train them. Proper safety protocol is a skill, and all skills need practice. Make training interactive, avoid marathon training sessions, let your best team members lead, and hire a workplace safety expert to help with the curriculum. Doing this will ensure your plumbing company gets the most out of workplace safety training.